comparing SEO Archives - Page 2 of 3 by Mark Murnahan

How To Avoid Going Broke in Business

Free 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.

Internet Marketing Truth: An Internet Marketer Fights Lies With Truth

In today’s marketplace with all the desperate static on the Internet, it seems that honesty is hard to find. I can give you instances like the guy I found claiming to be an Internet marketer for over 25 years; the liars telling you that more followers on Twitter will make you money; or the many search engine submission jokers with pink ponies for sale. I can list instances of lies, deception, and fraud in Internet marketers all day long. I have heard Internet marketing described as “the last refuge of sleazy,? get-rich-quick scumbags too slimy to sell used cars.” and I agree with that statement.

The fact is that I am not here to sell you anything. Only a small fraction … and I mean a tiny number of the people who will read this can afford my services or care enough about their company to build a business the way I do it. I want their money, and not yours. Just relax, my hand is not reaching for your pocket.

This article will possibly bore you to tears, but at least you cannot say I never gave you something. I am going to give you some harsh truth about Internet marketing. For those who choose to brave the truth, my work here is worth my effort.

If you smell one whiff of typical Internet marketing “bullshit perfume” in what I will tell you, just turn the page and don’t bother coming back. I want to tell you how to truly achieve success in a market, and I am not going to lead you wrong. If you don’t come back, at least I know that you are not serious about doing the right things for the right reasons. That shame is on you.

You can chock this up as just another blog post from an Internet marketing guy trying to seem revolutionary, or you can drop what you are doing and listen to the truth. The truth of how I truly, factually, and without lies, have earned millions of dollars for myself and my clients using the Internet … and how much I hate the directions my industry has taken. You may not want to read all of this, because it will not spell out a glorious pink pony ride to success or the convincing unicorn hunting expedition that other Internet marketing and SEO people hit you with every day, like this Johnny Come Lately Internet Marketing Parody video.

I made a late night coffee run with a friend who reminded me how much truly spectacular marketing takes benevolence, persistence, honesty, integrity, intelligence, and marketing talent. It really requires a whole lot of other “magical” secrets that the huge wave of Internet marketing “experts” will try to sell you, but the piece I want to focus on here is truth about Internet marketing. Not the kind of truth you may expect, and not the kind of truth you may want to stick around and endure. I am offering the real deal. I want to give you the honesty about Internet marketing that you may be missing, and help to set you in a better direction.

So, you want the truth about Internet marketing. This will require you to read, and against all forces of outside persuasion, to pay attention to what I tell you. Only a desperate need to rush and read the next ineffective ideas of how to improve website traffic and reach more people to sell your stuff to should tear you away from this. I understand, there is a lot of that bad Internet marketing out there, and it all seems very tempting. If you are under time constraints to get rich today, go ahead, you probably have something more important to do. If you must go, just get lost … this is a story of truth in Internet marketing that I am telling, and not a ploy to help you get rich fast or to get you to buy my stuff.

Oooh, look … there is something shiny over there … *blinking advertisement* … you should click and check that out. Really, go ahead, you are not going to hurt my feelings. That is the way of the Internet. Click away, because you may get massively rich with that very next click. That seems to be the popular message these days.

OK, since you are still with me, and if you can shut out the temptation to go see the next message on Twitter or the next thing your friends on Facebook just did, sit there until you finish this.

I am going to give you a tip. I am going to tell you why and how it takes more than all those Internet marketing lies people will lead you to believe, and why I drink more coffee and smoke more cigarettes than the average person. It is so that I can be consistently alert and useful in my SEO and Internet marketing career. I know work … I know real work, and what it really takes to earn millions of dollars in Internet marketing, for myself and for my clients. No, not the crap you see in most marketer’s arsenal of fakeness … the real deal. I have walked a high and narrow path with hell on each side and I have battled business alligators until I found the swamp plug. I have endured insane work schedules and taken the risks that wives hate their husbands to take. I even released a book titled “Living in the Storm” to share what it takes to become successful. I wrote it as a man who dropped out of school at fifteen years of age and owned successful companies before many of my classmates finished their schooling. I have also been there to wave goodbye to a half a million dollars in fine cars when I decided that I could not justify my six digit per year second job as a race car driver. The truth is that I have walked along the highest steps in the top percentile money earners worldwide, and I have also looked in the cupboard and found nothing but peas and pancake mix and found a way to make a fantastic meal of it to get there. If you want lies and you want to find a shortcut, at least be ready to live as hard as that successful dropout kid I have grown up to be. That is a bit of truth about what it actually takes to be a success. You have to be ready and willing to make sacrifices, and be ready to work hard … or pay somebody who has been willing to make those sacrifices for you, and learned the truth about Internet marketing.

