Smart Slate Interactive Teaching ToolYou may be surprised what the Smart Slate WS200, the Smart Airliner wireless slate, and other interactive slates have in common. I will tell you a bit about these products, but what they share in common is more than you will likely see on the surface. First, I want to tell you about a couple of really useful technology tools that you may see more of in the future.
Smart Slate WS200 and Smart Airliner are each teaching tools by Smart Technologies which allow a teacher to work interactively with a classroom using a Smart Board interactive whiteboard. The Smart Board was introduced in 1991, but this product and other similar types of tools are still building steam as groups seek ways to work more interactively.
This is really neat technology that we did not have when I was a kid. The school can provide students with a wireless slate that allows students and teachers to interactively share things on a whiteboard at the front of the class. Smart Slate and Smart Board interactive whiteboards are designed to increase classroom productivity and allow for better interactive sharing of ideas and solutions.
Think of the possibilities for the Smart Slate. They can be used in boardrooms, think tanks, classrooms, and other places where simplified idea sharing and extra productivity are needed. We each have a limited amount of time, and tools that help to make our time in a group more productive are very worthwhile.
Commonalities of Smart Slate WS200 and Smart Airliner Wireless Slates
I said I would tell you what these things have in common, other than the obvious similarities of manufacturer (Smart Technologies), and their potential productivity enhancements. So here it is, the unseen commonality of these items is that each of them perform better with good SEO.
Come on, you should have seen that coming. This is an Internet marketing blog with a focus on search engine optimization and social media marketing. It was a natural conclusion, but why did I decide to blog about it? I will give you two reasons.
First Reason to Blog About Smart Technologies Interactive Smart Slates: I think the products are cool. They are not paying me, and I do not have any new or refurbished Smart Board whiteboards, Smart Slate WS200, or Smart Airliners to sell or rent. If my kids’ school PTO has a fundraiser to buy whiteboards, I may hit you up to buy some cookies or come to a school bake sale, but other than that, keep your wallet in your pocket … I am not selling you anything.
Second Reason to Blog About Smart Technologies Interactive Smart Slates: OK, I listed it as the second, but it ranks right up there somewhere above second. I realized that this is one of the many products offered by a company I will meet with in a few hours. As I started drilling into their offerings, I saw that this is one that I like, and one which is dreadfully under-represented in search results. The question this begs is not of whether this product line is good or not, but rather why in the name of everything good and wholesome did nobody really take this market seriously enough to get these in every classroom?
Why did I need another one of these articles to show people that a good search engine optimizer with a boot full of piss standing in a puddle of vinegar can outrank a whole industry in search engines? Well, I suppose that it is because I have a boot full of piss and a puddle of vinegar all around me. I was full of these things, until I leaked. Sometimes I just want to scream at the top of my lungs when I find that somebody does not grasp the value of being able to type out an article and watch it start attracting search visitors within 5-10 minutes after clicking publish. What happens if a company did this often? Wouldn’t it seem that if they could top search engines for just five to ten search terms per day by providing relevant and useful information that it would eventually add up to something really big? Yes, I think so, too. That is why I will walk into a meeting in a few hours and be able to say “this is why you need SEO” and hope that the company CEO will trust that what I tell (and show) him are valuable.
What Would Honest Abe Say?
I was recently referred to a businessman by a few mutually trusted acquaintances. In total, three different people have come to me suggesting that I could help this man to grow his business. Each of these three people are involved in his personal and professional life in different ways, and each carries a different level of trust. It all got me to thinking a lot about the importance of trust, and what a role it has in business relationships, personal relationships, and how they overlap.
I thought of the trust others had placed in my work and my integrity, and I thought about ways trust is conveyed to others. How to build trust is a tricky topic, at best. There are many factors involved, and it is different to each person. I do not have all the specific answers for this, but here are a few things that came to mind for me. I hope you will enjoy the food for thought.
The First Step to Selling is Trust
The way this really came to me was when the man I was referred to set aside time to meet with me. We will be meeting for the first time tomorrow morning. I asked him how much time we could set aside to visit, because I am often long winded and wanted to know what to expect. I told him that I am not a “pitch man” and that an “elevator presentation” really does not give justice to the work I do. Ironically, a lot of my job has to do with building trust, but I do that online, through branding and delivery of consistent value. In this case, I don’t have a lot of time.
