SoloSEO

9 Steps to Land & Keep Fortune 500 Clients

Posted by Aaron R Stewart on February 19th, 2009

I’ve been inspired today by a post written by Demian Farnworth entitled: What a Cocky CEO Can Teach You About World-Class Blogging. The post was excellent, and as a small business creator and owner, I loved the points made in the blog on keeping our companies “focused, lean, fast.” Embracing these attributes usually keeps you competitive, especially against larger companies, which can occasionally bog down under the weight of their own hierarchy, policies and procedures.

However, in my experience in working with large clients, I have learned much about them. When I was younger, I used to get quite frustrated with the sometimes arduous process to get anything approved, or to get policies changed, in order to make it possible for clients to use our services and technologies. But over the years I have learned to be patient, as we have seen that once the required changes have been made, and the contracts signed, there is nothing more satisfying than the stability a large client can provide to small business cash flows, and A/R collections. We currently spend more way more energy running around attempting to collect from small clients, than we ever had to spend waiting for a large client to put everything in place for us. So to all small businesses out there thinking about servicing large clients, go for it. It may take years to get a contract in place, but once it is there, it is a very comfortable place to be. In one example, one of our current Fortune 500 clients took almost 5 years of discussions before we actually got the business, but we have now been working with them for over 3 years, and just renewed our contract for 3 more. It is very, very nice in these economic times to have a contract in place with a sound, stable client.

So how do you land these large clients? Is it an art? Are there any tricks? I have thought about these questions quite a bit over the years. There are no tricks per se, but here are some steps we have found to be very helpful.

1. Before approaching a client, learn everything you can about the company, their history, the current management team, read all the latest news articles. I love to look over their stock price, and history. Many working within the company will watch the stock closely, as it has much to do with how their salaries, bonuses, 401K and retirement will be calculated. Whatever you can do to increase your knowledge about them, and what they do and are about, the better off you are going to be once the discussions begin. With every phone call, I have found the opportunity to ask them about some aspect of their company, or mentioned something I have learned, or I congratulate or commiserate with them on their stock price. Once they know you really know about their company, you have made an impression that is invaluable.

2. Don’t be afraid to follow up. There are many demands on employees at large firms, they are required to attend all kinds of meetings, produce reports, and they do not have as much control over their time as small business folks do. The polite, squeaky wheel does eventually get the grease in this case. We try to follow up at least once a week during the courting period. That is a lot of contact when it takes years to finally get in place, but again, think of the long-term prize, and keep your expectations realistic on the amount of time required to get the deal done.

3. Make sure your product is not only great, but it is a near perfect fit with what they are doing. Do not call and fish to see if they just may possibly have needs for some form of what you could possibly do for them if they had time to listen and share what their needs are… (annoying run on sentence used purposefully) There have been many times we have pitched our product or service, which fit well with what the potential client was doing, but while talking to them we realized we could offer other products and services that might be even better based on their immediate needs. We would then approach them later with a new proposal that is not only more comprehensive, but excites them more because of their current needs. This is a great way to get the ball rolling more quickly.

4. Don’t be afraid to ask for referrals, even during the negotiating process. One of our current largest clients was actually a referral from a client we were in negotiations with. Those you are speaking with know others in other companies in their line of work. They went to school together, attend conferences together, might be in local organizations together, and they will know if your services might prove helpful at another firm. A referral from a person of stature in a large company, to their counterpart in another firm is golden. We literally started working with the referral company the same week the referral was made. It was a fabulous surprise.

5. Take the time to travel and see those you are talking to. As small business folks, we don’t always have the working capital to fly all over the world on a whim, but maybe consider taking a family trip to a city where you have a potential client. Michael and I were in a city for SoloSEO business, and since we were going to be in the area anyway, we just called up a potential client we had been working with in another opportunity and said “hey we are going to be in the area, and were wondering if we could come by and meet with you?” They were very accommodating, and we actually got to meet with entire executive group. We had a great discussion, demoed some stuff, and moved the discussion along more in a hour, than we had been able to do over the previous 12 months.

6. When all else fails, invite them to golf. Oh laugh if you must (and my wife will ), but there has been many times when I have tried and tried unsuccessfully to get someone on the phone or to answer an email. But eventually I will call, when someone tries to give me the brush off, or if I have to leave a VM, I will say “well, I have a tee-time today at 2:00, and have had an opening, just wanted to see if _______ wanted to join us.” I am either put on hold and put through, or I get a call back in less than 5 minutes. Great thing about golf, I then have 4+ hours with the person I needed to talk with. And, never, never, never allow them win, that’s terrible. If they beat you straight up, fine, but if you can take it to them, then you will earn their respect. Once you trounce a CEO, President, VP or anyone else on the golf course, you have their attention, respect, and they will take your calls from then on, guaranteed.

7. Probably the most important, just be yourself. You are good enough, just as you, to hang with anyone, no matter how big the company is in your sights. Your products and services are (hopefully) excellent, and you will do a good job for them, and make their company more competitive or efficient. As long as you can focus on this, the whole process is easier to exist through. I have no doubt that what we have to offer the companies we approach can help them be better at what they do. If they choose to use us, they will see amazing results, and they will be grateful they decided to work with us. If they choose not to go with us, it is their choice and their loss. Chances are we will work a deal with their competitor, and the original company will eventually learn how good things could have been.

8. Once you have landed the big client, keep them by providing customer service they have never experienced in-house. We try to respond to any request or comment from our Fortune 500 clients as soon as they come in. We will tell them instantly what we are doing to address the concern, and how long it will take to get it done. When someone works in a large company they are used to their request taking days, and sometimes weeks to be addressed. So they are happy when things are dealt with more quickly, but we don’t allow ourselves to become complacent because their expectations are way low. We respond as quickly as we possibly can, even though we don’t really have to in order to keep them happy.

