SoloSEO

How to handle SEO client problems

Posted by Aaron R Stewart on March 9th, 2010

As an entrepreneur and SEO professional, you crave credibility and good relationships. This is all well and good. To nourish any business relationship, you should go “the extra mile” – not just because it’s savvy business but also because it’s the right thing to do. I know in this day and age that might be a concept most don’t embrace anymore, but I think it is paramount, even just to sleep at night.

On the other hand, we’ve all had hair-pulling situations with SEO clients. Phone calls in the middle on the night requesting next day edits on a random white paper. Mandatory six-way conference calls that meander and have no point. Heated e-mails randomly directed your way.

So what should you do in these kinds of situations? More importantly, how do you determine when to give in to weird client requests/demands and when to jump ship?

Here are some good working tips:

1. Get opinions from other people whom you trust

Often, we get so knee-deep into these SEO situations that we cannot see the forest for the trees. Talk to friends. Get an objective read on the situation. Take yourself out of the equation to arrive at a more professional and resourceful decision about how to proceed. Getting the emotion out of the situation can be the first step to properly rectifying it.

2. Break ties honorably

If you decide to break ties with a client, do so professionally and honor the terms of any contract or agreement, if at all possible.

Always be a good guy (or girl). Even if a client has behaved unprofessionally or even abusively, that doesn’t give you an excuse to return the favor. I always want to feel like I came out of a situation doing all I could to make it right. You always sleep well at night if you do.

3. Remember: A bird in hand is worth two in the bush – not six or seven

Sure, it can be a pain to lose any client – and not just because it throws your budget out of whack. No one likes dispensing bad news. But beware of the tendency to overvalue what you already have. Sure, an abusive client may provide a steady stream of work. But every ounce of energy you waste attending to the abuser’s tyrannical demands is one less ounce you have to lavish on a new prospect. We have found the often heard saying of 10% of clients take up 90% of you time to be true, unless you make the hard decisions to dump some of them, or never take them on in the first place.

This tendency to overvalue current assets is all too human, by the way. For instance, who hasn’t had a friend who has been mired in a terrible relationship? This person will admit that he/she should get out of it but ultimately refuses to break things off because of a fear that he/she will never again find anyone “that good.” It’s nonsense. But sometimes you can’t see it if you’re too close to it. That’s why reliable outside feedback is so key.

4. Serenity now

To paraphrase (and butcher) the serenity prayer: “Grant me the serenity to accept the SEO clients I cannot change but want to keep; the courage to change/get out of dysfunctional SEO client relationships I can change; and the wisdom to know the difference.”

Well, that’s really clumsy and ineloquent, isn’t it? Hopefully, it still drives home the point. Doing what is best for your company, and doing it the right way, can get tough, but in any small business, it sets you up for greater things in the future.

Add comment Visited 334 times March 9th, 2010 Aaron R Stewart

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Avoiding Problem SEO Clients

Posted by Michael D Jensen on March 2nd, 2010

As an SEO professional, you are always on the prowl for new business relationships. There are many great people out there to work with. But there are also many “problem clients” who for whatever reason turn out to be more of a hassle than they are worth. These type of clients will disrespect your contract or call you at 3:30 am with random questions about some minute issue. How do you stay away from the bad clients and keep the good guys on the bus?

Here are some tried-and-true rules of thumb to separate the wheat from the chaff (or the curd from the whey or whatever other metaphor de jour you want to use to describe this process):

1. Eyes out for red flags

- Does a new client keep you on the phone for 30 minutes to talk about her dog? Red flag.

- Does the client repeatedly reschedule calls/meetings for arbitrary reasons? Red flag.

- Does the client complain to you at length about a previous writer or partner – and his complaints make absolutely no sense? Super big red flag with sugar on top.

2. Listen to your “spidey sense”

Do you get a strange intuitive sense that something about a business or client is not quite right? 99 out of 100 times, this is but the tip of the iceberg. Don’t waste time hooking a fish that’s going to die once you get it into the aquarium (sorry, again, a pretty weak metaphor there).