He is a bit cramped for time, so I thought of ways I could present the most important facts right upfront. I considered the specific facts, figures, and projections I could make for marketing his business better. I thought of the “silver bullet” to how I can bring him success with his online marketing. I guess I could just give him the facts, and maybe he would trust those facts … real facts, real numbers, real proof. You can see why I am not a pitch man, right? Yes, I agree … I am not a salesman. He has probably heard all of that before, or if he did the right research, he could certainly ascertain facts, figures, and proof of the things I would tell him.
Once I got to thinking a little deeper about what this man really wants to hear and believe is me. If I do not have his trust, nothing I say will matter … even the best information will be pointless. I could prove how much I know about the Internet, and how I create great visibility to a company. I could show him big profit gains by having a better marketing message. I have that proof on my side, but if I relied on proof alone, it will just fly right on by and at the end of the meeting, we will have both wasted our time. So the challenge is really in how to earn just enough of his trust that he will want to know more … and believe it once I do give him the facts.
Building Trust in an Distrusting World
I started thinking about factors of building trust online. We only have seconds to earn that little bit of trust that makes people want to know more … and believe in us. If we get just a tiny piece of their trust … enough to want to know more, we may get somewhere. Otherwise, we are shot down and we have nothing to show for it. On the Internet, that generally comes with a nice professional looking website, but why? If somebody sees a great website, it is less likely that they wasted their time and money just to throw it all away by trying to rip you off. It conveys some sense of authority.
When I considered this in the offline world, it didn’t really translate so well. Sure, we know that the numbers prove that good looking people earn more money. That is true, but being good looking does not break the trust barrier. There has to be more!
Rapport: Finding Common Threads
I thought of things I know about this man. I guess we could talk about cigars. He likes cigars, too. People like people with common interests. Maybe we could talk about my auto racing … everybody likes fast cars, right? Here is in-car video of me qualifying 7th of 77 at Road America with a top speed of around 170 miles per hour … who wouldn’t like that?! No, this is going nowhere. Rapport, or finding common threads is fine. It can make somebody feel a little more comfortable, but it still does not fill the trust gap. What is the answer? I really want to know.
Honesty and Sincerity: If You Mean it They Can Tell
This is something I guess I have always really tried hard to do. I mean, if you could see the look on my face, you would really know that I mean what I say. I have always been one of those guys who will tell people my sincere thoughts over and above telling them just what they want to hear. I am simply not a schmoozer, and I have always felt like my sincerity and willingness to polarize an audience with what I really think and feel has been an asset to me. Being honest even when it is hard is something I think my father spanked into me at a very young age, and I have been very successful as a result of honesty. It has also caused a few hardships, but it is overall my greatest gift. Some people have a good gauge for honesty, but some do not, so it still does not fill the trust gap. What’s next? There has to be something … some good answer that will make the big difference in trust.
Time and Familiarity Builds Trust … You Trust Grandma, Right?
Maybe grandma is not a perfect example for you, but in general, time and familiarity builds trust. I trust my grandmother implicitly. Over time, people observe others actions and intentions, and with experience, they learn whether they can trust somebody. Time and familiarity are huge factors in trust, but in business, we often only have a moment. Busy business people often do not have time to build trust, either from the buyers’ perspective, or the sellers’ perspective. I have put off sales representatives for over a year before. In fact, one of my largest suppliers took over a year to earn my trust, but I have been a large client to them for over eight years now. Today, that is unlikely to happen, because postponing good business decisions during a recession can sink a company fast. Besides, how many companies will really take the initiative to build trust with you the way this sales rep who called me once a week for a year did?
Referrals Convey Trust
I have written about the value of referrals, and how they can help a business. They shorten the trust gap, because when somebody you trust vouches for somebody else, some of the trust is conveyed. In my case, it seems that about every time I give a business referral, I get a call from the person I referred to say thank you. I guess it happens for two reasons. I am selective, and before I will refer somebody to another business acquaintance or friend, I want to know that they are a good match. When I give a referral, I will convey a huge lot of my influence to be sure that the two parties (referral and referred) will do business together. I almost find myself a bit offended if I give a whole-heartedly earnest referral to somebody and they go elsewhere. It is because I gave a huge piece of my trust, and when my trust is wasted, I don’t like it. I don’t like it one bit.