9. When contracts eventually come due, and it is time to negotiate, realize these companies are going to do all they can to keep the price as low as possible, or to lower the price. They have budgets, supervisors, and stocks holders they have to be concerned with. We like to have at least three possible pricing options for them, with varying levels of products and service we can offer at these varying price points. The client can then choose what is best for their needs. In all the packages we can be profitable, and we have addressed the concerns our clients have. If we are doing our jobs right, we usually know what these concerns will be, by listening during time we spend working with them.

Working with large clients is challenging, it is demanding, but it is incredibly interesting, and most of all it is very enjoyable. I consider the people I work with at these firms to be great friends, I enjoy their phone calls, visits, and solving their challenges for them. We have gained quite a bit of business by current clients just asking if there is anything we could do to help them solve a new problem. In many cases we have, and it has developed into a new product or service we can then offer in the marketplace.

So get out there and land a big client(s), it can be done, and when it is done, it will be well worth all the effort.

1 comment Visited 2906 times February 19th, 2009 Aaron R Stewart

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SoloSEO’s Super Dumb Bailout Plan

Posted by Aaron R Stewart on November 26th, 2008

Due to the rough economic times we face together, the leaders here at SoloSEO have decided we are going to start taking out loans in the names of our people, and confiscating retirement funds for company use. We have learned recently that some of our vendors are really struggling, so we will be using these funds to help them through these difficult times.

As an example, the good folks who provide our bandwidth have lost quite a bit of money lately. It is mostly due to some Internet based companies going under. Many of these site owners were provided Internet bandwidth at almost no cost for the first few years, because they couldn’t afford the monthly fees normally charged up front. However, there was an agreement in place to raise the monthly fees over time, when hopefully the site owners could afford it. Unfortunately it didn’t really work out, and many, if not most of these clients never could pay the rising fees, and they just abandoned their sites and moved on. These site owners are now pretty upset at our vendors, and feel like they got tricked into having a site in the first place. Now I ask, how could our vendor know these individuals, who couldn’t afford to pay to start, would not be able to pay later? It is impossible to predict, and it would have been unfair if these economically challenged citizens didn’t have the same opportunities others who could afford the services were enjoying. Just as a note, I must say I love this vendor’s facilities, they are simply gorgeous. All decked out with the finest leather and fixtures. It is really an amazing place. You should see the entrance, breathtaking. And wow, they take care of their management team, every one of them has a BMW leased for them by the company. What a great idea. It would be a pretty sweet life to work there. All that being said, SoloSEO doesn’t want them to fail. Too many other companies might have to find services elsewhere, and that would be a bit difficult. Or worse yet, what if some other competitor heard of our vendor’s financial troubles, and just came along and offered to buy this vendor’s assets and accounts for pennies on the dollar? That would be a shame. Anyway, we must not let this happen.

Another one of our struggling vendors provides our servers for us, and they build them right here in the good USA. Now while the quality of their servers isn’t the best, and their features are a little behind the times, and their servers are a little more expensive than ones made by foreign owned firms, it really isn’t their fault they are bankrupt. We have learned that the contract our vendor has in place with the union factory workers is almost 100% higher than the agreements the same unions have with foreign owned, US-based server manufactures. How can we expect our vendor to compete fairly in such a hostile marketplace? It isn’t fair, they need more money to make another go of it, and be hopefully be profitable this time. Now we aren’t dumb, we are requiring this company come up with a plan to repay us. We hope it works, and we hope we will get your money back eventually. One the other hand, the bandwidth guys are free to use the money for us anyway they want, they just need to promise they will pay us back eventually. They were essentially forced to give away bandwidth to these failed clients in the first place by some of our managers, so we have to cut them some slack. And, just so our vendors know, if more funding is needed in the future, we will be able to take our more loans our people’s names, and also the rest of their retirement funds to help you, we are sure they will understand.

Now, unfortunately our employees have no choice as to how much or when we take their cash, and it doesn’t matter if they disagree with us, we are a team. And as a team of managers, we have decided we are going to do this, and believe us, it is in all your best interest in the long term.

Oh, oh, oh, I almost forgot… Some great news, we did work something pretty cool out with our failing, borrowing vendors. If any of our employees need a little financial help from time to time, they will be able to borrow some money from our vendors!!! For this service, they will need to pay some interest on the money they borrow to the vendor. Then the vendor will have more revenue to help them pay us off. Don’t worry about it. Just think of it this way, the loans we are taking out in your names to fund all this, you won’t even have to pay all the way off. No these loans are so large, that they will need to be passed on from generation to generation. So your kids and grandkids will be paying the bulk of all this money, not you!! Brilliant huh?

Now I know there will be some of our smarter people who will think this is a terrible plan. They will ask why they should be forced to pay for another firm’s mistakes. Then they will be angered when they figure out they are now going to pay interest on money forcibly taken from them and given to the vendor in the first place. But come on, can’t everyone in the room see the wisdom in the plan?

I hope anyone reading this knows that is a moronic plan, and this is essentially going on right now to all of us, just substitute Congress for SoloSEO management, Citigroup and AIG for the bandwidth suppliers, GMC, Ford and Chrysler for the server manufacturer, and all of the American tax payers as SoloSEO people. We are getting screwed.

I love this country, I just hope the guys in Washington (especially the new guys coming up) start thinking their decisions all the way through. I am terrified for small businesses in this country right now, and I hope the future proves to be brighter than it is today. I hope we all face this financial storm and pass through safely to the other side, but forgive me if I don’t give Washington any credit for any sort of turn around, they will have had nothing to do with it, it will be hard working, inspired small business owners who make it happen.

