When I think about the worst things in the whole world, I have this mental list of things like cruel people, wars, child abuse, murder, and all of that awful stuff. Ranking right up there is selling SEO and Internet marketing services. That is why I say that when I go to hell, they will probably strap me down to a flaming chair in front of a smoldering desk to answer a fire telephone and respond to burning questions about SEO services. Really, I have nightmares about this!
How Selling SEO is Like Hell on Earth
I said that Hell would have me selling SEO, but probably because it is the one thing I despise more than almost any other thing on Earth. I will explain this to you, but first, you must wonder how I can possibly love my job? I love my work as a search engine optimizer, probably more than what you would consider “natural”. If all jobs paid the same, I would have two jobs … SEO and racing cars. There are only a few things I love more than my work as SEO, and those are my family, racing cars, and riding motorcycles. So, it may seem strange that I hate to sell SEO, but I will tell you why.
Most People Only Know Enough About SEO to Be Annoying
It seems common that when people will set out to find good SEO, they have no concept that the best SEO have something more than basic geeky programming skills. I hear things all the time which make me believe that people view SEO and Internet marketing services as commodities. People often think what the SEO does is all about things like properly SEO’d meta tags, page titles, h1 tags and other things that really are a miniscule piece of the overall objective.
The objective is to earn the highest return on investment for the client. Technical issues, high search engine rankings, and even more website traffic will not achieve the objective without the rest of the assets a good SEO brings. These are the things the client often does not care to hear nor understand.
Good SEO (search engine optimizers) also have marketing talent that goes far beyond what the client is prepared to recognize (or pay for). They mostly just have a handful of common SEO questions that somebody who knew nothing of SEO suggested that they ask. Then they are shocked when the search engine optimizer will give an honest answer instead of just what they wanted to hear. It is almost as if the truth offends them, and they will keep shopping until they find somebody willing to tell them the right lie. Good for them. The one who will lie to them will also show them the lowest upfront price. So as long as they just want to live for today and not consider lost profit tomorrow, that will work great for them.
A lot of people come to me each day hoping to optimize their websites for particular search keywords. They usually don’t have a clue which search words will actually bring them results, and they think it is just some basic tasks that an SEO can do to optimize the existing terrible website content they already have that is already not working.
This kind of shopper does not want to hear that their brand image sucks, or that their website marketing reflects a company that cares more about shortcuts than doing something well. They think of only their landing pages, instead of factors like whether those people actually care what they have to say. They don’t look at whether people spend a lot of time on their site, click on the links in their text, and follow their call to action. They think of more in terms of more clicks equating to more money, but remain clueless how the two things actually relate. To tell you the truth about why I consider selling SEO to be hell, it is because this is the norm, and not the exception. This is the way the majority of SEO shoppers see the SEO industry, and it is why most companies fail to reach their online marketing objectives. I have plenty of numbers to back up this statement, and I live in it every day.
Just yesterday, a man asked me for any keywords that I am particularly proud of for ranking well. I guess that should not shock me too much, because a few prized words ranking well on search engines is what a lot of people think will bring success. I told him that I was proud to have each of the hundreds of thousands of search terms people use to find my work, and to narrow it down meant to narrow down my success in this industry. I gave him a few words, but there is not a small list of prized keywords that make up my big nest egg.
Drag Me to SEO Hell
I guess perhaps it is my attitude alone that makes it feel like Hell to explain things that people do not care to really understand. They set out to compare SEO without realizing that there is no apples-to-apples comparison. SEO is an art and a science, and no two minds will produce identical results.
Too many people come to me with a set of questions, but they already have the wrong answers strongly embedded in their head. If you want to ask me questions about how and why SEO and better Internet marketing works, you must first dismiss all of your previous false conceptions.
The fact is that I am probably the worst guy in the world to sell SEO, but I sure as hell can rank for the term.