I have a large collection of reference letters and kind words people have written about me over the years. I could give him a nice leather bound copy of reference letters to show I am trustworthy, but even that is not a perfect answer. There is still more to it than just this … a lot more.
What About the Jaded?
I told my wife I was thinking about and writing about trust. I asked her if she trusts me. I already knew the answer. She clearly trusts me like none other. She trusts me as a husband, father, and provider. Then I asked her how to build trust, and she said “it depends on how jaded the person is.” That makes sense, and it reminded me of something I wrote in one of my books, “Living in the Storm” in the chapter titled “Wins and Losses of Cynicism”. Perhaps we just can’t reach everybody, and some people will just distrust everything. It has to do with the individual’s experiences, and sometimes their own trustworthiness and intentions. It is a lot harder to trust somebody if you have been jaded, or do not feel trustworthy.
A Summary of Trust
I cannot tell you in a single blog article what it takes to build trust. I know, that would be great if I could. One thing I can tell you is that in my job as an Internet marketing consultant, if you are not doing things to convey trust among your marketplace, you are not looking far enough ahead. Trust is a key factor in doing business, online or offline, and the sooner you start, the better.
Building familiarity and authority within your marketplace is never a simple task, but if you never begin the process, you will not receive the benefits. Online social networking is a good start.
I did not come up with all the answers for my meeting tomorrow, but I know that his confidence and trust in me will play a vital role. I hope that my knowledge, history, integrity, and the trust conveyed by others will help.
What do you think? I would enjoy hearing your thoughts on trust. If you are a subscriber to my blog, why did you trust my opinions enough to subscribe? If you are a regular visitor, why do you come back? Does trust play a role in that? My guess is yes.
Who Is On Your Front Line?When the world spoke to you and said “You should have a blog”, you listened. Well, at least hundreds of millions did. Others may take a while to catch on and understand the many good reasons to blog. Overall, blogging has caught on extremely well in the past few years. Companies understand that a good blog with things people want provides a means to reach more potential customers than any other method. It can create a lot of additional sales. In fact, it can create a lot more sales than any sales representative you’ve got … even the very best of them. It can also make closing the sale a lot easier for the whole company, and greatly reduce marketing overhead. The potential customer has already done the research about what you offer, and if they contact you, they are already mostly sold.
This all begs the question of how your blog will come across to those potential customers. If you look at your blog like it is a sales representative, would it be the sleazy representative you hired and later regret the decision; the representative who makes people’s eyelids heavy and need a nap; or the sharp and clever representative who makes up your top percentile of volume producers? This really all depends on the person or people behind the blog. If you stop looking at it like a “thing” and start looking at it like your top sales representative, it can make a big difference.
Make no mistake! Blogging can create massive exposure to a company, and drive huge success, but it can also fail miserably without a great plan, clever branding, and fantastic content. If you look at it with the potential of becoming your top sales representative, it takes on a whole new feel, doesn’t it? Shouldn’t the people behind the blog have the skills of a master, and not just anybody you can find to produce it for the lowest cost? Really, this is your business front … shouldn’t you take that pretty seriously?
You should have a plan, and I mean a serious strategy to get what you want. What does this mean for you? For me, it means constantly trying to help people with great ideas, branding myself with a touch of snarky humor, and producing enough fantastic content that some of you will say “this guy really knows his stuff and I’ll bet he could help me sell a lot more if I pay him.”
That is my example … but what about you? Here are some questions to ask about whomever you will trust with your online business front. If it is you, these questions become even more challenging, and you should try to be very honest with yourself.
Do you know what readers want?
Do you understand the technology, psychology, mathematics, and creativity necessary to get what you want?
Can you produce the brilliant content it takes to stand out among thousands of worldwide competitors?
Are you able to amass enough readers that you can mathematically predict how many will become customers?
Do you understand the numbers and use them to optimally further your growth?
Can you defend your company’s position against naysayers?
Is online marketing your real job, or it is just another thing you feel you have to do?
Could somebody else do it better, and if so, will they work for you or for your competition?
The list can go on, but this should be enough to think about for now. Take inventory of these things and consider how you stack up. Is the best sales representative on the job?