3. Incomplete references or credentials? Bad news

Everyone on the Web is in some sense flailing. This medium is so very new, and we all wing it to an extent. That said, sometimes a leap of faith is just jumping off a cliff. Protect yourself. Check references and credentials whenever you engage a new client (or have questions about an existing one!)

4. Get it in writing – and get it clear.

Set clear expectations. Tell the client precisely what you will deliver and when and how you will deliver it. Remember to keep expectations low and then over-deliver too.

5. Baby steps.

Don’t do $5,000 worth of work before getting your first check. It’s okay to spec out on what might ultimately only be a $50 assignment. But before you invest too much time/money/heartache into a project, make sure that the client shows you the money!

4 comments Visited 203 times March 2nd, 2010 Michael D Jensen

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SEO 101: How to crank out content for SEO

Posted by Michael D Jensen on March 1st, 2010

It is a cliché in the SEO world that “content is king” - that to feed the hungry search engine beasts of Google, Yahoo!, and Bing, you need to churn out targeted, keyword focused, and most of all useful content. This leads to the long-term passive pay-off that is the SEO pot of gold.

To succeed, you don’t want to get stuck fine tuning content and rewriting blog posts forever. You need to get stuff out the door so that you can get indexed, get ranked, and make a living.

So what’s the secret? How do you quickly create high quality content – stuff that’s really good and useful and that’s optimized for the search engines?

1. Get stuff out the door

Fritter away time fine-tuning your web pages, and you will eventually get discouraged, and your writing will also suffer. Do NOT be afraid to make mistakes. Build web pages, write your blog posts, tweet your tweets. Do whatever you need to do. But just get content produced. You will learn by doing.

2. Focus on keywords, but make it natural

Content needs to be first and foremost natural and good for readers. When you optimize and emphasize for keywords, keep each article focuses on one keyword or phrase, but you can also include variants on that. You spread your article too thin when you focus on 10 keywords.

3. Get input from coaches

Even if you majored in literature at an Ivy League College, you no doubt have a lot to learn about how to write for the web. The internet is a wild world with its own rules for what constitutes “good” or even “acceptable.” You can’t do it alone. You have to talk to people who’ve made a living at this business. Read about how SEO works and how the web writing community functions. Attend SEO and Internet marketing conferences, specifically go to sessions on copywriting and content.

4. Group your assignments

Instead of just doing 1 page for a topic at a time, try doing 10, 20, even 50 pages on the same topic. This may sound like a terrible chore to some people – who wants to write 50 pages in a row about long-term healthcare insurance, for instance? But if you are going for volume, then grouping helps. You can get into the spirit of the topic easily. You can also do research upfront and then have it all laid out in front of you when you write your pages. Take notes while you do research of different article ideas, and use keyword research as a tool to create pages for your topic.

5. Protect your hands

If you plan to bang out more than a few pages a day, you need to be aware of the ergonomic dangers of overtyping and keyboard misuse. Carpal Tunnel Syndrome and repetitive stress injuries run rampant among web professionals. Take breaks, stretch, eat well, and maintain a good keyboarding set up. Listen to your body.

6. Develop and refine your system over time

You are not going to get it right the first time. You are not going to get it right the second time. Hopefully, a few days into the process of cranking out good SEO pages, you will begin to develop a rhythm. Get feedback from everyday people as well as SEO professionals to better develop your style, attitude, and routine. Keep reading. Keep building your skills. Focus on easily attainable short-term goals to string you forward.

7. Hire writers if you can’t do it yourself

If you don’t have the time to write your own content, consider hiring a content company like Applied Content, our content writing company. We have a team of very skilled writers that can do lots of high quality, unique content, very fast. If an hour of your time is worth more than the cost of an article, you should seriously consider assigning out your writing.