I just got off the phone with a guy who purportedly spent over a million dollars developing his quasi-e*trade competitor service that will supposedly bring the whole world of finance back into check and fix the struggles of anybody afraid to lose their money in a mutual fund or other stock market failure. Before I get too far, I want to make it very clear that I do not earn my living writing this blog. People find me here, but it is absolutely not how I earn money. I earn money when somebody comes to me to make their business successful and can push their marketing go button. When they come to me to feed me more crap, I feed it right back to them. Sometimes I feel compelled to tell my readers about it. I often do that with a scorching opinion of mediocrity.
The Wizard guy called me a couple days ago after finding me online. Yes, he found me in a search and I was not seeking him. I don’t seek people, and I don’t do fluffy sales pitches and free market research. I am the SEO (search engine optimizer) after all, and my job is for people to find me, but mostly to help people find my clients. I answer questions and I help people to understand what I do, but I would rather choke them than explain the importance of being visible in search engines with a magnificent marketing message … or that I know how to do it. Seriously, if you find me, don’t ask me if I can help people find you. That is clearly grounds for choking. People discover me many times per hour, and some of them think they understand the whole idea of what I provide, but most of them have it all wrong. I mean, sometimes they get it extremely wrong!
I am not here to sell you stuff or to take your money. Do not ask me for a price tag for a subjective interpretation of success, because I will only tell you that if you want “success”, you better bring your lunch money and expect me to hang you up by your ankles to shake the coins from your pockets. You are not going to get success for free. I already have a wife, and she is the only person who can rip my shirt off and get my talent for free. Success does not come with a set price, and it is not defined the same for you as it is for that other person over there. That is why, if you want success, my standard price begins at 438 squillion dollars. Now just how much success do you want to buy?
I am here to improve my clients’ profits by improving their marketing message and its reach. That is what I am paid to do. I do not care who you are or how much you can pay me … or try to impress me with, because you cannot buy my reputation or integrity. Not at all, and I have foregone millions of dollars in the past to prove that money cannot buy my integrity. Don’t even make a bid, because it is not going to happen.
The Wizard Impressed Me … At First
The Wizard guy gave me a great demonstration of his service and I was impressed. In fact, I was impressed enough to ring “The Wizard” on the phone tonight as a follow-up call to our previous conversation. He was beaming with delight at the prospect of my interest in marketing his service, and we shared some great ideas about what his marketing plan should entail.
The Wizard guy has the brilliance to suggest that his service may be best served as a pyramid scheme. Sure, it could go that way (in a bad movie), but I told him that if he made that decision without the foresight of market research that it could kill a lot of other possibilities he had also hoped for, including potential for selling the company. He had mixed ideas on how to market his service, and I told him that what would benefit him the most before his product launch is some solid market research. He liked that, but thought that should be free. He had the impression that properly extensive market research was something we would just provide free of charge and then send him a proposal for the implementation. It is too common for people to think that marketing is just about the implementation and that the research is just pulled out of our undershorts. It is not that way, and good research with solid projections does not come free … for me, you, The Wizard, or anybody else.
In my opinion, this guy expressed no better clue about marketing the product than an arrogant idea of who should buy “The Wizard” and why the whole stock market and mutual fund industry should believe in him and his flashy but convincing Wizard service. He only explained who he was and who he thought he should sell it to. He seemed to know or care little about who it would actually benefit the most, how to reach them, or the proper message they would respond to. Market research to him seemed to mean I would go and gather all of the magic bullets and put them into a canned proposal, and that to pay me meant I would send him a loaded gun to shoot at his target.
There is a whole lot more potential for The Wizard than he seemed to grasp, but it was only after I gave him a big enough dose of my marketing experience in a “reality pill” that he finally said “this is sounding kind of expensive.” What completely failed to sink in was that in order to bring a product to a position of massive market success in an industry already clouded with distrust and crooks is that you cannot do it with a tin cup full of pencils and a pair of dark glasses begging for nickels on a street corner. When you create a self-proclaimed brilliant product and have the audacity to call it “The Wizard” and brand it as some sort of financial savior, you better be ready to market it and prove that you have more than a mythical profit-solving stock market idea. Marketing takes research, and that means more than a kid next door saying “we can put it on Craig’s List.”