Will You Get All the Pieces Right?
Do you know how to harness the value of what people want, and how to spread it to the masses? If not, I know a web guy who is for hire, and that can help you with a better call to action.
Blogs Are Not Created Equal
All blogs are not created equal, and they are as different as the people behind them. Some will create amazing success, and some will be miserable failures. Remembering this and recognizing the marketing talent and creativity of the people behind the blog as the reason for success is important. It can save you a whole lot of time and money to do it right, and not just do it like everybody else.
Will You Go Broke or Take ActionFree advice? The Internet is full of it. You cannot swing a cat without hitting somebody willing to give you free business advice, marketing advice, tips, and ideas. So what is it all worth? I will answer that later, but first, want to share a story of my Monday with you.
I got a call from a good friend who is a top-level economist. He graduated magna cum laude from Princeton University, and has an impressive job. He is a brilliant economist. We talked about solutions for a mutual friend’s locally-focused service industry company. While we spoke, he was in the car and driving through a strip mall with a huge grocery chain. He gave his opinion of how chilling it is that the once-thriving strip of over 30 businesses has only three businesses left. We talked about the huge challenges a business faces, and how scared companies are today.
What does it all mean, and should you be scared? Allow me to share some observations. First, should you be scared? Yes! Heck, I am scared for you. The numbers are against you, and if you don’t change with the tide and swim harder and faster, you will not make it … you will drown. Even the most brilliant business minds have had to make some big changes in the past couple years. Some will succeed, while many will give up. The worst change a business makes is that of just “riding it out” or taking a “wait and see” approach. In order to make it, it will take action … uncomfortable, scary, swift, and decisive action. If you are not sure I am on the mark with this, just watch this recent video!
Taking Action to Avoid Going Broke
Let us, just for a moment, stop allowing the blindness of false positivity to get in the way of logical thinking. I know, it feels like things will be better if we think positively and maybe if we ignore the downsides, economic conditions will improve. This is not a case of ignoring it and it will go away. Quite the opposite. If you ignore your business challenges, the business will go away … not the challenges. So what can you do to come out of this better than the rest, and even better than before? After all, that is what you hope for, right? Whether you are trying to catch up, trying to keep your lead, or trying to break records with success, doing more business tomorrow than you did yesterday is going to require some changes. It does not matter if you are ready for change or not, change is ready for you.
Only Wet Babies Like Change
Here is an example of fearing change that nearly cost many millions of dollars.
A few hours after visiting with my economist friend, another friend dropped by to pick up a modem from me. I have an Internet company. I have modems of all shapes and sizes. While we visited, I told him I am looking for a new sales representative. Actually, a presentation representative is what I am seeking, because I really hate boardrooms and ridiculous business politics. I am worn completely smooth each day with lies and excuses from companies who contact me, and I want to pay somebody who is willing to filter it out for me. Tom is a lobbyist, and I know he is well-networked and knows a lot of motivated people with good business experience. I told him I that am entirely worn out by answering the same questions each day, and hearing the same sob story from companies over and over. I decided that it simply is not good for me to face ignorance and indifference, and it sucks away a little bit of my soul every day.
He related my services to a bill he helped to pass that would cost the State of Kansas millions of dollars, but then return nine times that much by its passing. He told how frustrating it was to explain it to so many people who simply said “the state can’t afford it” because it was not in the budget. He understood how exasperating it was that the concern was the money, but that there would be far more money soon after the passing of the new legislation. The math was done … it added up, but legislators would still express fear of passing the law. Tom gets it! Tom has been in my shoes, and he understood why my fingers are tired from making that reaching for the throat to choke somebody gesture when somebody leaves their brain on the nightstand the day they call me.
I hear the same thing that Tom heard from legislators in my job every single day. People want to free up the money to spend on good marketing, but they cannot see beyond the check they write. They cannot see the vision. Sure, I can, because it is my job. I know the math, and I know that for each dollar out, there are dollars in. I know risk-management, and I know how to calculate expected returns. I know how much my clients benefit from what I do, but for new clients, it is as if it is just a big blur … it is something they cannot see.
I hear you, people … I get it … you are paralyzed with fear, but there is a point when you have to push the “go” button or go home without a job. Business will not cure itself.
What Makes Business Happen?
