It's Raining Links!
As a kid, I recall many times when good thinking would elude me. Those were the times when my father would say, “Do I have to draw you a picture?” Dad got pretty good at drawing when I was a kid. Now that I am a dad, I often find myself drawing pictures, too. These days, we call this kind of picture an “infographic” (informational graphic). I drew one for you, plus an alternate just in case.
Why the Infographic?
There is a constant challenge for marketers to explain the process of social media marketing and search engine optimization. The many various Internet marketing methods and tools which we use cannot be summed up in just one infographic. However, I believe that the infographic below provides an explanation of the job sufficient for most clients, while not overwhelming them with information.
Alternate Infographic
Of course, as every marketer knows, there are all levels of cognizant thinking and some people have a harder time using their heads than others. If the infographic above does not make the point clear enough, I offer “Murnahan’s Alternate Infographic”. It is a simple red dot. Print it out and paste it on the wall. Then swing your head at it until it hurts really bad.
DISCLAIMER: Just in case you really do not have a sense of humor, please be aware that I will not be accepting any liability for the use of “Murnahan’s Alternate Infographic”. Any use of the red dot will be solely at your own risk. “Murnahan’s Alternate Infographic” may cause severe bleeding, headache, runny eyes, and an overwhelming need to scream obscenities. Results may vary. Consult your physician if you have any doubts or concerns about using this alternate infographic.
SEO Lies Exposed
I was taught that it is not nice to call somebody a liar, but if you hear these things from a search engine optimizer, there is a good chance they are lying to you. They are either lying about the facts, or lying that they know the job of SEO. In either case, it is unreliable information that can cost companies a lot of money and can have some disastrous results.
Let’s have some fun and review these common lies told by SEO. If you have stories to tell, please add your experience in the comments of this blog post.
SEO Lie Number One: Meta Tags
One of the most common lies I have ever heard is when the SEO says, “You just need some keyword meta tags to improve your ranking.” The truth is that meta descriptions are important, but the keywords tag is mostly meaningless. Meta tags are a minor part of SEO and if somebody tells you that adding meta tags is your answer, they are lying to you. Here is some more information on the topic: “SEO Meta Tags: Oh, You Must Be Another SEO Expert!”
SEO Lie Number Two: Search Engine Submissions
Here is one of my favorite SEO lies. The SEO says something like “We will submit your website to 40,000 search engines and directories.” This is not only an ineffective thing to do, it can also be very damaging when your website links are in a bunch of penalized websites called “link farms”. The same thing goes for other methods of reciprocal link exchange.
If you just must submit your website somewhere to make you feel productive, submit it to DMOZ. Otherwise, leave it to the search engines. They will find you if you have something that other people believe is worth linking to.
SEO Lie Number Three: Guaranteed Search Engine Ranking
Here is a lie I see a lot, and I often wonder how many people actually fall for it. The SEO lie sounds like this: “We guarantee number one results in Google.” The big problems here are often twofold. First, the “top ranking” they offer is for weak search phrases which do not convert to more business. Secondly, the guarantee is worthless because it came from a liar.
Inexperienced search engine optimizers will often tell this lie: “Sure, we can get you ranked high in search engines for under $300.” This one is absurd, because if it was true, don’t you think every one of your competitors would have done it, too? This is a sign of the SEO who really does not want a long-term relationship with you, but rather prefers to just agree with you and take your $300 instead of telling you the truth.
SEO Lie Number Five: Technology vs. Marketing
One of the worst lies is when the SEO will lead you to believe that SEO is mostly about a bunch of high-tech stuff that you would not understand. Yes, there are a lot of technical and mathematical aspects to SEO, but that is far from the whole truth. The truth is that if you give people what they are looking for, you will be found. Delivering something awesome is what really matters. You must stop trying to sell jumbo jets to jelly bean customers. Good SEO requires good marketing, and not just good technology. If they told you otherwise, I strongly suggest reading “Search Engine Optimization is Not a Technology Job!”
SEO Lie Number Six: The SEO Doesn’t Rank
Any SEO who does not have a highly ranked website of their very own is almost surely lying. There is no good excuse that a qualified SEO can provide that their own website is not ranked highly and receives a substantial amount of traffic. I have heard them try to lie their way around this and say, “Oh, but we have a whole bunch of websites, and our traffic does not all just come from one or two websites.” My question is this: With all of those websites, why are none of them ranking in search engines? The answer is that they actually do not know how to do the job without being penalized in search engines. Count on it!