I guess that is why it doesn’t say “In Government We Trust” on our currency, because the governments create the problems, and someone else has to clean them up.

Add comment Visited 2068 times November 26th, 2008 Aaron R Stewart

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How the Ryder Cup and SEO are similar…

Posted by Aaron R Stewart on September 19th, 2008

In honor of the Ryder Cup starting this morning, I thought a little piece on the similarities of golf and SEO strategy would be an interesting challenge. I love the Ryder Cup, and I love the match play format, it is much more interesting than the stroke play format found at most other professional golf tournaments, so the Ryder Cup is just grand.

SEO and golf, so here we go. First and foremost, the online marketplace, like match play golf, is a competitive situation, and you must perform better than your competition does to win (visitors for your site, or a better position in the SERPs). We don’t have much control over what our competitors do, but we can perform in a way which gives us the best opportunity to win. My philosophy on SEO is probably a bit more practical than most, but so is the way I play golf.

There are so many golf teachers, gadgets, philosophies, and techniques out there, it is rather confusing to figure out which golf swing to learn or which equipment to buy. Much the same can be said about SEO. Many SEO pros will give us quips about their little tricks and tips, many will cheat or be black hat, and there are others that just white hat it and are good at what they do. However, I don’t think any technique, on the golf course or in SEO is worth much if it doesn’t work well for you in your situation. In my mind knowing your competitor is where SEO must start.

If you don’t understand your competitor’s online strategy, then you have a greatly reduced chance of doing well online. Every business owner, or potential business owner should/must take a long hard look at what is out there in their market, and then make a decision as to if they are going to enter and how they are going to compete once launched to succeed.

SEO shouldn’t be about finding as many Keywords, creating as much Content, and rounding up as many Links as possible, that isn’t a smart SEO strategy, and can eat up all kinds of time. As small business owners, time is our most precious asset. SEO is about seeing what is working in your online marketplace and then implementing those SEO strategies and performing them better than everyone else. None of us will ever know exacly how Google or Yahoo really evaluate our sites, and rank them accordingly, but I don’t think it is important information anyway. Like golf, everyone has their opinions what makes a good golf swing, and there are many who will claim they know what a good site is, but for both golf and SEO the proof is simply in the results. If you are starting to score better in golf, or if your site is doing better in the SERPs, then you have found something that works for you, stick with it, and hone it, make it yours. One thing in SEO, if it is working for your competitor online, you can be sure it will work for you. Save time and focus on those items first.

In one of our businesses, we are going after a rather large (Fortune 500) account, and we needed to understand more about the client, and the vendors the are currently using. So we called the vendors up and got price quotes for their services, and asked them their businesses and their philosophies. The information was/is very valuable as we move forward. Sam Walton, of Walmart fame, used to go into his competitor’s stores and look around, he would copy the techniques that he thought worked well, and ignore the rest. This also is where he learned the pricing strategies of his competitors, and we all know the Walmart philosophy on pricing… (go to the bottom of the Walmart home page, and see the running total of the money “they have saved American families.”) I wonder how many American jobs that savings equates too? Interesting question… At one time, probably 7 years ago, we were wholesaling a product Walmart wanted to put in their stores, it was a total nightmare dealing with them, but that story is for another day. If nothing else Walmart is an excellent example of knowing your competition and just out-competing them head to head.

In golf as in SEO, know your competition, then find out what’s works for you, and you will improve in both.

SoloSEO has some of the greatest online SEO tools to know how your competition is performing online. Once logged into your SoloSEO account you can set up to have reports about your competition created periodically, and then adjust your SEO strategy once you know what they are up to. It really is that simple.

Now, it has been 6 years since the USA has won the Ryder Cup, they are getting ready to tee off here in just a few minutes. Go USA, bring the cup home!!! As a final note to family, friends, associates, and all others, please don’t try to get hold of me today, I will be unavoidably detained.

Add comment Visited 1767 times September 19th, 2008 Aaron R Stewart

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Online Reputation Strategies

Posted by Aaron R Stewart on July 16th, 2008

In the evolution of all things online, we have come to a place where individuals can now employ some online strategies to really hammer at a firm’s or individual’s reputation. And if these dipsticks are good at what they do, they can have a disastrous influence on potential clients and partners. Michael and I have had the opportunity to meet with a number of large firms, even Fortune 500 companies, to discuss online strategies and systems, including online reputation management.

Yesterday we sat down with a company we are quite familiar with. We have had discussions with them over the years on a number of different technological systems to improve aspects of their business. We first discussed SEO strategies with them starting back in March of 2007. But at that time, due to some management changes and architecture issues, we didn’t have the opportunity to help them much. Yesterday their online situation had changed a bit, in that they are now facing some online reputation challenges, and they know something needs to be done, and the sooner the better.

No doubt about it, we will see more and more of these sorts of online attacks in the future, there seems to be something very empowering about a keyboard and a screen. Words and comments people would never say in public or audibly, get thrown up on blogs and as comments every day, with little consequence to the mud slinger. So what can we do about protecting our firm, and our firm’s reputation. Here are a few words of advice.

Michael made a great comment yesterday about openness in business, which has become so more important in this online revolution. We as business owners and managers of firms need to be more open to the public, even if it is uncomfortable or unnerving. I personally was raised in a family where we kept our “problems” “in house” so to speak. I mean we felt like “why should we share our dirt with the neighborhood?” It was none of their business, and we didn’t want to look any less perfect than we already did. In corporate America, this type of “keep the dirty laundry in-house” attitude has been prominent. Large firms used to be very good at ignoring what others were saying, they would just pretend to look the other way, refuse to comment and they hoped, with time, the problem would eventually go away. And to a degree I think this strategy worked and had merit. But that won’t work anymore. If we aren’t willing to get in the discussion, especially a negative one, then we risk appearing out of touch, and most importantly we risk letting others present our firm’s image in a light which may not be representative, nor fair.