2 comments Visited 360 times March 1st, 2010 Michael D Jensen

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Twitter & SEO Keyword Research Tools

Posted by Aaron R Stewart on March 13th, 2009

As some of you know, I have recently been trying to get into Twitter. It has been a very interesting ride. I have met many incredible people, and learned much about a variety of business models and ideas. The Twitter community is growing rapidly with Mashable reporting an astounding 752% increase in 2008. Many project 2009 will be even higher. Who uses Twitter is a question I had in my mind when I first dove in. The best explanation of Twitter I have ever heard, was from twitter user @wisekaren who tweeted to me the following:

“FB (Facebook) is for people you used to know; Twitter is for people you’d like to know.”

Which is a comment I have learned to be absolutely true.

As I see it now, Twitter is a social media platform that provides opportunity for real business growth, understanding, learning, and networking. In social media realm Twitter is like the infamous lunch date tactic all we young executive types use(d) when we were expanding our careers, working 80 hours a week, but still wanted to meet someone worthwhile, without blowing a whole evening and serious $$ on someone who was not quite right. Twitter gives everyone the opportunity to sample ideas, musings and knowledge of others, not only in your same area of expertise, but in areas of expertise where you have great interest, but lack knowledge.

There are some great Twitter help aides out there, that assist in getting the most out of Twitter data. Some of the Twitter tools I am now using include: TweetBeep, created by my biz partner Michael Jensen. TweetBeep allows you to save keywords and keyword phrases, then the TweetBeep service will email you tweets containing your keywords at predetermined times. Imagine putting in some important keywords for your business and receiving the resulting tweets with those keywords every morning. You can easily see emerging trends, and pick up other related keywords that should probably be considered in your SEO keyword strategies. It is a marvelous SEO tool.

I have also been using TweetGrid. This is a web based tool/system, which allows the selection of 6 topic keywords, and then streams all tweets containing these keywords. If you want to learn about a topic quickly, pick a keyword you are interested in and watch the data fly by. This is also a great way to find and engage Twitter users directly who have similar interests, and perhaps strike up a relationship for future work together, or at least someone we can bounce ideas off. It is an excellent tool to leverage Twitter.

For folks on the go, there are many amazing Twitter tools that provide the benefits of Twitter on the road. I personally use Tweetie on my iPhone to tweet, but there are many others, including: Twittelator, Twitterrific which offers all of Twitter’s functionality and TwitterFon, which is a free, but very basic iPhone Twitter client.

Some other cool Twitter tools for the iPhone include Fastweet, which allows for quick reading of many tweets. GeoTweeter which adds GPS coordinates to your tweets, GPSed, lets you share maps of your travels to Twitter and Twitter Trend which gives you a snapshot of what topics are really hot on twitter for the last 24 hours. Very cool.

I know many of those that use SoloSEO are small business owners, and are working diligently to get their online business screaming. We can see how much work is being done through the use of the SoloSEO SEO tools. Please also consider using Twitter to bolster your online exposure, and knowledge about your online market, it will make a difference.

Just a quick note on some Twitter rules of engagement (suggestions really). When someone “follows” you on Twitter, it is a good idea to follow them back. How many followers you have is a big deal to many. It doesn’t indicate exactly if you are a good Tweeple, but does show how popular you are on Twitter. Following people who show interest in you makes good sense, as many will have something in them you will be interested in. I have learned this tidbit over time, and am now in the process of ditching those I follow that don’t follow me, and following my followers. Its just good Karma. Also, on Fridays there is a custom of recommending good Twitter users others should follow. You simply list the user’s usernames with a hashtag (def. a keyword with # at the beginning of the word, which allows organization a group of tweets) of #FollowFriday somewhere in your tweet. For example, I tweeted earlier today the following:

#followfriday @brucecarlson @tamar @mattlaclear @chrisbennett @mdjensen @wisekaren @LoriLeavitEvans. Great folks, great follows.

Which essentially tells those that read my tweet that I recommending these 7 users as worthy to follow.