What makes business happen for you? It should be clear that if more people know your business, and understand the benefits of doing business with you, it helps your company. You know this, right?
While everybody is out there vying for your customers, you must market your company better than ever. That does not mean having a blog, a Facebook page, and a Twitter account. It means understanding how to use the tools. It means having a better plan and understanding that execution of the plan must be done better than the competition. It means that marketing is not a commodity, and that Pepsi beat out those other cola companies because they had better execution of a better plan. Luck only spreads so far, and after the luck is gone, it is going to take marketing talent and marketing creativity.
Marketing Made Cheap
There are a lot of cheap marketing offerings out there. I was curious about some of them, so I decided to dip my hook in the water and see what fish would bite on a small worm. I wanted to see how people really think. I took a call from one of those squillions I normally weed out who asks for prices instead of wanting to know what he is buying. I asked all the important questions. I took a little time for discovery, and found that I could take his competition to the wood shed and bare-assed whip them like an angry stepfather.
I took it on the chin and wrote up an eight page plan for his stated budget of $2,500 (yeah, I laughed, too). It was a full-featured proposal including much research, custom blog creation, search engine optimization, social media marketing, five Murnahan-written and circulated blog posts, and web hosting for a year. The expected return was many tens of times the investment. I mean, this guy would have been set on a path paved with Murnahan-engraved gold bricks, and just because I wanted to make an example of somebody.
I received an email from this company owner a couple days later and it read as follows:
I hate to admit this, but I can’t afford your services. At least not in the immediate future. I really like your ideas and respect your abundant knowledge.
I’m respectfully declining your services.
Sharing My Findings About Cheap Marketing
I could write for days about things I have learned about people hoping to get something for nothing. It is not new, and a lot of people really think of marketing as all the same … that it is a commodity. It is easy to overlook or ignore the research details, planning, execution, talent, experience, reach, and other assets in a good marketer’s toolbox. In this case, I decided to share my example of delving into the cheap marketing arena with some people. I asked a small sample of people who know my work fairly well how much they thought my absolute floor is for taking on a new project. The answers averaged around $80,000, with none answering below $25,000 as what they thought the absolute lowest project that I would or should take on as a marketing consultant. Well, what I should do and actually do are two different things. I will take on small jobs if I like the people and I like the product. I liked the guy with a $2,500 budget that I wrote an extensive plan for. Do you think he made a good business decision? I don’t benefit by lying to you, so here is the truth. In this case, a measurably better decision would have been to pay the marketing guy before the light bill or the mortgage.
Good marketing is really hard to find, and sometimes hard to produce the upfront cost, but the bottom line is that if the marketing is performed well, it will make you more money. Good marketing is an investment, and not a cost. If you find a good marketer, you must never forget that fact.
About that earlier question of what all that free business and marketing advice is worth, the answer is as different as the people offering the advice. My advice and the next guy’s advice are not equal, and marketing is not a commodity.
SEO Guarantees You Can MeasureThe search engine optimization (SEO) industry has attracted a lot of bad search engine optimizers. For a good SEO, there is a lot of money involved. Wherever there is a lot of money, there is usually a lot of fraud, too. It can be really hard for the average person to know the difference between good seo and bad seo.
I know it is not only me who gets the offers in my email each day offering guaranteed top ten results at Google. I manage a lot of websites, and nearly each of them will receive offers for guaranteed SEO results. I even get these offers for sites that I intentionally exclude from search engine indexing, which makes it pretty clear these guys don’t know much about targeting their market … they just have an email address. They claim to guarantee top ten results, but top ten for what search? I guess that would be pretty easy for keyword phrases like “unicorn hunting expedition”, but what about the stuff that really pays off? What about the things that create more business for the client, and not just a buck for the SEO?
SEO Guarantees Should Be Objective
A guarantee without an objective measurement, that is reasonably guaranteed to be achievable, and is guaranteed to be of value, is no guarantee at all. However, that is the type of guarantee people get suckered into all the time with SEO. It is a good reminder that it is really easy for people without integrity to make false claims. It is a constant challenge for me to try and understand why people so often believe lies more than they believe the truth about Internet marketing. They only see the bold print with great claims, but their eyes glaze over when it comes to the fine print or when common sense is necessary. You know, like the common sense that kicks in and tells you “it sounds too good to be true.”