This type of corporate openness can also have sort of a self-policing aspect to it. If we are open about what is going on inside the company, freely discussing issues head on, there will be more internal effort to make sure nothing actually does goes too wrong internally, as people are being held responsible for their actions, and frankly dealing with problems is a royal pain. I wonder if the stories of Tyco and MCI might have been a bit different if openness from top to bottom was a policy in those organizations? Perhaps.

So, how can we get involved in the online clammer? One method is to pay attention to what others are saying about your company. There are many ways to do this. Michael shared the example of how Comcast monitors Twitter for comments about their company, then quickly responds to these comments, positive or negative, to make sure they are heading off any potential problems. What a wonderfully proactive way to interact, and to be apart of the online social conversation. Obviously watching the Twitter feed to perhaps find something about your firm would be time consuming, and maybe impractical if it is a small firm, but it is also possible to go back and search the archives of Twitter. Then, when we have the time, we can write a blog post using keywords that might associate our firm with the past comments, and deal with the issue head on. I also would suggest contacting the person who made the comment directly, just to see if there isn’t anything that can be done to improve their attitude toward the company. You might find them pretty surprised you cared, and possibly shocked you knew they had commented in the first place.

I personally use Google Alerts to watch for keywords which are important to me. I use it for my name and each firm name, just to keep any eye on things online. If anyone uses these tagged words online, Google alerts me, and we can then go and check it out and deal with it. It is a very helpful, and frankly reassuring system. When a hot topic comes up, and our firm is put in the discussion, we make sure to get some content out there, on a new web page, or in a blog to address the issue, making sure we use the very keywords used in the attack. We all need to make sure that when someone puts across a potentially negative view, that we have provided our own narrative of the situation to buffer a searcher’s reaction. If we are open and honest to the problem, potential clients will give us the well-deserved benefit of the doubt , which we essentially earned by responding directly. I don’t think individuals are naive enough to believe everything they read, but they are more likely to believe when no opposing view is offered.

When considering future pages or blog post, perhaps we should discuss items that might be problems in the future… If you are an injury attorney, I would have a page discussing the term “ambulance chaser.” A used car salesman should discuss the whole sales process and perhaps offer steps on how to avoid buying a lemon. Helpful content like this is not only beneficial in reputation management, but also assists in building a group of loyal readers who appreciate your unique view of your market. We each know our individual markets better than most our clients will, and they might as well learn it from us. Then when shots are taking at our reputations, we have a trusting readership to come to our aide, and participate in the conversation. So the online noise will not only be from some delusional competitor or a disgruntled client, but also from us directly, and others that have learned to trust us over time.

The bigger the firm, the bigger the challenge to manage online reputations. Fortunately there are more complex and technologically advanced methods for larger companies, with more online real estate to protect, but these strategies take a new mindset, a great deal of money and usually new internal and technological architecture to fully implement. Most of us will never have to worry about this extreme level of reputation protection, but if there is a time when your large firm or you yourself do need some help, let us know, we have learned a great deal on how to deal with these challenges, even on the largest of scales.

In short, as a buddy of mine likes to say, “just keep it real,” and online that advice is good as good as any, especially when managing what others can find out about you through search.

1 comment Visited 3085 times July 16th, 2008 Aaron R Stewart

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Don’t be a Victim of Online Fraud

Posted by Aaron R Stewart on January 24th, 2008

Due to all the mortgage fraud around here, and throughout the country, there have been public service announcements popping up, to better “educate” us about the dangers of fraud. Fraud seems to be a part of life, with new ploys being developed all the time to take advantage of trusting individuals. The last comment of one of the public service announcements heard frequently around here states: “If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.” We all have heard this comment before, and frankly it is a good piece of advice. Due to blatant greed, we all need to be suspect of almost everything, if not everything. I can promise you there is no money locked in a secret US bank account, which only you can get out to help a banished Prince of Nigerian royal decent, and for your efforts the good Prince won’t be giving you a few million as a commission either.

In online business the same goes, I am sad to hear of stories of people who put out their hard-earned money on some hyped-up trick to increase traffic to their site. These programs might in fact increase traffic a bit, but it isn’t quality traffic, it isn’t qualified traffic, so it isn’t worth what was paid.

Then there are the “online marketing experts” who are willing to open their secret treasure trove of online selling secrets for a nominal fee. These are the secrets that have “made them millions” and they are going to hand them out to you for only $29.95. Oh, but that’s not all, you can also get a special bonus of the super-duper extra secret online marketing magic techniques for just another $19.99, but you have to do it before that 60 second timer ticks off to zero… hurry!!! Please…

I am also tired of hearing of the many SEO scams, and then dealing with the fallout these scams put on the SEO industry. These SEO scammers are the people who ask you to pay a relatively small fee up front, then monthly fees thereafter for their masterful “SEO services.” All of which can’t be audited or proven, while you are being assured by the scammer they are working hard on your site, and you sense they are sitting in their underwear, and you swear you can hear Halo 3 being played in the background. I am sure there have been many occasions when all these SEO guys have done is sign our sites up for that traffic-pusher scam system mentioned earlier, and then they just sit back and claim the new increase in traffic is from their relentless SEO efforts. Total scam.

In the world of Internet marketing, let’s just agree on this… If it sounds to good to be true, it MOST DEFINITELY IS NOT TRUE. Please do not fall for any of these and a myriad of other online scams, there is not easy money out there, not legally anyway.