The Wizard Mutual Fund Management Tool Wants Contingency SEO
If you ever happen to Google the term “contingency SEO” I am what you get. Yes, numero uno … I am the guy. I love working for pay based on my performance. That is where I make money, and that is all great. I just hate it when people think that it means they have no cost involved and that I trust them just because … well, just because they called me on the telephone to pitch me their line like a squillion other cheapskates. For my candid take on this, take some time and see the video of Wimpy from Popeye here (if you are reading by RSS, see video on the original blog post).
If you want to know how contingency SEO works, read about it. It does not mean free marketing. It means partnering up with your marketing people and working together for more profit. I know that may get confusing for some people, but the reality is that you cannot shit on your best asset and expect the best results. No … that is not how this works. That kind of illusion only happens in fairy tales and movies … like The Wizard of OZ.
Peeking Inside The Wizard’s Mind (My Speculation)
OK, I get it … if I create a market for this unknown service called “The Wizard” and give my gracious SEO talent and market research on contingency, the wizard will gladly pay me on Tuesday, like that jackass Wimpy from the Popeye cartoons who always owed people for last Tuesday’s burger. Sorry, but no dice. When I market something, I bring more than my good looks and a pocket of arcade tokens. I use my industry reputation, and I use a long list of marketing resources and talents which are not free. I put a lot of money and work into the launch of a product which can cost dearly if I start launching marketing plans like “The Wizard” only to piss off all of my business relations when some Wizard guy does not pay the bill and I am on the hook to pay the people I brought in to help market it with me.
The Wizard Stock Market Service Has No Stock
Before I jump into bed with a client for a contingency SEO contract, they had better be ready to put some skin in the game. I mean, if this guy has a million dollars wrapped up in development of a service, how can he seemingly care so little to recoup the cost and bring it to market the right way. How much can you trust the wizard who did not seem to understand that creating a solution is only a tiny part of a business? What kind of financial wizard is that?
Do you want to do business, or do you want to feed bullshit to somebody choking on a mouth full of bullshit?
Success and earning trust from consumers should require that you can do what you say you can do. You have to be a business person and that means more than having a great idea. You must have money … yes … m-o-n-e-y, because although it may look easy, what I do requires people … full-time people with kids to feed and bills to pay. Without money, it is hard to promote some scheme that deals with people’s finances and retirement futures. I am not about to become another Bernie Madoff jerk by promoting some plan to solve the world’s mutual fund and stock market troubles. No … not for free, and not if I view you as a bad businessman or somebody summing me up as a sucker.
I may be an asshole, but I am not an asshole that you can scam, or pay enough to scam others.
Do Not Act Like The Wizard
If you have a product to bring to market, do not act like The Wizard. Are you seriously so delusional that you think product development is where an idea will make money? No … the money comes after you bring it to market, and sometimes not even then.
If you come to find a need for serious marketing and you reach out to a serious marketing person … I mean one with some marketing talent, don’t come to us with an attitude that we are here to sell you something. If the marketer is good, and if it is any search engine optimizer with a little experience, he or she hears from people like you all day, every day. We get sick of it, and it forces our gag reflex into overdrive. Then we end up waving a bullshit flag all over you and may turn you into the next Suture Express. Go Google to see what happens with companies like Suture Express when they irritate the SEO by not paying. Don’t take my word for it … go and ask Google!
If you want the best marketing, it is better to treat it as if you are going to the bank seeking a loan. You want what we have to offer (money), that means you need to give us a reason to approve you. This is especially true if you are seeking contingency / performance-based SEO. I am not your momma, and I have no obligation to feed you. Let’s get that straight right now. I have three words for cheapskates wanting a free lunch and those are “rub a lamp”.
If you think I make my money here … writing this blog, you really got it all wrong. I make money when non-bullshitters reach up under their sack and bring something to the table that I can market for them. Hitting me up for a bunch of free ideas and then insulting me is a good way to get said sack on an Internet chopping block.