I want to share seven legitimate SEO guarantees that are based on objective third party measurements that are very achievable by any SEO worth the water their body is made of. These are guarantees that actually have meaning, because they are measurable and not subject to individual interpretation, and they place specific responsibility on the SEO.
SEO Guarantee Number One: Website SEO Readiness
Measuring website readiness for SEO can be performed in many ways. It seems that a lot of non-SEO people do not realize how objective this can be. There are a lot of very specific deal-breakers that can preclude a website from high search ranking, and they can be measured very objectively. I will give you just a couple of examples.
Website Grader by HubSpot: HubSpot is a company that provides tools to help companies measure and improve their website and social media reach. As a side note, it is actually kind of funny that if you search Google for HubSpot SEO or HubSpot social media, or a bunch of other terms related to their services, you can find my thorn in their side. I have given HubSpot a hard time in the past, but they really do have some good products to measure a website’s preparedness for SEO.
Website Grader analyzes a website based on preparedness for SEO mixed with its traffic level. A legitimate SEO guarantee based on a set ranking on Website Grader is something achievable to the SEO, because it will provide details of what to improve, and it is objective data from a third party. If the SEO guarantees a HubSpot Website Grader score of 98 within 60 days, it is something that is both measurable and readily achievable to even an average SEO. Try it for yourself and see where your site ranks. If you want to improve it to 98+ within 60 days, your SEO should be able to make a legitimate guarantee. This particular site is presently ranked at 99.7, and it did not require any rocket surgery. Click the badge to see a sample report for my blog.
Google Webmaster Tools: I have previously pointed out that Google wants to index your website. Providing relevant listings for searches has everything to do with how Google makes money. They provide a lot of help for making websites more search engine ready, because it helps them meet their business objectives.
Google Webmaster Tools provides objective information to help website owners measure and maintain the SEO preparedness of their website. This provides a measurement that any SEO should be able to guarantee, legitimately. I will include a couple screenshots to show SEO standards that any SEO should be able to achieve, maintain, and guarantee.
The appropriate SEO guarantee in the instance of Google Webmaster Tools is clear and very simple to track. It is also very achievable to any SEO that has been in the business more than three weeks.
SEO Guarantee Number Two: Traffic Measurement
There are a lot of ways to measure website traffic. There are many different value metrics such as number of unique visitors, time on page, bounce rate, traffic sources (keywords, referring websites, etcetera), new vs. returning website visitors, and more. If a guarantee is to count, it must be well defined and based on historical data compared to new data.
A legitimate guarantee that the SEO can make in traffic measurement could include ongoing work in specific increments until certain goals have been met. For example, if the goal was to increase search traffic by 300 percent and keep the time on page above four minutes, the SEO will provide (and log) no less than ten hours per week in services until that goal is reached. That would be a reasonable guarantee. If the SEO wants to get to work on other projects, he or she will probably work pretty hard to be sure the goal is met without delay.
SEO Guarantee Number Three: Alexa, Quantcast, Etc.
Ranking at Alexa, Quantcast, Nielsen, and etcetera is another form of traffic measurement that is more important to websites focused on selling advertising than their own products or services. These rankings have often been contentious, and many people will argue their validity due to possibilities for falsified or fraudulent results. However, it is hard to argue that the SEO has not done a good job if a website’s ranking in two or more of these services has made significant improvements, especially if they each produce results that are in agreement.
If the SEO chooses to guarantee increases in these rankings, it can be beneficial to measure more than one of them simultaneously. A guarantee of ranking in the top “X” sites on each of these services could mean the SEO will provide the amount of increase at a specific cost and continually log efforts until the goals are reached. If the SEO priced it too low, their guarantee is to keep providing work, and proof of that work, until your objective is reached. An incentive to the SEO for higher than promised results is often an additional guarantee of another sort. It guarantees the SEO will be excited to work on your project.
SEO Guarantee Number Four: Increased Incoming Links
Incoming links pointing to your website is the most desirable and effective way to achieve higher search engine rankings. Because of its importance, it is also one of the most abused areas of SEO. The most common scams I see are from crooked SEO selling useless links. Many SEO will promise you a squillion new incoming links to your website, but what they do not tell you is they are largely links from domains that are penalized by all major search engines for being “link farms” and can actually do more harm than good. It is why this kind of search engine optimizer will generally have their own website penalized and cannot produce a single example of a website where they have created a large number of useful incoming links.