Making a site a success is like anything else in life, it takes work. SEO is work, it takes time to build links, create content, research keywords, all of which are important in SEO efforts. There are tools you can use to make the process of SEO more manageable, but the work has to be done by someone, somehow, somewhere, in order for a site to really improve its performance. You can use a system like SoloSEO to help you keep track of all your progress and provide you with tools and training to do it yourself, but it does take time and effort. Or you can hire a reputable SEO firm, one that will be a bit pricey, but they will tell you what they are doing, and show you reports of the progress they have made, and you will see an increase in qualified traffic, and ultimately sales. Good SEO efforts drive real potential clients to your site because they already know what you are offering and it is what they are searching for, that is the type of pre-qualified clients we all want browsing our product pages.

At SoloSEO we are working to make the tools and processing of SEO easier to use, as well as more educational. We not only want our clients to see their sites improving the right way, we want them to know how SEO works and to understand what the tools and processes are doing, and why the positive results are happening. Understanding the concepts behind SEO allow us to better understand our online marketplace, and helps us quickly determine the different online tactics be employed by our competitors, so we can better compete. Learning and doing are both important in SEO, as it is with many other worthwhile endeavors.

In short, please be careful when purchasing SEO services, make sure the providers will be accountable, make sure they give you some benchmarks on what they will accomplish over the term of the contract. Not so much in terms of traffic, traffic will come if the SEO is done right, instead make sure they give you a timeline on when the keyword research will be done, how much time they will spend building links, and how they build links, (hopefully they avoid purchasing links), and how much time will be spent on content, etc. Pin them down, and make them commit to a defined time-line. This is the way business is typically done in the offline world, we should demand and expect the same level of responsibility from the online world. Don’t be intimidated by their perceived expertise, you know more about other stuff than they do, I assure you. Speak with confidence, and expect them to stand by their performance.

If you have any questions on whether a SEO service provider is a good one or not, ask them to provide you a few URLs they have worked on and talk to the owners of those sites, see how past clients have felt they were treated. You could also use our SEO tools to analyze these sites and see if they have addressed basic SEO principles required to improve a site for the long haul.

Ultimately, just be wary, money can make good people do some pretty dumb/dishonest things. We unfortunately had $20K stolen from us last year by a family friend. This someone we allowed in our home as one of the family and we mistakenly trusted, so it can happen easily, anywhere, anytime, even to the most untrusting among us.

One final note on fraud, pay attention to all the political campaigning going on right now. Some of the very best scammers in all the world are now running for President of the United States, it is fascinating to watch. Let us all remember, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is, even ( or especially) in politics.

4 comments Visited 2701 times January 24th, 2008 Aaron R Stewart

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Paid Links are Bad, No Good, No Bad…

Posted by Aaron R Stewart on December 13th, 2007

Michael Gray doesn’t know who I am, I don’t expect him to. We sat next to each other one day at lunch during Pubcon, he is a polite, engaging guy, with obviously tons of knowledge in SEO/SEM field. I enjoyed Michael’s many interviews on Local search, and learned much from his posts. He has earned a great deal of respect for his knowledge in this industry, no bones about it. (And here comes the but). But in his latest rant concerning Google and paid links, which was in response to Matt Cutts’ blog post about paid links, I think Michael’s perspective of the situation is just a bit too simplified. Now, I am not what anyone should consider a SEO, I am more of a SEO theorist at best. I have been learning SEO to selfishly help our businesses grow online, so I analyze SEO related, and most business related situations through my experience as a small business owner and based on basic economic principles. These lenses are the only ones I feel comfortable using when analyzing interesting business issues, just so we have established my perspective.

Michael Gray has a problem, as do many, with the apparent hypocrisy within Google. On one hand Google asks us to not buy or sell links, and to report sites which do one or both. Google tells us this will allow them to adjust a site’s rank, and relevance calculations accordingly, which needs to be done because links currently influence a site’s rank. So, in a paid linkless world, Google, in theory, would only be serving up the most relevant sites for each of our search queries. This of course is a preposterous dream, but we will leave this a discussion on another post, it still remains the stated purpose of Google’s actions.

Now to the other hand, while Google publicly denounces and punishes those dealing in paid links, they turn around and make piles of cash selling links for placement on their SERPS, as well as on other sites participating in their ad delivery system. On the surface there is definitely some cause for concern, and the appearance of impropriety is nothing short of glaring. It is this apparent conflict of interest which has Michael Gray and SEO minions riled up. “Why can Google sell links on their site, but we can’t sell them on our site?”, is their united cry. It is a good question, it is a fair question, and one I don’t think Google has quite answered completely or eloquently enough, which possibly increases the ire even more.

So from a simpleton’s business perspective, let me provide Google with a little defense fodder to this whole selling links dealio. I do not come at this as a dyed-in-the-wool Google Kool-Aid drinker, although I do use them as my primary search engine. Nor do I do this because Matt Cutts was genuinely cool to Michael Jensen and myself as we left PubCon one night. (Matt: we sincerely hope you are using and enjoying the SoloSEO swag item in good listening health.) We all enjoyed a few minutes crossing a busy street together, which in Vegas is a bonding moment, as is any other near-death experience.

The simple reason Google is trying to manage the paid link situation in this heavy-handed manner, is they are protecting their core business, that’s it… That’s the answer, nothing more to see here, move along. Now Gray suggests in his post that Google had in fact created the paid link mess, but this isn’t totally correct. Links have always been a good measure of a site’s popularity, many of us will remember all the early sites, which proudly displayed a “Links” page, I used those “referral” pages all the time. Links to companies, from companies I already trusted, made a difference to me, as I am sure they did to many. Even today, links out from trusted sites are a good referral, and lend credibility to that site. So not including the incoming links as a measure of a site’s quality would be a huge mistake for any search engine. Links must to be measured by all serious search engines attempting to deliver relevant results. And because links are beneficial to our site in terms of traffic and sales, some are willing to pay for them, that is why paid links abounds. So Google didn’t create the paid link mess, but by profiting the most through the selling of links, they definitely have the appearance of being holier than thou in their current stance. Perhaps Google and their billions don’t particularly care what we think, but I don’t think that is the base motivation behind their actions.