So there is my rant. Do you want to do business, or do you want to feed bullshit to somebody choking on a mouth full of bullshit?
That is my opinion. Take it or leave it, but don’t act like you didn’t see it.
I recently returned home after an all-day meeting with a company in need of my SEO and social media marketing services. I wrote about them in my recent article titled “99 Percent of Marketing Fails, But Eleanor Can Fly!“. The company asked me to come to Chicago and meet with them at length about their needs, and get to know them. They don’t just want a consultant, they want me to share in their vision and help them to achieve some really big goals. They want my commitment to their long-term success.
We had a great time, and I learned a lot about things which make the company really great. The culture of the company is to do things with purpose. They do meaningful things and they do them for the right reasons. Their purpose is not all about the money, but the money is all because of the purpose. I suppose it is easier for them to come by their purpose, because they are a family-owned company in their fourth generation. The culture was passed down, and there is a strong sense of responsibility that comes along with that. I am still optimistic that a greater purpose can be developed in newer companies, too. They must first understand that greater rewards come from a bigger vision than themselves, and not just a clever business plan.
Tangent Thinking Creates Great SEO and Social Media
While I was meeting with these fine folks, we often spoke in tangents. We let our minds wander with our ideas. Thinking and sharing your tangent is often the best way to discover your greatest creativity. I told the guys that if I was there in the office each day, much of my best work would not be sitting at a desk and doing geeky stuff like reprogramming their websites, but rather pacing the sidewalk smoking cigarettes, and chugging coffee. I forgot to add the telephone. I need cigarettes, coffee, and a telephone so I can call for more inspiration and ideas from that perfect person in my giant network of creative and resourceful friends who can help me think through my latest flash of genius.
I explained that good SEO takes a lot of hard work, data analysis, and understanding of technologies, but that great SEO requires something a whole lot different. It requires creativity, passion, and doing something truly exceptional and showing people what makes your company amazing. Yes, SEO is a whole lot more than just picking some keywords and putting them on a perfectly crafted website. Really great SEO (search engine optimizers) know that asking for a link from other webmasters is a huge waste of time. They know that if you do something really out of the box that people love, more people will link to you because they are compelled to share the value you provided them. Yes, there I said it. I just gave you the single best tip in my SEO bag of goodies.
When the SEO Light Bulb Comes On
While I was on a tour of the company’s facility with the VP of Marketing, his right-hand man, a brilliant note-taking scribe who goes by the title of “Director of Innovation” came to re-join us on the tour. The three of us stood in the “bird cage” high atop a huge facility where employees were working hard to do their jobs. As we talked about them, it really began to feel like they were not just there to get the job done, but that the culture of this company allowed them to all be a part of a bigger picture. They worked side-by-side with family members, and I don’t just mean the strong family which is the company. They worked with people they had known since birth … you know, actual family members. Many of them had been there for a very long time. Sure, jobs are harder to find these days, but I don’t think these people came to work each day just because this was the only job out there for them. They understood the vision, and if any of them question their corporation’s intentions, they shouldn’t. I don’t. Hearing it from a guy with the founder’s same name, I can say that the higher-ups really have a whole lot of heart wrapped up in that staff. They really do care about the employees, and they feel a huge sense of responsibility to the thousands of people it can affect if they make bad decisions. It gave me goosebumps more than once.
While we stood there talking about these hard workers and sharing our visions for the company, the Director of Innovation had a moment which really came to seem like a light bulb turning on. He knew that what I do is more than just things he had read about SEO and Internet marketing, but had not put his finger on it just yet. In this light bulb moment, he really started seeing how the initial perceptions of SEO as a technical trade went a lot deeper. He noticed that it also has a lot greater than expected roots in people, talent, creativity, networking, and so many other branches of a marketing tree. It was in this conversation when he realized that there really is a lot more to the job description of search engine optimizer than he thought. It is not just about getting a bunch of website traffic. It also has a lot to do with being able to express the value of something, and doing it in a way that people can relate to. It has to do with building a brand and sharing that great culture of the company with other people who will appreciate it and benefit from it. It has to do with building consumer confidence, which often takes a lot more than just being the first search result when people search for what you offer.