Those are just a few things on Twitter. The best way to learn and love Twitter is to just jump in and get going. Sign up for Twitter here. At anytime, if you have a questions about how to use Twitter, just tweet about it, and you will find just how helpful and responsive the Twitter Nation can be. Hope to see (follow) you soon.

Finally, we would sure appreciate a follow once you get up and running. @mdjensen & @aaronstewart

Twitter graphic above provided by AddDesign

Add comment Visited 7376 times March 13th, 2009 Aaron R Stewart

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Can Twitter Help Small Business?

Posted by Aaron R Stewart on February 17th, 2009

In my attempt to learn and grow, I have really focused on being a participant of Twitter the last week. It isn’t something I am comfortable with, I prefer to avoid the public eye, I prefer the shadows and the back row, to the sunlight and the attention. I wasn’t always this anti-social, it has just developed over time, as I have discovered being in the public domain can be very time consuming. I now make a conscience decision to put my efforts into things more important to me personally, which usually brings me little to no notoriety. As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I even shut down my Facebook account, just due to the inordinate amount of time required to reply to all the Facebook foolishness. I can’t stand games, games when dating, board games, video games, game shows, card games, puzzle games, if it is a game, and not a sport, I am rarely if ever interested, much to the dismay of my wife and kids. So with all the games in Facebook, a personal Facebook page was much more of a distraction, than a personal advantage.

As far as my initial reaction to Twitter, at first I fought it, and it has taken me quite a bit of time to warm up to the idea. I am still a newbie, with only 49 followers and 205 updates, but I have been following people for just over 8 months, so I do know some stuff. My initial reaction… It is a part of social media that doesn’t take up that much time, and there is just enough interaction to make it interesting, without being annoying. Best of all, you can just say on the sidelines and watch the whole thing if you want. I like the idea of requiring users to say something relevant in only 140 characters. One thing I have found to be most interesting is I tend to read items those I follow read and recommend. About 2 years a go I got into reading blogs everyday. I would set aside an hour a day to just read blogs. Business, SEO, technology and health blogs were my favorites. As updates would occur to these blogs throughout the day, I would click over and get caught up. But as many of us know, the information distributed through blogs these days just keeps coming, and there are more and more really good blogs out there all the time. Eventually it got to a point where I couldn’t keep up, and now I will maybe get to read the blogs once or twice a week now, and usually I just skim and look for a headline that catches my attention. My RSS feed is quite a lonely fella these days, and is basically ignored.

However, with Twitter, when someone I respect and follow recommends something to read, I will take the time to read it. It they give me a couple of bad articles in a row, I just quit following them, and the bad recommendations go away too. It has made choosing where I spend my time reading much more effective and beneficial then going out and just searching the various blog sites on my own.

Twitter in business has proven to be very successful, with many good case studies. Comcast and Zappos both use Twitter to interact with clients, address complaints or comments broadcasted over the Twitter network. With Twitter the public can actually see the interaction taking place, which I think bolsters both sides. Because it is a public setting, customers complaints and comments carry more weight, and companies have more incentive to take notice of these individuals. Additionally, much goodwill can be earned when companies publicly address these concerns, and solve the issues within the public forum. It is potentially a great result for both parties. Additionally, Twitter has been used to increase sales. Dell Outlet has used Twitter to broadcast sales items and great deals on their products at their online store. Dell recently published a tweet which stated they had been able to sell $1 million worth of products using Twitter.

