How do you know if your SEO is worthy? Kick the tires on your SEO.
I had a customer inquiring today about our SEO services. He asked me to provide him with some rankings of our existing customers. I told him, sure I can show you them, but it will make no difference to you.
If I told you we ranked someone for red widgets, would you know the difference in red or blue widgets. If we rank a customer #1 for red widgets and only 100 people per month search the keyword, what does it matter that we have a #1 ranking. Really the keyword to have ranked is blue widgets at 10,000 searches per month, but we only have a #4 ranking. Obviously less impressive even still on the first page, but what if I told you we got 1,000 clicks per month from that organic listing? That is more impressive than the #1 keyword ranking. Sounds obvious, right?
The only way we can provide meaningful information for our new customer is, if we have another client with data in the same industry, same products, and often same location. Targeting red widgets in Denver is very different than targeting red wigets in Miami. So rarely do we have an example of what we can do for our new customers and looking at existing work doesn't provide an accurate detail of what we can do for your business in your specific industry. Looking at previous work only shows our accomplishment in that industry and with that customer’s budget constraints.
Any keyword ranking can be achieved provided the right amount of time and effort. Search Engine Optimization is not rocket science, but it does take a certain amount of experience to know where to focus your time, energy, and which keywords should be targeted first. Often taking a mid-range keyword, building off of that to increase traffic, and ultimately conversions will help create new revenues to help offset your SEO expenses. I am not saying not to focus on the top keywords all this time, only to take a long term approach with them. Some SEO efforts improve with age.
So how can you determine, if your SEO knows what they are talking about? I'd say the best thing to do is ask for references. Why don't people ask? Any one of our customers will be happy to share their experiences with another and tell how we have improved their rankings, conversions, their overall knowledge about search engines, their own customers, and web sites in general. If you can't get references, then the SEO likely does not have repeat monthly customers because they are not performing. I would ask for references from customers from six to twelve months of continued service.
The next item you can ask to review, although they may not show, is current and archived reporting. Essentially you should ask to see those reference reports and look for an increase in rankings over time. They may not show you current client data, but they may show you expired client data. Each of our customers has an initial report before any work begins so we can see the improvement over time. The problem is that targeted keywords lists can change, so the reports are not 100% reliable for that purpose. If they have good aged references and good steady reporting they are at least doing the most time consuming part of the project, which is customer service and data management.
You can, also, ask for examples of copywriting. If the copy is illegible to a human, then you have a problem. Your SEO needs to write copy for both search engines and people. Remember, getting the user to the page is only half of the equation. Your SEO should also focus on converting the user for a sign up or a sale. The content should contain some marketing one liners with calls to action. You have to have some action you want the user to take, engage them, and give them tools to use your site more efficiently. Give them a reason to contact you or buy from you.
As far as what your SEO will be doing with all of the data collected each month, its a tough call. Every SEO is different and their are so many techniques for achieving rankings you have to go with what works for you. I recommend a trial period 6-12 months with goals you both agree on. You can also ask to see the monthly plan and make suggestions. The more you get involved the more you will get from your SEO.
Here are some things you will want to pay attention to:
If I told you we ranked someone for red widgets, would you know the difference in red or blue widgets. If we rank a customer #1 for red widgets and only 100 people per month search the keyword, what does it matter that we have a #1 ranking. Really the keyword to have ranked is blue widgets at 10,000 searches per month, but we only have a #4 ranking. Obviously less impressive even still on the first page, but what if I told you we got 1,000 clicks per month from that organic listing? That is more impressive than the #1 keyword ranking. Sounds obvious, right?
The only way we can provide meaningful information for our new customer is, if we have another client with data in the same industry, same products, and often same location. Targeting red widgets in Denver is very different than targeting red wigets in Miami. So rarely do we have an example of what we can do for our new customers and looking at existing work doesn't provide an accurate detail of what we can do for your business in your specific industry. Looking at previous work only shows our accomplishment in that industry and with that customer’s budget constraints.
Any keyword ranking can be achieved provided the right amount of time and effort. Search Engine Optimization is not rocket science, but it does take a certain amount of experience to know where to focus your time, energy, and which keywords should be targeted first. Often taking a mid-range keyword, building off of that to increase traffic, and ultimately conversions will help create new revenues to help offset your SEO expenses. I am not saying not to focus on the top keywords all this time, only to take a long term approach with them. Some SEO efforts improve with age.
So how can you determine, if your SEO knows what they are talking about? I'd say the best thing to do is ask for references. Why don't people ask? Any one of our customers will be happy to share their experiences with another and tell how we have improved their rankings, conversions, their overall knowledge about search engines, their own customers, and web sites in general. If you can't get references, then the SEO likely does not have repeat monthly customers because they are not performing. I would ask for references from customers from six to twelve months of continued service.
The next item you can ask to review, although they may not show, is current and archived reporting. Essentially you should ask to see those reference reports and look for an increase in rankings over time. They may not show you current client data, but they may show you expired client data. Each of our customers has an initial report before any work begins so we can see the improvement over time. The problem is that targeted keywords lists can change, so the reports are not 100% reliable for that purpose. If they have good aged references and good steady reporting they are at least doing the most time consuming part of the project, which is customer service and data management.
You can, also, ask for examples of copywriting. If the copy is illegible to a human, then you have a problem. Your SEO needs to write copy for both search engines and people. Remember, getting the user to the page is only half of the equation. Your SEO should also focus on converting the user for a sign up or a sale. The content should contain some marketing one liners with calls to action. You have to have some action you want the user to take, engage them, and give them tools to use your site more efficiently. Give them a reason to contact you or buy from you.
As far as what your SEO will be doing with all of the data collected each month, its a tough call. Every SEO is different and their are so many techniques for achieving rankings you have to go with what works for you. I recommend a trial period 6-12 months with goals you both agree on. You can also ask to see the monthly plan and make suggestions. The more you get involved the more you will get from your SEO.
Here are some things you will want to pay attention to:
- The number of links back to site. Try putting this in Google: "link:www.yourdomain.com" and "link:yourdomain.com" See Edit-X here
- The number of pages indexed. Try putting this in Google: "site:www.yourdomain.com" and "site:yourdomain.com" See Edit-X here
- Fresh new content each and every month. They may ask you to hire a copywriter and then optimize those pages.
- Internal site links, keywords linked in your site to pages in your site.
- Title, Meta Keyword, and Meta Description Tags, Headline text, Image Alt Title Tags and Body text on all pages.
- Monthly Reporting, traffic analytics, visual charts and graphics, and detailed activity logs.
- Compliant HTML, XHTML etc. Clean lightweight code and images makes for happy search engines.
Interested in getting an SEO? How about a test drive? Kick the tires on Edit-X. Give us a call at 720-982-7770 and Get a Free Usability Review and Free Site and Keyword Ranking Report. That is a $250 value.
Why not look under the hood? We will give you aged references to call and show you our detailed and exclusive reporting. You will learn something about your web site and, more important, you will learn how to improve your web site. See why we are a safe and trusted White Hat SEO.
Comments
What are your thoughts on using Yahoo to check for back links? They offer more filtering options and from what I've read most people prefer. For example if you use the site mentioned you will see 10,000+ inlinks to the entire site disregarding links from that domain.
Posted by: JDog | March 18, 2008 03:15 PM
Its true, Yahoo is way better. For the purposes of my example I elected to keep it simple. Don't forget the Link analysis by Joost de Valk's SEO Link Analysis Extension link in the top right hand corner for even more value in your results.
Posted by: R. Stacy Cook | March 18, 2008 03:41 PM