There is one area in this paid search mess which does concern me a bit… Google’s position on why buying links from them is ok, is based on the fact that when we buy from them, they know who we are, and they know not to pass page rank from those links, in order to keep their rankings systems pure. Here is the tricky part, if Google is squeaky clean, then the relevance and popularity of any paying client’s site should not be improved or effected, even though they are paying clients. We can only hope Google is ethical, and this is how it is handled, otherwise Google is no better than Tyco, WorldComm and Enron. Unfortunately, I know of some who now buy ads with Google, not only because they hope to get more traffic through SERPs, but also because they believe it potentially improves their organic positioning on the SERPs. So, in an odd way, Google actually profits from the appearance of a possible impropriety, most likely based on the current corporate climate, in which many of us just assume big businesses are greedy, lying, cheating, crooks. Pretty sad.

Ultimately we may never know if there is a benefit to a site’s ranking through advertising with Google, this is a part of Google’s “secret sauce” and protected as proprietary. So unless someone from the Google inside commits corporate hara-kiri, and tells the world how it all works, we will never know. So, in a perfect search world, paid links to Google would not have an effect on a site’s organic position within Google’s SERP, this practice, in principle, would be going against their core business model of providing the most relevant, naturally occurring search results for every search query.

For me personally, I understand why Google sells advertising… Because they can, and because it makes them loads of the green. We all would do the same if we could, in this regard the Google haters are being a bit ingenuous. I also understand why Google tries to manage the paid links conundrum, in a sense, to protect and improve their ability to provide their clients with the best search experience possible. We can only hope Google is being responsible in keeping the two practices mutually exclusive, and not influencing results based on their paying client list. It is also easy to understand why many are suspect of Google, there have been so many instances of corporate greed in the past, that many are cynical, rightly so. But not to worry, history has shown us again and again that business is the survival of the fittest. And the fittest companies are the ones that do things ethically and honestly for the long term. Eventually the law, or competition puts the fakers/takers in jail, or out of business. It has always been that way, it doesn’t matter the market, it doesn’t matter the product or service, and it doesn’t matter the company, eventually time runs out. We will know at some point in the future if Google is doing what they claim to be doing, or if they are truly are as slimy as some believe them to be. In the meantime, while Google carries their big stick, we might want to think twice before buying links, not everyone at Google is as pleasant as we found Matt to be.

9 comments Visited 2809 times December 13th, 2007 Aaron R Stewart

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Specialized Search is Simple Economics

Posted by Aaron R Stewart on November 29th, 2007

There has been much speculation about how personal and local search, which I term “Specialized Search,” will affect search marketing strategies in the future. Although it feels recent, the discussion of more specialized search systems really started to heat up back in 2004, when Google’s Sergey Brin made comments concerning Google’s foray into Specialized Search technologies. Bill Slawski, our industry’s legal expert, has done a masterful job of following the patents issued to the search engines for various new personalized search techniques, and he asks insightful questions on how these patented technologies might affect search in the future. Bill helps me think, which isn’t easy. Bill’s SEO by the Sea blog has a has a full category on the personalization of search. It is worthy of your time if you want to better understand the great strides search engines are making to innovate to further customize the search experience for every individual client.

Additionally, Michael’s post of yesterday entitled: Local Search is Changed Forever - Now Google Knows Where You Are also discusses the amazing trends in local search. None of us should be surprised that the search engines are going to try to improve the search experience for their clients, it is basic economic principles at work here. We have to remember that Google and Yahoo! are competitors, I would say fierce competitors, and if these companies do not evolve, and implement new & better search strategies, then they run the risk of losing market share, and eventually becoming irrelevant over time. I don’t think either company will allow themselves to become the next Excite.com in the world of search.

There are many who believe Google and to a lessor extent Yahoo! are out to kidnap our personal preferences, and somehow use this “personal” data for some unsightly purpose in the future. Yes, even in search we have our own group of conspiracy theorists. I have read blogs recently of some who feel tricked that Google has been modifying their search results, based on their personal search histories and their locations, without their permission. While I am not one that wants to lose any personal freedoms, if while I’m using Google’s service, Google saves my search history to improve my search experience in the future, it seems like a pretty good business decision in my mind. Nothing overly Orwellian about it, just a vendor trying to better help a client, and fight off competition. If I am more satisfied with my search results, then the chances of me moving to another search engine is greatly reduced. That is pretty much what all of us business people are attempting to accomplish, develop a loyal customer base, and do all we can to prevent them from going elsewhere. If we aren’t moving forward in the marketplace, we are being left behind.

So as search results become more based on individuals, what effect will that have on SEO, and SEO strategies? It is an interesting question. If each of us are getting manipulated/personalized results based on our personal search history, then how can the SEOs “prove” their worth to their clients? I mean if we can’t see our sites rocketing up the SERPs, and show our friends, how will we know what we have paid out has been it? Or how will be know our personal SEO efforts are effective? While the benefits of SEO work may not be as obvious and homogeneous on the SERPs, we can be hopeful the resulting traffic driven to our sites will become more qualified, and our conversion rates will hopefully climb a bit. We have heard many times, we should rather have 10 people visit with 5 people purchasing, then 1000 visiting with only 1 purchase (assuming we aren’t a big Adsense site).