For your own sake, if you think it is easy to have Picasso hang on your wall, walk across a rug worth more than the $50,000+ desk you write blogs at, or ride a motorcycle that cost more than your first two homes combined … go ahead and read from those Internet marketers who know an easier way than I did, because it took me to my knees more than once to have those things. Go ahead and suck it all up and believe them, but don’t come to me to fix what they mess up for your business. Also, don’t blame my industry for your being too naive and getting conned into something stupid. Now, if you are ready to work hard and stop chasing unicorns long enough to learn something useful about Internet marketing, keep reading.

I am going to give you a piece of truth about Internet marketing, social media, and SEO that you can confirm. Here you go:

Internet Marketing Success Requires Hard Work

If there is no sacrifice, it probably will not work. Otherwise, everybody else would be doing it, and then the market would no longer be so great … kind of like the market for good SEO and Internet marketing. Instead of selling real services with real marketing strategies that work, the majority of Internet marketers are all trying to sell you some crap about how you can get it all and have it all just by sitting there at your keyboard adding up your money. They are lying to you. Go back and read my blog to see if I am telling you the truth. Just go and read the last few days, few weeks, or few months of my work of telling the truth about Internet marketing.

Maybe you think that due diligence will take too much of your time and you may just miss that next click from a Twitter friend or you may not catch that link that will make you filthy stinking rich. What it may save you is a whole lot of wasted time and money spent on Internet marketing with the wrong agenda. Let me remind you that I am not here to sell you anything. What I want from you is enough of your time to stop believing in all the unicorn chasers and static makers, enough to put them out of business. Then, perhaps without all the suspicion and static making the Internet deaf with something worthless to sell, we can all benefit. We can start looking forward to a world where people can see through the clouds and build their businesses the right way again, instead of getting scammed out of more money and then looking at the whole Internet as a failure.

Let’s face it, good marketing that brings loyal customers is trickier than ever. It gets harder and takes more creative marketing to be heard above the rumble of bottom-feeding Internet marketers who want you to believe that you will get what you want and will not have to make big sacrifices. You have probably heard somewhere that if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Yeah, well it seems that a lot of people overlook that sensible statement as soon as they switch on their computer.

As I visited with my friend late last night, I gave him a fantastic rendition of many things he could do to effectively build his business and reach all the right people. He and I both know that I would never sell him anything for money. The things we brainstorm together are the best kind of honesty, and without any awkward agenda. He is a long-time technology guy, like me, and he strongly agreed to everything I said. If he disagrees, he is a close enough friend to be extremely stubborn. As it was, it was one of those light bulb moments for him, and he quite frankly flattered me with his attentiveness to my ideas. I shed light on his marketing thinking, and I feel really great about that.

We had one of those conversations where we came up with some brilliant business ideas for his company, but he kept trying to switch it around and focus me on how to improve my company. He complained about how I constantly have great ways to help monetize other people’s ideas, but yet, I will overlook the best direction in my own business. He called me a “cobbler with barefoot children”, and I had to agree. He really nagged me about how hard I work for others, and the sacrifices I make to build their success. It is not the easiest thing for me to hear, because I actually know he is right. He is one of the closest friends in my life, and when he kept trying to focus me on how little I try to maximize my own company, I had to internalize it. It kind of stings to feel my shortcomings, just as it does for most people. It is not because I don’t have the talent or the drive. I guess it is just because I am really focused on what I do. I make people more successful in their business. That is my job, and it is something I am passionate about.

So, my plan for following up on Mike’s urge to focus on my own business is not just for my own benefit, but to benefit others as well. My intent is to inform people that as long as there is static in my industry, it hurts us all. As long as people keep believing that it will be easy and not take serious efforts and make sacrifices to build their business, I have done us both a disservice.

Internet marketers who will tell you the truth and the ones who are just out of your reach are the ones you listen to. You know that you probably cannot afford their services anyway, so they really are not a threat to you. You nod your head as you read their blogs, and it all makes very good sense. Then you walk away from it and try to trust an industry of thieves to implement it cheaper, or try to do it yourself. If this rings any bells for you, please take a step back and look at your motivations. Take a moment to decide if you have the persistence to do things better than before. Take the time to use the sincere honesty that you will find here at my blog and those of a few other industry leaders. Use it … don’t just try and hold onto that hope in the back of your mind that there really is a simple way to win.