So how can we approach Twitter as small business owners, and brand builders. One thing which if common in any media, we must remember we are our brand in many ways. We need to show our personalities and just let it go. I enjoy following those on Twitter who are fun, who share insights to not only their business, but also into themselves a little bit. I like reading how others struggle with the everyday life items, it makes them human, and frankly more likable. So I would suggest discussing business and your work goals, but also let them see who you are, you may not know it, but others will find that kind of honesty and willingness to share very I don’t like doing it, I am sure many of you won’t. There is just something that feels fundamentally wrong about throwing myself out into cyberspace, and not being totally sure where it will land, or who will read it. I had to deal with the same feelings when we started this blog a while back. Just as a final note. For those on Twitter currently, who are attempting to create or build your personal or business brand. I would suggest leaving the F-bombs and foul language out of your tweets. I know there is Freedom of Speech in this country, and I know everyone is free to spread whatever they want, but we as potential clients are also free to choose where we buy, and what we read, and I for one am not going to read or buy from a person who can’t spend the brain power to come up with a few better words than the sludge some sling up there in the tweets. Here is a link to an online Thesaurus, please take a minute to come up with a few less offensive words before your next foray.

So far Twitter has been an interesting experiment. Twitter is far less annoying than Facebook, and has proven to have some benefits I did not expect. It doesn’t take much time, and finding and following good people on Twitter can actually be quite beneficial. Throw in the opportunity to interact with clients, and perhaps increase sales, and I would say Twitter and small business can be good partners for a long time to come.

Sign up today at Twitter’s Sign Up page, and give it a try. You can follow my musings (tweets) at www.twitter.com/aaronstewart.

2 comments Visited 3419 times February 17th, 2009 Aaron R Stewart

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How to Implement “Canonical Tag” To Reduce Duplicate Content

Posted by Michael D Jensen on February 12th, 2009

The Big 3 search engines have agreed on a meta tag standard for identifying a page’s “permalink” or “Canonical URL”. One problem a lot of sites experience is having the same content show up with different URLs due to search features, categories, etc. This can hurt your pages and your site, and so having this solution can really help out with the problem.

So now that the big 3 are all going to “honor” this new tag, how do we implement the “Canonical Tag”?

Step 1: Identify what the permalink URL is for the page. You need to figure out the one URL that you want used when search engines (and people too) look for and list that page.

Step 2: Now you need to figure out how you are going to dynamically call that URL from each page including when the page is pulled up from different search parameters or what not.

Step 3: Once you know how to get the URL, place the following tag inside the <HEAD> tag with the canonical URL:

<link rel="canonical"
href="http://www.mysite.com/mydir/mypage.html">

If you have any questions about this, please leave a comment!

Add comment Visited 2422 times February 12th, 2009 Michael D Jensen

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Google Analytics on your iPhone with Analytics App

Posted by Michael D Jensen on February 12th, 2009

We’ve developed a new iPhone app that I think you and all SEOs with iPhones will love. The new Analytics App for the iPhone and iPod Touch gives you anywhere access to your Google Analytics data. I had a lunch meeting the other day with a buddy of mine that I’m helping do some PPC and SEO for his site, and using Analytics App we could talk over lunch about keywords, PPC campaigns, and other sources of traffic. I think you’ll find it handy in many ways too!

With more than 29 reports available, as well as unlimited custom reports, all your analytics data is just a button away. Change the date to see any date range, and there’s an easy Today report that any Analytics addict will love. Why Google doesn’t have a button for that is beyond me…

You can download Analytics App for $5.99 from the iTunes AppStore.

For any subscribers to the SoloSEO.com tools with an iPhone or iPod Touch, email us with your username (info at soloseo dot com) and we’ll give you a free promo code for Analytics App!

Add comment Visited 2285 times February 12th, 2009 Michael D Jensen

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Writing Fake Customer Reviews

Posted by Michael D Jensen on February 2nd, 2009

I’m a huge Dilbert fan. The artist, Scott Adams has a way of just nailing real life business things right on the head.

For any company seriously deciding to leverage employees or a 3rd party vendor to write fake customer reviews (hi Belkin), I would rethink your decision. There’s really no substitute for real, authentic customer reviews.