Social Media Seeds SEO, But Here is How!
In our discussions, I mentioned that social media is like seeds of SEO. Actually, SEO is social media, and I will explain that briefly. If you consider that Google’s most important SEO ranking factor is quality links pointing to your website, you can see that it is all about the people’s opinion. People who have confidence in your brand, and see value in your message, will link to your work. Google is just a bigger tree in the social media forest. It reflects what the people like, and what the people want. It is largely based on the same principle of great things being popular.
Google is just a bigger tree in the social media forest. It reflects what the people like, and what the people want. It is largely based on the same principle of great things being popular.
There is a lot more to it, but it is the whole forest that I want you to see. Sure, you can swap a bunch of links and ask people to link to your website. If you think that works so great, consider how long it would take to get thousands of incoming links to your site by asking for them. Then consider how much more effective it would be for your business to do great things and provide great value, then present it in a way that people will love to share. Getting this wrong is why I say that most SEO fail at link building.
How Does a Good Business Become Great?
A wise man who knew about making a good business great described it as feeding the gorillas. You must give them what they want, and they want bananas. Give them bananas and they will be happy gorillas who will be loyal to you. I think there was a lot more wisdom in this than just the picture you have in your head right now of a silly man throwing bananas to a gorilla (you saw that guy in your mind, too … I know you did). It means giving people what they want in life and realizing that is the most effective path to getting what you want. This holds true, whether it is a link to your website, a purchase from a customer, love of another person, or becoming a massively successful brand. Feeding bananas to gorillas is what made the company I met with yesterday a great one. They have been giving people what they want for a long time, and the success is evident.
I really enjoyed my trip to Chicago and the day I spent getting to know these guys. I hope they see just how much similarity we share in our methods and motivations. I suspect as they read through the copies of my book, “Living in the Storm” that I left with them, they will see that I strongly believe in feeding the gorillas, too.
Mark’s Side-Note
This may seem a bit outside of the topic, but it does relate. I want to add that while I visited with my wife on my way back home, she sensed an emotional attraction that I have to this company. She said that from all I told her, I could not have dreamed up a more suitable and exciting opportunity to do the things I love than what this company has in mind for me. I was not looking for this, and I have been a CEO for two decades. The company found me, and has expressed an interest in making me an employee of their corporation. This is certainly not something I would normally even consider. At the same time, it really proves that if you do great things, with great purpose, and you present it in a way that people love, nearly any goal can become reality.
My SEO tip today is about paying attention and taking action. There are about a squillion things that influence good SEO, and even more things are required to achieve great SEO. Paying attention to details can sometimes make the difference between good SEO and great SEO. Do I have your attention yet?
You are not, I repeat NOT going to get the best results that you seek from this article if you do not pay attention to detail. Good SEO has a lot to do with very fine details, and it often means paying attention to the details that the rest of your industry neglects. Today I am going to give you some thought-candy about the links which point to your website, but first, I am going to be sure that I have your full attention and that you are ready for this brain-exploding tip.
I think a lot of people try to make SEO seem a lot harder than it actually is. Really good SEO is actually quite tricky and time consuming, but there are many things that are pretty simple and tedious, but just need to be implemented properly. Knowing all of those simple and tedious tasks, and how they fit into the big picture of your search engine optimization strategy, and using them properly to receive optimal benefit is why people hire a search engine optimizer.
Squillions of people write tens of thousands of tips each day about search engine optimization. The good search engine optimizers choose their topic carefully, title it just right, tag the information well, add it to their search optimized website, and are sure to address it to the proper audience using just the right keywords. Then they emphasize the call to action, and make it clear why you found the information.