The truth about Internet marketing as I know it is that I have to keep turning away companies who want and need my help, but they have wildly misguided ideas of what it really takes to be successful. I am tired of watching so many people suffer from the belief that it should all be so easy and that anybody can do the job. These are the same companies who come back to me after they get the shirt ripped off their back and can no longer afford to implement the best solution to their needs. I think it is a damn shame.

Maybe if I tell you the truth that you didn’t want to hear, we can all be more successful tomorrow than today. The truth is that I am seeking one new client … just one, and it probably is not you. I have turned away a lot of people in the process of seeking that one new client. Maybe in exchange for some truthful and useful articles about Internet marketing, you can help me find that one new client. Maybe you can help to clean up my industry and remind people that there is no pink pony ride to success.

Perhaps you know a business person who wants to do it right and is not afraid to start seeing the truth. If you know somebody who needs to impress their board members or investors with more profit, please pass them my name. If you know somebody who can make serious sacrifices to make their business more profitable, please pass them my name. I only want one, so it would be hard to call me a big threat.

If you know somebody being conned with the vision of easy and cheap success, please help them to know the truth about Internet marketing, too. It is going to take a lot more work than most people are ready to withstand.

Good SEO vs. Bad SEO: How to Tell the Difference

There are good SEO (search engine optimizers) and there are bad SEO, and if you cannot tell the difference, your money and time will be wasted. I am going to give you some third party objective tools to tell the difference between good and bad SEO. These can help you to determine whether yours is working, whether you have hired it out, you are seeking to hire it out, or you are venturing into the ever-popular DIY SEO. The information I will provide in this article also includes some great SEO tools just to satisfy your curiosity. This can help, in case you wondered why there are not more people coming to your website, or to estimate how well your competition is doing. First, I want to be sure that you understand what SEO is and why good SEO is important, so I will start with that.

Why Good SEO is Important

We should first establish that it is important to be listed when somebody searches the Internet looking for what you offer. Searching the Internet is the most common way for people to find a business. If people do not find you, they will find somebody else. Obviously, they will find your competition. Count on it!

I will be really basic for a moment, in case you are totally unfamiliar with SEO. In this article, I will use the term SEO as both the field of search engine optimization (the art and science) as well as search engine optimizer (the person). In basic terms, SEO involves placing your website at the top of a list when somebody performs a search on the Internet. SEO also has a lot to do with making sure that when your link is found in a search, people will click on it, read what you have to say, and take an action such as buy what you have to sell, tell their friends, fill out a form, call you on the phone, and etcetera. These are the things that will produce more business for your company. It really involves a lot of different areas of art and science, so I want to give you some ways to measure both of these things.

Now, let us assume for a moment that good SEO actually exists. It is not a unicorn chase, and it is not some VooDoo witchcraft. Somebody actually is at the top of those searches, they are making sales, and there are reasons for it. So, let’s look at this from a standpoint that there actually is such a thing as good SEO for a moment, please? After all, we can be pretty sure that there is a reason the company at the top of a search for, let’s say, “travel” is not just a brand new company with a $400 budget and 13 incoming links to their site. No, it does not happen that way … ever.

Tools of the SEO Trade

Good SEO is not just made up of a couple of big factors. Yes, there are some big things we look at, but there really are a lot of little things that make up the big picture. Some of the factors are specifics about the website itself, such as the programming code, the servers, XML sitemaps, robots.txt, text content, link structure, keyword usage, and much more. There are a whole lot of pieces to the puzzle of the website itself that add up to make a difference. You have to get those things just right, and have every piece in place to achieve high search engine ranking for competitive search terms. That is to say, the things people actually search for when they need you. Then, there are the things that exist in the world outside of your website. These are things that a lot of website owners often feel are a bit out of their control, or really hard to improve. It is not so hard, but it does take some work. When there is work to be done, there are tools for that work. My father was a craftsman, and he always expressed the importance of using the right tool for the job. If you use the right tools, the job will always go much smoother. My father was really on to something.