I believe specialized search will also increase the importance and necessity for more online competitive analysis strategies. Michael and I have been discussing other competitive analysis tools to add to SoloSEOs current tool set to further improve our clients abilities to understand what the competition is up to, especially when compared side-by-side to their own site’s performance. Then clients will be able to use the trends these metrics provide to accurately measure how effective their SEO strategies are within their competitive marketplace. Competitive analysis will provide more of the confirmation we need on our SEO strategies, especially as SERPs continue to morph to meet the personalized needs of search clients. It will be exciting. I will be interested to see if specialized search might possibly give those who didn’t get out online as quickly as they had wished, an increased ability capture new specialized clients by focusing on long-tail keyword phrases relevant to their specific market.

It is going to be fun to watch and be apart of all the fast approaching changes, and it will be fascinating to see which of us figures out how to capitalize on the new opportunities of Specialized Search.

We are looking forward to meeting many of you at PubCon in a few days, I did enjoy it last year. Please travel safe and enjoy. As an alum of UNLV, I know from personal experience, Vegas can be great, and Vegas can be absolute crap. I hope the former Vegas for all of you. If you to make is to PubCon, please come up and say “hi,” we are going to be handing out some SoloSEO SWAG, which is pretty cool. Quantities are limited. I may resemble one, but I am not a pack mule. )

Add comment Visited 3911 times November 29th, 2007 Aaron R Stewart

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How To Profit From Site Images

Posted by Aaron R Stewart on November 8th, 2007

The other day we were leaving a soccer game for my 6 year old boy. My 2 year old wasn’t quite happy with her perceived lack of playground time, and she expressed her upset quite loudly, while she thrashed around. I calmly (kind of) chased her down, picked her up and lovingly wrestled her into her car seat. She reacted to her entrapment with unrelenting, ear-pearcing screams. Over this outburst, I couldn’t hear myself think, let alone my car’s reverse alarm, and we subsequently backed straight into a light pole. The bone-jarring thud caused instant silence, which was quite nice, but I dreaded getting out to view the damage. I slowly walked to the back of the car, and to my complete surprise and extreme delight I had hid that poorly positioned pole dead center. The only damage was to my trailer hitch cover, it was completely shattered, but it costs less than $100 so I was happy. I went from total dejection to total elation in just a few seconds. What a relief.

Now I really love that trailer hitch cover, and in honor of its fine protection, I wanted to replace it with a new one. Unfortunately I couldn’t remember where I purchased it, I knew it was online somewhere, but it was over a year ago and I can’t even remember my kids names from day to day. So I went to Google and searched “Jeep Trailer Hitch Cover,” which seemed to be a pretty good description. But, while I love search, and I love the amazing supply of products online, I do get a bit frustrated with all the information we get back in the SERPs, it can be way too much. With so many of the sites just being unhelpful noise, much of which is caused by all this Adsense craziness. It makes efficient searching more difficult, and the SERP I was looking at was too much. Fortunately, because I knew what I was looking for, I just clicked on the Images link at the top of the page, and was happy to find an image of the hitch cover I was looking for at uhaul.com

I went to the page, determined the formal name for the product, and searched again, to find other suppliers of the hitch cover. I quickly figured out the best deal, which happened to be at uhaul.com anyway. But going through all this, I became curious as to why U-Haul’s image of the product showed upon the first image SERP, but the image from the other online stores did not. I assumed it was due to U-Haul wisely naming their image well, and using the description tag to inform the search engines about the image, but I was wrong. It turns out U-Haul needs to thank Google for this particular sale. U-Haul’s images are actually served up from a image database, and no image names or descriptions are passed through to the product page, leaving the image without direct description. However, Google knew there was an image on the page, and wisely assumed it was related to the first 3 words on the U-Haul product page, namely “Jeep Hitch Cover,” so Google decided to return this page with my query. People can bang on Google all they want, but in this situation, they performed well.

So what could the other online stores done better to insure they are being found more readily through image search? First let’s look at stores which use the same product image as U-Haul, and see what how they named their images:

1. Jep_hitchstep.jpg
2. 10903_step_jeep.jpg

First, neither store used the image description tag, so it would be very difficult for any search engine to match my particular query by virtue of the image name alone. Both pages were also full of content, obviously trying to show their authority on the topic Jeep accessories, but Google couldn’t seem to figure out what they were selling in their text. Now if both stores were to name their images a bit more descriptively and add “Jeep Trailer Hitch Cover that is also a step” or something similar in the description tag, they will do better in the future for queries similar to mine. It is very important for us to think about what our customers will type in the search engine, which combination of keywords they will use to find us, and make sure our product images are labeled accordingly. The search engines are smart, but they are looking for some sort of relevance, and if we provide them this information, we will be rewarded with qualified traffic.

One final note, due to the shear volume of web pages being added each day, Image search will continue become more important. Image search allows us to narrow some searches more quickly, to find what we need more efficiently. I use the Image search function quite a bit, if I know what I am looking for, or I am not familiar with an online store for a particular product type. How important is image search to you? How often do you search via images?

Oh, and as a note, my daughter did stop crying… eventually.

4 comments Visited 4511 times November 8th, 2007 Aaron R Stewart

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IndexRank - A New SEO Metric of Indexing Rate

Posted by Michael D Jensen on November 5th, 2007

How do you measure the success of your content strategy? How do you compare your website’s growth with your competitors?

Enter, IndexRank. IndexRank is a new metric to summarize the indexing rate of your site. If you constantly add content to your site, big or small, your IndexRank will be higher. If you only periodically add content to your site, your IndexRank will be lower. The metric is based on an algorithm that makes use of time specific indexing data from Google to indicate (on a 0-10 scale) the indexing rate of a website. Hat tip to Aaron Wall for a great post about the value of this data.

Below is a snapshot of the IndexRank of several sites. Read on for an analysis of each site, and why their IndexRank is where it is.