If any SEO guarantees to produce “X” number of incoming links, you should see it as a big red flag. On the other hand, if they guarantee a given MozRank increase based on high quality links, it had better come with some pretty serious content production. That means producing the kind of website content that will attract people to share your article in social media, reference it in their blog, or submit it to Digg, Delicious, StumbleUpon, and others. Any SEO promising links simply by adding your web address to blog comments, forum posts, and link farms is likely to hurt your business in other ways, too. If you want to know how to create incoming links, read this article titled “SEO Backlinks: Why Most SEO Fail at Link Building“.
Links are not created equally, and some are not only worthless but even harmful. Any SEO guarantee including link building should be based on measurements of link value and not just link volume. A reputable measure of link value may be found using SEOmoz Linkscape or Open Site Explorer (example report). Of course, there is also Google PageRank, but a good SEO knows that PageRank is not a good measurement tool, and it is old and unreliable data.
A reasonable guarantee for the SEO to offer is to produce and promote useful content on your website and continue until it reaches your set goal. This is another example of an SEO guarantee that places responsibility on the SEO to work for their money.
SEO Guarantee Number Five: Increased Search Phrases
The number of unique search phrases that bring you traffic can be a useful measure of overall performance. I do not mean measuring the number of search phrases where you appear in results, but rather the number of search phrases that actually brought visitors to your website. It can indicate that your site is being more thoroughly indexed, and that its overall search engine health is improving. If your site was visited as a result of only 500 unique search terms in one month but then visited as a result of 5,000 search terms the next month and 10,000 the following month, it is a pretty good indicator that things are going well.
This is a very measurable metric that has meaning, but for the purpose of a solid guarantee, it should be measured alongside the number of unique visitors to your website. You know, for the skeptic to be sure the SEO is not running a script to falsify the results.
A good SEO guarantee based on the increase in search phrases could be something such as additional increments of services being logged by the SEO until “X” percent increase in unique search phrases and “Y” percent associated increase in unique visitors.
SEO Guarantee Number Six: Solid Marketing Plan
This is a preemptive guarantee that is a hard one for a lot of people to really grasp as a truly measurable guarantee … but it is! Many people will look at SEO as a commodity that is produced the same by every search engine optimizer, and is just a set of basic tasks we perform the same for each client. This is not how it actually works, but it is why I receive many visitors searching for SEO hourly rates (google it for yourself).
I recently wrote about the relationship of marketing cost vs. marketing value, and the truth is that if you want all the pieces to fit just right, you should plan to make a sizable investment. This is because a good SEO will be making a sizable investment of time and knowledge to help you achieve your business objectives. As you can perhaps see here and throughout my blog, there are a lot of tasks to perform in reaching good search engine results. The specific work of my industry is not the same for any two companies, which is why a properly outlined plan can be the greatest SEO guarantee of all.
The lack of a solid marketing plan is a guarantee to fail. If the SEO provides a well-formed contract outlining the discovery process, proposed execution of tasks, and reporting of outcomes, it is likely the best guarantee that you will get what you pay for. When it is carefully planned out, high quality SEO can become the greatest asset to a company, topping the chart for online success tools. It can take a company to a whole new level and send their profitability and market share through the roof.
SEO Guarantee Number Seven: Inaction Guarantee
Number seven is the SEO guarantee grandfather of them all. I guarantee that there are a lot of websites returned in a search for what you offer. If you do not take action to optimize your position, or you lack the proper actions, you will miss a lot of potential business. That is a guarantee worth betting on. If the SEO has a strong track record and will make specific guarantees like the ones suggested here, you will risk a lot more lost money by inaction than if the SEO took your money and split for a country without extradition.
Ranking at Alexa, Quantcast, Nielsen, and etcetera is another form of traffic measurement that is more important to websites focused on selling advertising than their own products or services. These rankings have often been contentious, and many people will argue their validity due to possibilities for falsified or fraudulent results. However, it is hard to argue that the SEO has not done a good job if a website’s ranking in two or more of these services has made significant improvements, especially if they each produce results that are in agreement.