Understanding SEO is Not Like Understanding “Rocket Surgery”

SEO does not require a degree in “rocket surgery” (rocket science and brain surgery). A lot of people will try to do some, if not all, of their SEO on their own, and it really can help. I respect anybody who wants to try to build their search engine optimization. Having people understand that SEO is important and that it actually works when done properly is one of the biggest hurdles in my job. In fact, I do everything in my power to be sure my clients and prospective clients understand SEO enough to help themselves. I tell them to read the “Google SEO Starter Guide“. I teach them the good reasons to blog, and I want them to have a better understanding of SEO. Most good SEO will generally try their best to be helpful, because they equate their success with the client’s success. They realize that it is a joint effort. Good SEO know that when they make clients massively successful, they have a lot easier career path. It is why people who Google the term SEO lessons find me at or very near the top. I want people to understand how and why it works. That makes my job much easier.

One of the biggest factors of SEO is backlinks, or links that point to your site from other websites. As you surely understand by now, this is not a silver bullet, but it is a huge factor. So let’s look at link building for a moment, and how to see if you or your SEO are doing a good job.

How to Check for Backlinks (incoming links)

Since a primary factor of good SEO is backlinks, we need to know how to check for them and monitor them. When I say backlinks, I mean links coming to your website from other websites. This is the biggest factor of Google’s PageRank algorithm, and it is what will make the difference between two otherwise equal websites. One with a lot of high-quality incoming links will be ranked, while the other may be totally invisible to search engines, or somewhere between. This is so important that if you could just see me right now, I am jumping up and down and screaming.

Most SEO fail at link building. They get it totally wrong, and their link strategy fails miserably. If you want to know why, I strongly suggest reading this article: “SEO Backlinks: Why Most SEO Fail at Link Building“.

I will give you some tools to check for backlinks. Each of these are useful, but for the most comprehensive look at incoming links, any SEO knows to use Yahoo Site Explorer. By default, it will show you the links for the particular page, so if you enter your website, be sure that you click the “inlinks” button and then select links to the entire site rather than just looking at the home page. After all, people link to the pages they like, and not just link to the homepage and tell people to look for it. Only television stations do that, and perhaps you have heard what kind of trouble they are in these days.

Your search for backlinks should look something like this search that shows tens of thousands of “inlinks” to my blog or like this search excluding internal links.

Another useful tool for determining incoming links and whether they are doing any good is to look at SEOmoz Linkscape. Linkscape will also show your mozRank, which is similar to Google’s PageRank but, in many people’s opinion, more useful.

It seems that most people are confused about backlinks. High-quality backlinks do not just mean any link from any website, and they do not mean just any type of link. The quality of the linking website makes a big difference in the quality of the link. Also, a link coming from a picture is not all that great, but a link from text is fantastic. Wait, but not just any text. A link that points to you with the words “pink ponies for sale” is not so great if you do not have any pink ponies to sell. You want links that are relevant to what you offer, and links that benefit your site. This is where Open Site Explorer can be handy. Open Site Explorer (another SEOmoz tool) will show you which links are valuable to you. It will tell you the actual text within the links pointing to your site (e.g. pink ponies for sale), whether they are “nofollow” links or “dofollow” links (which is another blog post), it will tell you the domains that link to you (e.g. facebook.com), and even how many domains link to them (which is also important). There is a lot more functionality to Open Site Explorer than I will go into here, so be sure to check it out. If it starts to feel like you are just tinkering with useless information, then you are getting the picture about why there are people who actually do this for a living.

Now that you know a little about checking for links, you may also like to know how to discover new ones as they arrive. For this, you can keep checking back, which I suggest anyway, but you can also set up a Google Alert to email you or monitor the RSS feed for new links coming in. That is another blog post, but what we want here are ways to decipher good SEO from bad SEO. So, let’s look at some tools that examine good or bad on-site SEO. This is to say, the things about the website itself that are working correctly, or need some tuning.

SEO Website Readiness Tools

Is the website ready for the incoming links? Let’s find out. I know that I probably spent too much of your time with that drawn out portion about incoming links. Backlinks really are very important … extremely important … but there is more. If you are still with me, I want to share some good SEO tools that will help you to uncover on-site issues that may be stumping your search engine optimization efforts. Running your website through these free SEO tools will help you find things that you can often fix quickly and relatively easily. If you test your website with these tools, and fix it as directed, your SEO will get better. If you are trying to determine a good SEO from a bad SEO, their website should be standing tall in these tests.