There are some reliable ways to know the difference between a good SEO and a bad SEO. Their website is a big indicator. I suggest reading this article: “Good SEO vs. Bad SEO: How to Tell the Difference”
SEO Lie Number Seven: Cold Calling / Emailing SEO
If the SEO is cold calling you on the phone or emailing you offers to provide you with top listings, look out for the worst. Doesn’t it make sense that if the SEO was good at what they do, they would catch your eye in the same way they propose to help people find you? I do not mean to knock every SEO who ever called a prospect for business, but if they are doing their job well, plenty of people are finding them every day. I wrote more about this in the article titled “Find Good SEO: Why Good SEO Don’t Seek Your Business”
Note: If you want to avoid the lies of an SEO, you should spend some time reading and researching. I’ll give you a good head start on your higher education. If you think I’m lying, just search Google for “SEO lessons” and see where you find the link I just gave you about avoiding lies. 😉
For your enjoyment, I have included a video to better understand the SEO liar.
What do you think? Have you heard any interesting lies from search engine optimizers / Internet marketers?
I share a lot of information about marketing topics and SEO (search engine optimization), but I realize that many people still wonder if SEO is real or just make believe. I have a pretty good idea of why this is the case, and I will share that with you. It is usually due to a history of low return on investment (ROI) for their SEO efforts, or a fear of low ROI for future SEO efforts. This pretty well covers it in basic terms.
Let’s face it, if you knew that you could hand a dollar to the search engine optimizer and they would hand you three dollars back, you would go to great lengths to get your hands on more dollars … to hand over to the SEO. So, what in this world would ever hold you back from that? I will venture an experienced guess. It is mostly a concern of whether you can actually see a return on investment, right? You want to know there is profit in the future, before you spend money on something you may or may not fully understand.
I am going to give you some simple math to help you understand and improve ROI of SEO in your business. I will also provide tools to help you measure your market potential. I hope that you will pay attention and use this to your benefit.
A big step to achieving this good math I speak of is to use mathematical logic in your marketing and stop fussing about low budgets, drained bank accounts, or anything else outside of these more important numbers of how to grow your profit. You see, this math will be lost on deaf ears unless you can overcome your own obstacles surrounding effective marketing. If it is mathematically sound, and a better answer for your business, it is your job to do what it takes to achieve better results.
The first thing to understand will be the potential value of SEO to your business, and then realize that SEO is extremely measurable. Thus it carries a very low risk when it is done well, and done completely.
How Much Potential Business is There For You Online?
If you are not yet aware of your market potential, we must get past this part. Do you have something worth marketing? I wrote an article on this not so long ago titled “Things You Cannot Sell Online“, but the list is pretty small. My wife even sells wedding cakes online … and lots of them! She does not take the orders online, but because of her online presence, she is busy enough to turn away customers every day.
If you are not clear on how much business is available to you, try using a tool like SpyFu, WordTracker, or Google’s keyword tool to find out how many people are searching for what you offer. Once you have some idea of the potential, which is likely more than you would expect, and even more than you will discover in just a few minutes of effort, it is time to turn it into an increase in your business.
Turning Market Potential Into Real SEO Numbers
Using basic figures, let’s consider this: If your average customer is worth an extra $50 to your business and you know that one in every 1,000 exposures to your business will bring you a new customer, you can see how 100,000 exposures to your business will be worth $5,000. This is easy so far, right?
Now, what if you could relatively easily raise some of these numbers? Which will you raise first? Maybe a better marketing message could reduce that one in 1,000 exposures to one in 700 that becomes a customer. That same number of visitors would be worth over $7,100.
What if there was an even easier way to improve your ROI? What if you had better market segmentation and a more targeted audience searching for exactly what you offer? Then, it may mean you earn a customer’s business once in every 500, 250 or even fewer exposures. That could add up pretty big.
Now, let’s consider increasing volume. What if you could realistically multiply your traffic just by moving up one or two positions in search results? Do you think that is impossible, improbable, or just doesn’t happen to people like you? Well, let me comfort you a bit by saying that it is clearly definable in the math, and it is quite achievable, too. Somebody will be there at the top of every search, and it is not just by luck.
It is true that where you are listed in search engine results for any given user’s search will have a huge impact on your reach and your ROI. Just how much does your search engine position relate to exposure to your brand? Allow me to explain it with math.
Using Simple Math to Improve SEO ROI
Let’s consider some very reliable numbers to help you increase your SEO return on investment. These are not sketchy make-believe numbers. These are numbers which are widely accepted and observed across the industry.