Good SEO (search engine optimizers) write their tips similar to the way they will perform SEO for their clients. In fact, you can tell a lot about them by the tips they give you (it is one of my top reasons to blog). Further, they provide the tips in the same way they expect their readers to implement their suggestions for those who try to take the do-it-yourself (DIY) SEO method.
The Great SEO will take a little additional time to do all of the things the rest of the world can only call “magic”. I do not want to let you down today, but this SEO tip is not designed to make a do-it-yourselfer a great SEO. It is just another piece in the puzzle that will help you to understand good SEO. I will say, however, that it is a pretty damn good tip that can help you move just a little closer to great. I still have to keep you reading regularly, so I cannot just give you that “SEO magic” all at once. Your head would explode, and I cannot have that on my conscience. Yes, imagine that, a search engine optimizer with a conscience … I guess there is just magic in the air today! Besides, I still want to leave you some reason to call on me when you have pulled all your hair out and get sick of letting business pass you by.
Now, on with today’s SEO tip!
Who Links to Your Site and Why Should You Care?
Links are at the front line of search engine optimization. The more high-quality links that point to your website, the easier it will be to rank for the things your site is about. The text within those links makes a huge impact on your ranking for certain topics. This is why many links to my blog include the words SEO and social media marketing. Those things are a focus of my blog, so it only makes sense that the links reflect this.
When important websites with a lot of authority start linking to my blog, I want to know it. I also want to be sure that they continue to link to my blog. I can control this in a couple ways, and the best of which is to keep producing consistently useful content. You know, the stuff people want to link to. Thanking them is not such a bad idea, either.
Another way to be sure the link-love keeps coming is to watch what received good links and write more of that. For example, a useful tip about a given topic (in this case, SEO) will often find its way into a lot of good streams of content, including both automated and manual linking. The automatic ones are pretty easy to manage, but the links created by people are a bit more tricky. You have to really blow somebody’s hair back to make them take the action of creating a link to you in their blogroll, or to submit your content to Digg, StumbleUpon, Twitter, and etcetera. If you want them to write about it and link to you in a blog post, you practically have to reinvent electricity or come up with something so amazing that they want to print it out and rub it all over themselves. Short of that you must at least write about things that people want to read, and present it in a fashion they will keep reading.
Finding Your Best Backlinks
You should know who is linking to your website. I don’t mean just the links that are being clicked on. I mean the links that make your site more visible and valuable to search engines. Here comes a big fat juicy SEO tip for you. It is called Open Site Explorer and the information it can tell you is more than you may see on the surface. Yes, this is where you have to pay attention to the details. For example, I just looked at an Open Site Explorer report for this blog and found the interesting facts as follows:
The Technorati tag “guerrilla-marketing” has produced a link pointing to my blog article titled “Marketing Without a Budget: Guerrilla Marketing Tips“, but the new content under this tag has moved my link off the page as newer articles arrived. So it seems to me that since that link is from a valuable source page, I should probably write something about guerrilla marketing and be sure to tag it with “guerrilla-marketing”. Oh yes, this article is kind of Guerrilla Marketing related … gosh, I am glad I was paying close attention. I am going to add that tag in this blog post.
I also noticed that there was a pretty nice link from the tag “whiteboards” that pointed to my article titled “Smart Slate, Smart Airliner, and Other Interactive Slates“. Perhaps I should write a follow-up to that piece and tag it appropriately.
My point is that if you pay close attention to the things which make your website rank well, there is a lot clearer path to success. Knowing that I am in the blogroll of great blogs like the ones listed below can give me a lot of reason to want to throw back some link-love to them and also keep reading their work.
These matter to me, and certainly deserve my attention (Thanks Guys). After all, they show faith in my work by linking to me. To some people, this is just a small detail, but to me it is a really important factor.
Paying attention to the sites linking to you, both automated and manually, can make a huge difference in your success. Now the question that remains is this: What will you do with this information? Were you paying attention and will you use what I have suggested? I want to guess the answer is “yes”, but there are a lot of people who do not pay attention. I hope those are your competitors and not you!