Note, that a good SEO also knows which “rules” to break. Nobody will have this all just perfect, because sometimes you just have to break the rules to get the results you want. For example, my site will not validate as XHTML Strict, because I use Disqus commenting system, TweetMeme for people to easily share my articles on Twitter, Apture for cool content display, and I use an anchor target in some of my links so that pages open in a new window. This is OK, because I know which trade-offs are worthwhile. However, the SEO’s own website should provide a good indication of their SEO knowledge. I understand the whole excuse of “the plumber with leaky pipes” (I have been guilty, too), but this is not a good excuse! Any good SEO should be able to show some pretty impressive results with their own website. I find a lot of people trying to sell SEO services who have very few incoming links, and really rotten rankings for their targeted keywords. Try these tests to compare SEO:

HubSpot Website Grader
SEOmoz Toolbox (an assortment of good SEO tools)
W3C Markup Validation Service

Website Traffic Estimates and SEO Website Age

If you are comparing SEO, you should know a couple of key things about them. Does anybody know they exist? You can find a really quick answer to this question by checking their Alexa.com rankings and see their estimated website traffic. This only gives a reasonable estimate based on sample data, but it can definitely tell you a lot about the SEO. If they are unknown there is a reason, and there are no good excuses for it. There is also the often more definitive Quantcast, but a lot of SEO do not wish to share that much data.

I see a lot of SEO with new domain names. This is not always a red flag, but it can be a sign that they are either new, or their previous domain was banned by search engines for abuse. It happens more than you may imagine. This is not the kind of SEO you want to do business with. If they have been banned, you can bet some of their clients have been penalized as well. I said that a new domain is not always a red flag, because there are a few newer SEO who have talent, or may just be beginning their freelance career. However, if their company website is new or unranked, they better have a really good sales pitch. You can look up domain ownership with a WHOIS tool such as YourNew.com WHOIS Lookup or DomainTools.com

Content Creation is Important to Good SEO

Content creation is where many of these SEO factors come into play. A great looking website that is easily indexed by search engines is a good start. Now let us consider content production. If the website does not have good content that includes topics and keywords people search for, it will not matter. You must have something fantastic to offer once the website visitors get there. This is where a lot of the art of SEO comes into play. This is where marketing talent and creative content really make a huge difference between success or failure. How important is creativity in marketing? The easy answer is that it is absolutely critical. Great website content is what creates a desire to buy what you sell, and is also the biggest factor in that important SEO goal I wrote about above. It builds links! If people like what you have to share, and if they find your website content to be useful to them or somebody they know, they will share it. They may tweet it, digg it, stumble it, facebook it, or blog about it, and that creates links.

I explained that incoming links are the most important off-site factor in good SEO. This is an undisputed fact in my industry. Now I want to explain that you do not get those backlinks by taking a pink pony ride with one of the SEO offering to add your website to a squillion search engines and directories. No, that is not how this works. That is how the bad SEO will often try to get your money. You will get the best links with great content, and being useful to others. Even then, good SEO results only happen if you make all the other pieces fit just right.

By the way, good SEO also means they read it all the way to the bottom of the page.

SEO Directory Submissions and Pink Ponies For Sale

Sometimes I wonder how pink ponies became so popular in today’s Internet marketing world. Then again, I guess I should stop wondering. People just love buying pink ponies and fairy dust. It is a shame, but when I look around the Internet and talk to people, I have to believe it is true. They think there is a magical fix for their dwindling or less-than-stratospheric profit levels.

Pink Pony Rental: $180 Per Month

I do not like to call people stupid. I try to inform them, instead. It usually doesn’t work, because the majority of people really love pink ponies, fairy dust, and all the other Internet marketing magic that gets sprinkled into their eyes every day. I can only try my best to save one or two of you.

I see a lot of “SEO companies” (that’s search engine optimization for the record) offering packages for placing companies at the top of search engines for search terms. The packages often consist of submission to a squillion search engines and directories, building incoming links to the client’s website, and a bunch of other magical fairy dust. Some of them will say their magic potion includes creating h1 tags (Google h1 tags and see where my article about h1 tags is), meta tags (serious, this is a joke) and HTML title tags (sure, that is all it takes).

What bothers me is how hard some people’s heads are when you try to explain that pink ponies and fairy dust are just ways that pretend SEO companies take people’s money and then leave them thinking that this whole Internet thing is a big unicorn chase. I hope this is not the case with you, but based on the numbers … the real hard facts … you probably have a lot of room for pink pony rentals deep in your heart. If you keep reading, I am going to smash some pink ponies into tiny little bits and eat them. This is not for the faint of heart.