First, second, and third positions returned for a search receive over 50 percent of users’ clicks.
First page search positions receive over 90 percent of users’ clicks.
Now think about this: It means that if you are in the top three search results, you can expect that over half of the people visiting a website when performing the particular search will land on your website. On the other hand, if you are on the second page, you can expect a website visit from only a minuscule number of people searching for the given term. The way the math works out, if you are number seven and there are 10,000 monthly clicks to websites from searches for a given phrase, you can expect 2-3 percent of the search users to visit your website on average. That means 200-300 visitors for that search phrase each month, whereas the top of the list can expect over 5,000 by being just six spots above you. Now try plugging that math into the examples I gave earlier about value per customer, reaching a better audience, and the potential profit.
It really is true that you can have many times the number of people looking at your website and checking out your offerings, simply by moving your search engine rank upward. Sometimes, it is just a small move that keeps you away from success, but do you know which terms you are almost successful with? I hope this is some pretty serious thought for you, because you may actually be on the edge of success, but you do not know it or know what to do with it.
If you are concerned about the ROI of search engine optimization, the first place to look should be whether you are almost there already, but only doing it part-way and ending up somewhere down the list. If you budget and plan for top 20 ranking instead of top three ranking, you will often waste money and risk wanting to slash your wrists sometime down the road. On the other hand, if you plan and budget for top three ranking, you will shoot coffee from your nose while laughing on the morning you walk into your office and see all the new business coming in.
Reducing the Competition Can Raise Your ROI
Another place to look for better SEO ROI is in the pieces your competition left behind. If you are only focused on highly competitive keyword phrases but only making it to the second or third page of search engine results, you are likely thumbing your nose at a lot of money. Two reliable solutions are to do more of what it takes to reach the top, and also refocus some of your effort toward lateral keywords which are more achievable and can be snatched up by the thousands. Yes, by the thousands!
For example, searches for terms like “lateral keywords“, “SEO meta tags“, or “how to sell SEO” (which, by the way, has a lot to do with being able to do it well) will show my articles in the top of search engine results. Although these items receive a lower volume of searches than other keyword phrases, they are valuable because there are thousands of phrases like these where users find my websites … and your websites, if you choose to embrace your lateral keywords.
Less competitive lateral search terms are often very specific to the users’ search, which means they are more precisely getting what they want. It is a winning solution which can often dramatically increase the ROI of SEO. Oh, and I want to repeat that there are thousands of these potential search terms just ready for you to sweep in and rank at the top.
ROI Requires Investment
Yes, return on investment requires investment. Are you surprised?
I see it every day how a potential client will flinch at the cost of good SEO. In fact, depending on how serious they are about increasing their business, I am lucky that some of them don’t stroke out and lie dead before me. I would really hate to administer CPR to somebody before the check is written, but I have come close a few times. So to minimize the risk, I try to have some good numbers to explain the process and benefits of SEO done well.
If you do not have an investment, you surely cannot expect a return on investment (ROI). This is pretty simple to understand. I realize how scary an investment can be. It is especially scary when it is something that you do not fully understand. I hope this has given you some thought on how you approach your search engine optimization efforts and how to increase the ROI with some very basic math.
Now after all this math, can you believe there are actually trained and experienced SEO for hire who can do all this for you and minimize your loss of ROI? It is a crazy thought for some, but you want to increase your SEO ROI, and I am sure you will try to use this information wisely.
Here are two more articles you may appreciate that discuss marketing cost:
Have you been here before? I do not just mean here at my blog, but have you been faced with questions or doubts about your efforts? Maybe you question whether people understand the intent and purpose of your blog, or maybe you question the intent and purpose of the blogs you read. These are legitimate considerations for a lot of bloggers, whether producers or readers.
I am a big proponent of blogging. In fact, if you just google “reasons to blog”, you can see that I am practically a poster child for the benefits of blogging. If you need encouragement, I suggest giving my list of “10 Really Good Reasons to Blog” a thorough read. If you need blogging tools, I would recommend “6 Essential Blogging Tools for Bloggers and Non-Bloggers“.
Let’s face it, great blogging is hard work. I have actually considered making a video of my steps to produce a blog article, but then I want to break my own fingers just to avoid the temptation of all the video editing on top of the other efforts.