Sites such as TechCrunch that create lots of content will of course be indexed more by the search engines, and this is reflected in the IndexRank. ColbertNation.com is a fan blog of Stephen Colbert, and content is added on a daily basis, although not to the same levels as TechCrunch. Bill Slawski has a great SEO blog, but with only him contributing to his blog every couple of days, he doesn’t get indexed as much as sites above him in IndexRank. A newer site, such as Gooruze.com has a lower IndexRank because it is new, but as it continues to create more content on a consistent basis, its IndexRank will continue to climb. Paul Allen (not the Microsoft guy) has a great blog, but only posts to his blog every now and then.

How to Use IndexRank

One of the best uses of IndexRank is to compare yourself with other sites, like your competitors. First, visit the Check Your IndexRank page and enter your domain name in the first text box. Then find a few competitors and enter their domain names in adjacent text boxes. (To find a quick list of competitors, search with your top keywords and select the top few domains that rank well.) The IndexRank of all of the domains will give you an idea for how your website is positioned with your competitors in terms of content growth. Remember, IndexRank must be acted upon to be useful, don’t just stare at it, improve it with action.

How Can I Improve My IndexRank?

If you find yourself lacking in IndexRank, the best place to start is by creating content. Start a blog and motivate yourself to write every day. Write articles, news, tutorials, or informational pages and post them on your site. Pay for content to be written for your site on a consistent basis (2-3 articles a week is a great place to start).

23 comments Visited 7153 times November 5th, 2007 Michael D Jensen

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In SEO - Be A Tortoise, Forget the Hare.

Posted by Aaron R Stewart on October 30th, 2007

On Aaron Wall’s site www.seobook.com, Aaron Wall makes a statement which makes me chuckle every time I read it, not because it isn’t somewhat true, but because I can imagine how it must drive others crazy. Aaron states,

“SEO is not hard, Anyone can be successful at it with the right information.”

While I agree that anyone can be successful through SEO, if they have the right information and the right tools, I don’t think SEO is “easy” for everyone, not even for most people. I personally have only met Aaron once, and have heard him present on a few occasions, and just based on those observations I can see why Aaron would see SEO as easy, I think for him SEO is easy. But for the rest of us, the average humans, SEO is tough work. It is especially difficult for those who are running more traditional/non-technical businesses. There is so much to do as a small business owner, and the entire organization relies on you and your efforts. Quite frankly you don’t have the time to sit down and work with site optimization all day, or dedicate enough time to learn how to make the required changes to web site pages in just a day or two. It is going to take more time than that. How much time really depends on not only your available time, but also on how good your information and tools are.

With accurate information, like from Aaron’s SEOBook, and excellent SEO tools, like we have developed here at SoloSEO, the SEO process can become more manageable, that much is true. But please never let anyone convince you SEO will be easy, unless you are a technological genius, and there are more than few using SEO as a profession. This hard work revelation probably isn’t what anyone with aspirations of quickly making it big online wants to hear, but I wouldn’t feel good about giving the impression SEO is some magic online wand, which when waved, instantly delivers more traffic and orders than a site can handle. It just doesn’t work that way. I am sure there are many out there who have heard and believed the claims of this “SEO ease,” then got in, got to work, and became quickly disenchanted with the SEO process, perhaps even felt frustrated at their inability to quickly grasp the “simpleness of SEO.” If you have felt this way, you are not alone, it is common, it is okay.

As perhaps some of you have done, I have spent my life as a very average person, not overly smart, not overly quick, not overly fun, not overly funny, not overly thin, just not overly impressive in almost everything. Fortunately I came to grips with my total averageness a few years ago, and I realized my only chance to get ahead in this world, was just to work harder than the naturally talented and smarter people were willing to. I can’t compete with the “blessed ones” one on one, hour to hour, but if I only sleep 4 hours, and they sleep 10, then I have picked up 6 hours a day on them, and my chances are better. I have no problem seeing myself as a tortoise, and I have always loved that story. I think most my fellow slower folks have too.

I think most entrepreneurs, who have created and succeeded in their own business, have either worked harder, or are “blessed.” For most of us it is simply a matter of out-working the competition, we may never be the biggest, or grow the fastest, but we can be successful, and live a comfortable life by out-working the others. And if we work harder, using the best tools and information, we can not only increase our chances of success, but shorten the time required. The same is true with SEO.

To me SEO is similar to the process of digging for gold. There are many technologies we can use to find gold now, and those technologies get better all the time. With today’s technology we simply don’t have to head out with a shovel and start digging hither and thither until we find something shiny, there are better ways. But even with all the modern tools and technology, when it comes right down to it, getting the gold out of the ground is going to take work. We can dig with a shovel, we can dynamite, we can use large equipment, and we can hire an army of miners, but it is all work and it is required to reap the eventual reward. No way around it.

There is no doubt SEO can be worth much to a company looking to increase sales, it can take a struggling company trying to make any sale at all, and turn that company into an online success story. Where they once wondered if they would convince anyone to buy at all, they now they struggle with cash flow, barely having enough cash on hand to pay vendors, so they can barely stay ahead of the orders onslaught. But to experience this kind of transformation in online sales, the SEO work must happen. We are going to need to focus on our site’s Keywords, Content, Links and effort must be spent to put it all in place. No way around it. We can use all kinds of great tools, and have the latest information to make our efforts as efficient and effective as possible. We can even hire others to do our SEO for us, but SEO is the price for long-term online rewards. SEO isn’t easy for most people, it isn’t a get rich quick scheme, there is nothing magic or extraordinary about it, but if the SEO work is done well, then success is more than likely, if not virtually assured. I like that about SEO, we can work harder at it than others do, and see success for our efforts. And as for all the other tortoises out there, I know you will like that about SEO too.

4 comments Visited 2775 times October 30th, 2007 Aaron R Stewart

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