Maybe you believe in magic, and you aren’t ready to put down your “My Little Pony” doll. Fine, but maybe you should mark your calendar for a good time to have somebody pop that bubble for you and help you to do things that actually work. You know, things that actually increase your profit and create more sales. If you are in business, profit is what you need, right? Not precious little pink ponies and fairy dust. Just in case you are not ready or you are in SEO relapse, I will give you a fun little pony video to look at while your competition continues reading and takes away some more of your profit.

SEO Magic Takes Research, Targeting, and Talent

Call it “SEO magic” if you like, but real Internet marketing and SEO takes research. Real research … the kind that compiles real data and has a focus on real results. You do not get that with an out of the box SEO service offering … for any price.

Once the research is done, online marketing success requires a targeted approach to reaching the right audience. The research tells who the audience is, but knowing where to find them and targeting their attention is another task. This is often skipped and companies end up with the equivalent of trying to sell knitting needles to race car drivers. Is that the right audience to spend your money marketing toward?

When you understand who and where the audience is, it takes marketing talent (yes, you should click on the link about marketing talent) to convert those lookers into buyers. This is the artistic part of SEO and Internet marketing, and an important piece. If you get this part wrong, you can just drop a signed blank check in Times Square right now. Your money is wasted … gone … poof … it disappeared!

After these things are handled, it takes more research and understanding the marketing data to know where to focus the next efforts. When you discover what works, it is time to keep doing it, only better than before. That is what takes profit into orbit.

Oh, and I probably should not leave out the huge fact that it takes a website that does not suck. Here, read a story about a $150,000 website that sucks.

When you think about these things, maybe you can drop me a comment to tell me how stupid I am for never submitting this blog to any directory other than DMOZ. Maybe you don’t know what DMOZ is. Well, the pink pony salesman probably doesn’t either. He probably does not have thousands of incoming links pointing at his site, either. That is because most SEO fail at link building.

Real SEO Providers Eat Pink Ponies

I was talking to one of my SEO buddies yesterday as we dined on some pink pony burgers. He was telling me of a prospective client who came to him for search engine optimization. The man had a great product and wanted my pony munching friend to perform some search engine marketing for him. My friend, who had no reason to lie to me about this, told me he could make this guy’s product a smash hit. I mean, the way he described it, he could have sent this guys profits into orbit. A serious SEO guy knows when they can totally smash a market, by the way. We have research on our side.

My friend went on to tell me that after talking to this guy a bit, the potential client said he could spend $180 per month to sell his machines. Where in the heck did this guy get the figure of $180 and what kind of pink pony did this guy smoke? Seriously, a $180 per month budget to make a serious impact in his company’s profits? Is this really what people think we SEO people do? Do people really think that a person who can send their profit into orbit is going to live on minimum wage? Wow, so the one person who can truly make the biggest impact on company sales volume is worth all of $180 to the company?!

What really made us taste our partially digested pony burgers was that a lot of people think the same way. They have it in their head that there is some automated magical fix for marketing success. They think that the same thing that will work for a car dealer should work for an accident attorney, a construction company, and a real estate developer. The industry of Internet marketing has deteriorated into a pack of thieves who pick the bones of desperate companies who really so badly want to believe that there is one single magic pill they can buy over the counter and fix everything that ails them.

Those machines my buddy spoke about sell for a minimum of $14,000 and included a good profit margin, by the way. So, anyway, it kind of made us both gag on our pink pony burgers and face the fact that most people are really not ready to take their market seriously. They are not ready to push their marketing go button.

People Don’t Want the Truth: They Want Pink Ponies!

This all got me to realizing that people don’t really want to hear the truth. I have become pretty popular for telling people what they need to hear instead of what they want to hear. The crazy thing is that they may like to hear the real truth once in a while, but it is like watching a horror movie. It is like entertainment, but it could never happen in real life. Like Hollywood. They like hearing how their Internet marketing guy made millions of dollars conquering a market. What is sad about this is that the Internet marketers who actually have earned millions upon millions of dollars for themselves and their clients (yes, like me) are the guys you really don’t want to hear from, because we will pop the bubble you ride upon and give you the truth. We make fun of those guys. See … here I am in a video making fun of them, while subtly showing you that I am not full of pink pony poo and actually have been doing this successfully enough and long enough to buy a few toys of my own. Yeah, I didn’t do that selling pony poo … I did it making my clients a whole lot of profit!