1 comment Visited 2451 times February 2nd, 2009 Michael D Jensen

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Search Engine Marketing’s Best Posts in 2008

Posted by Michael D Jensen on January 30th, 2009

For anyone starting out in SEO, or looking to sharpen their skills, it can be overwhelming the number of resources to digest. Thanks to Matt McGee and the SEMMYS, it’s fairly easy to find the best of the best on all the varying topics underneath the Search Marketing umbrella. I had the opportunity to be a judge this year in the SEMMYS, in the category of Social Media. It was fun to dig in and read several articles and posts that I had quite frankly missed, and find some new blogs to subscribe to.

Even the SoloSEO blog had some nominations, four in fact! Here are the four that were nominated:

SEO Category:

Learn SEO Basics: Long Tail Keywords

7 Steps to Get Your New Site Indexed in 24 hours

LOL Funny Category:

LinkedIn Wants Me to Accept or Deny Jesus?

What the Customer Actually Wanted

Even though we didn’t make it as finalists, we’re glad to be recognized as providing a source of great SEO material, and some laughs as well!

Now that the SEMMYS nominations have been reduced to 3-6 per category by a set of judges, it’s a great time to absorb that material and maybe find some new blogs to start reading as well.

Add comment Visited 2598 times January 30th, 2009 Michael D Jensen

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Facebook, Good or Bad for Business?

Posted by Aaron R Stewart on January 23rd, 2009

I have to be completely honest going into this, I am not a big fan of Facebook for personal use. I had a personal Facebook page for a while, my school kind of did this blitz to all alumni and encouraged us to set up a Facebook profile, within the school group. It was ok for a while, my wife would send me those flair things, which was nice. I actually had a friend from Japan, who I had lost touch with, find me again through Facebook, which was amazing. But over time Facebook began to be a royal pain. People you hadn’t seen in years, and some of them by choice, were showing up requesting to be friends. I even had old girlfriends find me, and then attempt to contact me, seriously? I’m sorry, old boyfriends and girlfriends contacting each other, chatting online, being friends, just seems pathetic to me. Get on with your lives, there is a lot more out here in the present world that is new and exciting. I am glad to be out of high school, I have no desire to go back to those times. Just as a note, I have also removed all the rearview mirrors from my cars too, I just don’t like to look behind me.

Anyway, so Facebook became a major distraction, a major pain, and basically sucked. Every Facebook email that came in, all the requests, it was a joke, so I shut it down. I have been very happy about it since. I now listen to others talk about their Facebook page, and what’s going on there, and I say to myself “losers.” (My wife and her sisters aren’t going to be happy about that comment, but it had to be said) Spending time on a personal Facebook profile, is just flushing good time down the crapper. I don’t want to be that personal online with many people, if anybody. I don’t have time for it, and it does me more harm than good.

All that being said, I think using Facebook to set up a business profile is a pretty great way to go. While I don’t like talking about myself personally online, talking about our business, our products, our services, and providing another opportunity for potential clients to find us makes perfect sense. Facebook gives companies another opportunity to get their brand out there, to interact with current and potential clients. Companies facing online reputation management challenges can use Facebook to potentially take one of the spots on the SERPS, because Facebook pages and profiles are now indexed. Anytime you can take a spot on the first page of the SERPS with any keywords about your business, it is worth the effort and leaves one less place where a naysayer can take a negative shot at your firm.

I would suggest keeping the business Facebook page very clean, stay away from joining all those ridiculous groups, don’t align your company with anything controversial, or questionable, don’t even join The Office group. We actually have a client that hates the show, so you never know. I would not add flair or any of that other clutter, just keep it simple and professional as possible. Too much noise, which is frequent on Facebook pages, can distract from the true purpose of conveying the company vision and message. Also, there are many Facebook addicts that will love the fact they can find you where they spend much of their time, and if they are impressed with what they see, this will drive new traffic to your actual site.

So in short, Facebook for personal use is a colossal waste of time in my personal, yet humble opinion. Facebook for business, an excellent way to go, if it is done professionally and the focus of the profile remains squarely on your business.

4 comments Visited 3772 times January 23rd, 2009 Aaron R Stewart

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