What does it take to produce a blog article? Here is a one-sentence rundown for you: I get a bright idea, then I research, write, print, proofread, edit, print, give it to an editor, edit again, find a graphic, edit the graphic, categorize it, tag it, keyword it, write a description, produce an excerpt, record a podcast, upload podcast, title and tag the podcast, review the podcast, preview the article, edit it, preview it again, publish it, tweet it, facebook it, linkedin it, stumble it, reddit it, ping it, diigo it, mixx it, delicious it, then watch my web stats and keep my fingers crossed while hoping that some people will digg it, stumble it, facebook it, tweet it, and etecetera.
Somewhere in blogging, there must be an earthly reward. This is not the extent of what it takes to produce and promote a good article, by any means, but I was running out of breath trying to fit it into just one huge run-on sentence. There is a whole lot more to it than just that one breath. Through all of this effort, I hope that readers will appreciate it just a fraction of how sincerely I was trying to benefit them. If I benefit them enough with useful topics, they may help pass my blog along to somebody interested and in need of my marketing services, so that I can keep blogging without my kids getting too skinny.
Ahh, true passion of the SEO and social media marketing blog producer … you want some of that, don’t you?
Fun and Simplicity of Blogging
I already pointed out that I am an advocate of blogging. It it true that blogging holds many great rewards, but blogging is not an easy task for most of us. Some people will promote how fun and simple it is to produce a blog, but then I once heard a woman say something similar about having a baby, too. Yes, blogging can be very worthwhile, but there is also a pregnancy and labor side of blogging. Good blogs come from things like pixie dust and unicorns, but great blogs come from mind-numbing levels of creative effort. This is especially true if they are business blogs, which require a high level of marketing talent.
Knowing that it requires a lot of work to produce a useful blog, it would be a horrible shame to create and promote all that great work and not at least receive a few comments from readers, more subscribers, additional business, or something to justify all the effort and keep you wanting to continue giving your works to this amazing Internet resource we all build together.
Why Do I Make So Much Effort to Blog
Yes, here comes the reason I work hard to serve you. I will break it down really simple to tell you why I work hard to provide benefit to my readers. It is not as despicable as you may have thought.
If you are a subscriber to my blog, you have seen my crafty works to help get your thoughts racing about SEO and social media marketing. You may wonder why I work so hard to help people with marketing tips and ideas. I do not sell advertising here on my blog, so how can this possibly be worthwhile to me? I do not even promote my own company. Actually, the opposite is true, and my company promotes my blog.
What the following description of my efforts should drive home for you is the very most essential piece of the combined art and science of online marketing. Here it is: The most important thing about my blog is to serve people with something useful and compelling. The short version that I often tell people is “be useful!”
Yes, there you have it. The emphasis of my effort is to be useful and compelling. The kicker is this: When I am useful and compelling, people will share my work with others. If they share it on their blogs and social networks, my search engine ranking is improved, my readership is improved, and far beyond any big ego boost you may suspect, I actually stand a greater chance of having a paying customer ask me to help to do the same for them. Now that does not sound so much like the kitten-killer you may have made me out to be, does it? I did not even con you into buying something you do not need. That is refreshing in this day and age, don’t you think?
Have I Helped You?
I want to ask that in consideration for my efforts for you to pass along my work. If you are a do-it-yourself’er, please pass this along to people who may hire out my marketing services. If you are a marketing person and you do not have a conflict of interest, please spread this to others in our field. If you are a marketer seeking a client, just like me, I want to ask you to reach out to me so we can share ideas. Maybe I can guest blog for you and help promote you to your best audience.
In any case, if you find it useful, I want to ask you to subscribe to my blog and share your comments with others here. Also, please do not be too ashamed to pass along what I offer to others on your Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Digg, or other social networks. I am not your embarrassing Cousin Eddie. Helping me to share my work with people who can benefit is nothing to be ashamed of. I may be just “a web guy” to you, but I may provide a lot of benefit to somebody you know.
Shoppers lie. It happens all the time that they say they want one thing, but the truth is actually quite different. This happens because most shoppers feel a bit insecure about their purchases. Just picture yourself walking into an auto dealership to understand this better. You probably make up reasons to say “no” before you even drive on the lot. It is how consumers “protect themselves”, and it is rooted in cynicism. People want to buy things on their terms, and not the seller’s terms, and if that means they have to lie, they will often lie.
I am not going to call everybody a liar. No, I am not going to do that. What I will say is that during the purchase process, there are often things which are not exactly as they seem. This begins in the very earliest steps to a purchase, and it is the marketer’s job to overcome those smokescreens. We do this in many ways, including fact-finding about our market to better understand the ideal customer and how to meet their objectives. We perform careful propensity modeling to determine exactly who to target. Then we create a strong call-to-action to entice customers to take action now, before they can dream up another lie to help excuse themselves from committing to the purchase.