Anybody who is tired of renting pink ponies and watching money slip away, what you really need is a pony slaying marketer. The presentation may be a bit crusty and abrasive for some people’s taste, but there is a reason serious pony killing search engine optimizers hang up the phone when people ask for a price before they even consider the real reason they called … the profit!

NOTE: If you like buying pink ponies, save us both the trouble and just drop me $180 per month in the mail. It will help me to cover my $1000 coffee expense while I work 25 hours per day to crush companies who try to compete with my clients.

11 Common SEO Questions Answered by SEO

Here are answers to some of the most pressing questions about SEO that are asked of SEO professionals. I am not ranking these questions in the order of urgency or frequency, but these are some of the most common things I hear when people call me, search the Internet and find me, or meet me and ask what I do.

SEO Question One: What is SEO?

Answer: I suppose I should start with answering the big question of “What is SEO?”

SEO is both a noun and a verb, kind of like Google. It can mean search engine optimization or search engine optimizer. You can usually tell the difference based on the usage.

It involves many aspects of improving a website’s ranking in search engines, and thus increasing website exposure. However, it goes a lot deeper than that. Being listed at the top of search results does not always mean a visitor to your website, especially if you are not listed for the right search terms. Finding the right search terms (keyword phrases) is very important, and often involves many lateral keywords.

SEO has a lot to do with converting more searches into clicks, but clicks alone do not always mean profit. So it also has a whole lot to do with converting those clicks into an action, such as a purchase or a new business lead.

SEO Question Two: How Much Does SEO Cost, and Why?

Answer: I get this question more than perhaps any other, and it comes in many variations. I get it in person, on the phone, and I get it in searches for “SEO hourly rates“. If you Google that term or a number of others like it, you will understand why I know this is a common question. You will find an article I wrote a while back titled “SEO and Web Development Hourly Rates” The funny part is that really great SEO is not done based on an hourly rate, and simply asking “how much does SEO cost“ is not a well-qualified question.

I know it is a scary thing to imagine waving goodbye to money. If a person can look at this without the hair on the back of their neck standing up and consider it for a moment, the better question is actually “how much will a lack of SEO cost?“ Sure, that just sounds like a guy trying to sell you stuff, but I am serious. What happens when you do it wrong? Doing SEO wrong or not doing it at all is what becomes really costly.

I realize that the real question people want to know about SEO is how much they will have to invest in order to get the results they want. The problem is that at the same time, they often do not really have a finger on what results they are after. “More business” is not a good enough answer to the question. The best answer for your individual case requires planning, and planning means developing better questions with better answers.

If you just want three more sales, it will probably not require a large upfront investment. On the other hand, if you are selling custom purple pajamas for botfly larvae, all the SEO in the world may not help you much. Neither of these represent a good plan, and if you start without a plan, you will end without a plan. Here is an article to help you consider your planning, and why you don’t just want to be along for the ride: “Business Evolution and Crash Test Dummies“.

What is needed and how much you should spend will be different for each individual business case. The answer that will provide the best results will usually be uncomfortable. My short answer is usually “bring your lunch money” because if the SEO is done well, every additional dollar you invest will produce a greater return.

Does it cost, really? I thought it was supposed to pay money, not cost money. I wonder what the cost is if you don’t do it? My really super smart-ass answer to the number one most important factor in your business success (your marketing) would be “how well do you want the job done?”

In answer to the last part of the cost question (why), I would like to refer you to an article I wrote only yesterday titled “Where Does Marketing Talent Come From?”

SEO Question Three: Can You Reduce the Upfront Cost?

Answer: Yes, there are ways to minimize the upfront cost of SEO, and the best one is with a contingency SEOcontract which allows the provider to earn money based on performance. Be mindful that there is generally still an upfront cost involved. After all, there is often a lot of risk mitigation for the SEO in making sure your company and your products are market-ready and something they want to partner with.

When you contact a good SEO, you should be ready to afford the cost. Again, this is an investment in your business and you are seeking a professional service to build your business. If you ever wonder why a good SEO’s phone keeps breaking up and the call drops, consider this: If you are asking them to deliver you the moon but to do it “cheap”, this could very well be the reason.

SEO Question Four: Can SEO Help a Small Local Company?

Answer: Yes, it can also help a small local company stop being small and local if they choose. Can it help a small and broke company? Well, I like to remember a term I learned in grammar school: survival of the fittest. If your company is already too broke to sustain the basic essentials of marketing, it may be too late. I said it may be too late. I think it is still better to go down fighting than to just roll over. SEO is likely the best chance you have.

SEO Question Five: How Long Does SEO Take?

Answer: This is another one of those sticky questions with a whole lot of answers. I generally expect to see results the moment I click “publish”. Once you have a site that is worthwhile to users, a squillion good incoming links, and a good reputation with Google, things can happen very quickly. A better answer may be how long it will take you to make the decision to take action. It is like planting a tree. If you want shade, it is best that you did it a long time ago. In lieu of that, I will let you answer the best time to plant it.

SEO Question Six: How Long Does SEO Last?

Answer: I have written articles for competitive keyword phrases that are still at the top of searches since nearly a decade ago. Things change, but the search listing aspects of SEO are generally designed to last. Other areas of SEO work are also designed with longevity, such as an emphasized call to action and other matters of Website usability. If you really want an understanding of how long SEO can last, I invite you to read “Can You Value Each Blog Post at $10,000?” where I explain it more clearly.

A pay-per-click campaign will last until you stop paying for it.

SEO Question Seven: How Can I Measure SEO Success?

Answer: The short and sweet answer should be “in your wallet” but it is a bit more than that. You can measure success of specific traffic results and user actions very easily with statistics from tools like Google Analyticss and Clicky Web Analytics. If you can get beyond the big task of planting the seedling of good SEO, the results can mean a whole lot more than just how much more money you have. It can mean that your business is on a path to a sustainable marketing platform where every time you have something to say, your content will rank much more easily in search engines. So your measurement should extend beyond today alone, but also include a longer term look at where your business will be down the road.

SEO Question Eight: Isn’t SEO Mostly Just Title Tags, H1 Tags, and Meta Tags?

Answer: I want to be nice about this one, because I know that the SEO industry has talked a lot about these things and it may seem there is a lot of emphasis on these items. I will touch on each item individually, but just for a moment. Then I will explain how little they do in the big picture.

Title tags are important to SEO, because they are the top-level on-page item to tell a search engine what the page is about. If the content matches the title, and all other things are perfect, you may have a win. There are clearly a lot of other factors. Otherwise, some of those pages titled “Home” (and sadly there are millions titled just “Home”, because somebody got lazy) would show up somewhere. Instead, when you search for “Home”, you find “The Home Depot”, and “Lowe’s Home Improvement”.

H1 tags hold importance due to the proper structure of a page. They are like a headline on a newspaper and they are the starting point of an article. The H1 tag tells the overall subject of the page, and ideally the rest of the page matches the subject. There are a lot of SEO who will argue until they are blue in the face about the subject of H1, and sometimes rightfully so, but if you want to know more just Google it. You will find an article I wrote years ago right on top. Here is my article titled “H1 Tags Improve Search Engine Placement” and here is the Google Search for H1 tags. You be the judge, but please do not assume it is there just because I used the H1 tag.

Meta tags? Don’t even get me started about meta tags. This is like a joke that spread widely back in the 1990’s to make SEO sound smart. Kidding! Actually, they once had some bearing on SEO, but many search engines do not look at meta tags as a factor any more than the haircut of your pet chihuahua.

The Big Picture: If these simple items of title tags, H1 tags and meta tags did the trick, don’t you think the Internet would get pretty messed up with totally irrelevant things in the way every time you search for something? It takes a whole lot more. I mean, wouldn’t you rank yourself a lot higher for “2010 Olympics” or “Brittany Spears” if that was the case?

SEO Question Nine: Are There Any Guarantees to SEO?

Answer: Yes, there are a few guarantees with SEO, and they are not all lies, either. First, I can guarantee you that if you do nothing, you will get nothing. Some SEO will provide outrageous guarantees, and I hope you do not fall for it. One type of reasonable guarantee is based on additional work until a set objective is met. The most reasonable SEO guarantee is one that the professional you hired will work hard and work smart to meet your objectives. If you ask for guarantees, you will usually pay for guarantees. In many cases the customers pay for them the hard way … by believing something that is not true.

SEO Question Ten: Can’t I Just Do My Own Google Adwords?

Answer: Yes, absolutely! You can do it all yourself. Just be aware that you have another job to do … running your business. If you think you can do the job as well as the professional who makes it their career, I just hope you don’t make the same kind of decision about professional football or dentistry. You are likely to get hurt.

SEO Question Eleven: Can’t I Just Read Your Blog and Do It Myself?

Answer: Sure. Subscribe here. If you need more help, don’t be too proud to ask.