It should not be surprising that much of this process is made far more difficult by trying to market to the wrong people. A lot of marketing efforts miss the target miserably by skipping the research and trying to sell to people who are only marginally interested in the offering.
NOTE: When I say “take action” I mean for the customer to get what they want … what they came for. After all, when a prospective customer comes out of hiding, there is a reason. They want what you offer.
The purchase of anything from jelly beans to jumbo jets has two sides; one side who wants the sale, and the other side who wants the sale. They ultimately both want the sale! Marketers often neglect this, and place themselves in a very defensive role as if the customer holds all the cards. Something important to remember is that the customer also wants what the seller has to offer, often much more than they will let on. After all, they are ready to trade their money for it. You just have to suit their objectives and help them to buy on their terms. The best way to do this begins long before you ever even encounter the customer. The best answer is to know who the buyer is, and to know their terms.
Stop Marketing Jumbo Jets to Jelly Bean Customers
I have taught many people how to market and sell things, both online and offline. I have been in the marketing field for over 20 years, and I have seen a lot in that time. I have seen about every smokescreen that a customer can hide behind. There is a common saying that “buyers are liars”. It sounds ugly, but it really just means that until you uncover the customer’s real objectives, they will often be less than forthright about their purchase decision making. It may sound like a “lie”, but it is actually just to cover up deeper objectives, and a prospective customer’s attempt to feel secure while getting what they want. You see, if they tell you the whole truth, then you have too much power (in their mind), and they become “vulnerable”. The common fear is that if they open themselves up to your influence, they may end up coming to you asking for a bag of jelly beans and leaving with a jumbo jet. Of course, if that is the case, it really means they actually wanted a jumbo jet, but they were afraid to admit it and afraid of the sacrifice. It also means that the seller was reaching out to the wrong audience instead of discovering the people who are asking for jumbo jets. When you reach the right market, much cynicism is averted.
Marketers who understand what customers really want are the marketers who earn happy customers and become very successful. Effective marketers do the necessary discovery work to find out who the customers are and what they really want. This helps us to understand how to reach the right people, define the marketing approach, and thus improve response rates.
If a given group has a propensity to purchase jumbo jets, effective market research will uncover the facts. Market research helps to determine the most effective means to reach the target audience, and the right marketing message to implement. In my work, I find a lot of people trying to sell jumbo jets to jelly bean customers, simply because they never took the initiative to understand who the customer really is and what the customer wants and needs.
Wasteful Marketing Efforts
Many people will take the approach of simply seeking more audience. We all want more audience, but as a sole effort, that can lead to a whole lot of waste. Marketing duck hunting to vegetarians may reach a lot of people, but it will not produce desired results.
Other people will focus too much on a stronger call to action. A strong call to action is good, but again, this alone often leads to more waste. Offering a huge discount on lipstick will probably not bring the greatest results at a gun show.
Another huge waste I see in many marketing efforts is to assume that markets are less defined online than that of vegetarians and gun shows. The fact is that marketing online provides much greater definition to market segmentation. I encounter many people who think of the Internet as a place to market to the whole world, but take little or no care to define their market and understand the best ways to reach the right segments.
These are extreme accounts of wasteful marketing, but I see much more subtle mistakes being made every day. A better option is to know who to reach and what they want. Put yourself in their shoes and research your industry from their standpoint. This is not easy, and it is not natural for most business people. It is also why there are people who specialize in the field of marketing.
Wasteful marketing efforts will cause you to constantly be at odds with the prospective customer and they will seldom come over to your side to see the benefits of doing business with you.
How Do You Bring the Customer to Your Side?
The first step to winning customers is to know your market and why they want what you have. If you can realize the objectives of your market, you can bring the customers to your side so they can see it from both perspectives. Then they can see your vision of how your product or service will benefit them. If they want a jumbo jet, you will be the one who sells it to them.
Market research and gaining an understanding of the customer is a huge missing piece in many marketing campaigns. I have been shocked countless times to find that for many companies, market research is a confusing task that just seems like wasted effort. You can believe me or not, but it is the most important piece of all. Market research allows you to know what people want and what they will respond to. It is what tells you who to reach and the message to reach them with. Without proper market research, you may as well advertise jumbo jets for sale in your local candy store. If you keep trying to sell jumbo jets to jelly bean shoppers, you will waste a lot of time and expense.
Take your market research seriously.
Unless I am mistaken, you want to know how to earn more business by having more effective marketing reach. That is what I sell. You did not come here for jelly beans.
