I decided to title this article “Reciprocal Link Exchanges Don’t Work”. Perhaps even more appropriately, what I really mean is that reciprocal link exchanges are fool’s work.
Of course, I also know what people are more likely to search for after some crooked or inexperienced SEO (search engine optimizer) runs off with their money and leaves them with worse results than they started. So that is what I am here to explain. Join in the discussion if you have the need to defend your reciprocal link exchange strategy after reading this.
I know this may put a huge bullseye on my forehead with the slimier side of the SEO industry, but I say “bring it on!” Show me your best reciprocal link exchange, and I will show you foolishly exhaustive efforts with lackluster results.
I am not saying that it is a bad thing to cross-link websites, because sometimes there can be a synergy created. It can be useful in a limited few cases, but reciprocal link exchange is a very weak link building strategy. In fact, it is far more common for reciprocal link exchanges to be counterproductive. I’ll bet the last SEO you talked to didn’t tell you that.
Why Reciprocal Link Exchanges Exist
Links are the single most important and effective means to help your website rank highly in search engines. The links pointing to a website are used by search engines to measure the authority of a website overall, and for a given topic.
There are a lot of important contributors to high search engine ranking, but incoming links are the biggest factor. The structure and content of a website is extremely important, but without links pointing to all of that greatness, it will never rank well for competitive search phrases.
Because of the importance of incoming links, link exchanges have become the focus for many novice search engine optimizers and website owners who just don’t know how much they don’t know. Link exchanges fuel enough failed SEO link building efforts that if we could turn that into electricity, we could light a small country.
There are at least a squillion people out there trying to sell you links and trade links with you. If they have not reached you yet, it is because you don’t have any links. Once you have links to your website, and especially if you have a high Google PageRank, they will come to you in droves! All I have to do is check my email spam folder to find at least a thousand requests to exchange links or to hire some self-proclaimed “expert” to handle all of those link exchanges for me.
Reciprocal Link Exchange Motivation
I told you a bit of the motivation behind people wanting to exchange links with you, but what motivated me to write this? Maybe you think I am just trying to stand my industry on it’s ear, or maybe you will just think I am trying to mislead you. Yes, perhaps I am just trying to fool you in order to keep the SEO mystique alive, and try to cover up the truth about SEO. Maybe this whole “reciprocal link exchange” thing really is the big secret to SEO.
Just in case you are truly skeptical about this, I offer you this quote directly from Google Webmaster Central.
Your site’s ranking in Google search results is partly based on analysis of those sites that link to you. The quantity, quality, and relevance of links count towards your rating. The sites that link to you can provide context about the subject matter of your site, and can indicate its quality and popularity. However, some webmasters engage in link exchange schemes and build partner pages exclusively for the sake of cross-linking, disregarding the quality of the links, the sources, and the long-term impact it will have on their sites. This is in violation of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines and can negatively impact your site’s ranking in search results. Examples of link schemes can include:
Links intended to manipulate PageRank
Links to web spammers or bad neighborhoods on the web
Excessive reciprocal links or excessive link exchanging (“Link to me and I’ll link to you.”)
Buying or selling links that pass PageRank
Of course, there are a lot of people who will say that Google is lying, too. The complete failure of that logic is that it is contrary to Google’s own interest to lie about how to rank well in their search engine. Google wants to include your website in their results, and they work hard to try and help website owners to do the right thing. If you still feel skeptical, please read this article titled “Brandon’s Baseball Cards and Google SEO Starter Guide” which explains Google’s motivation, and their efforts to help you.
If you really want more links, do something useful, creative, or otherwise more like sex and bacon. Take it from Google’s head of webspam, Matt Cutts. Here is a video of Matt talking about building links.
Matt Cutts (and common sense) said this: “the best links are earned and given by choice.“ Unless common sense is a totally worthless concept, what Matt said still holds true today, tomorrow, and always.
Reciprocal Link Exchange Foolishness
I will write more about link building soon, but I want to offer you some thoughts about links. If it was really as easy as just trading reciprocal links and submitting your website to search engines and directories, don’t you think the usefulness would wear off? If there was a way to cheat search engines, don’t you think they would fix the problem?
Maybe you heard that the magical fix is to use indirect, three way link exchanges. If you buy into that, you still have the wrong mindset of trying to shortcut the best practices. I mean the practices which work within the guidelines of a well organized system of both technology and people.
Consider that if you are seeking a link exchange with another website, who do you expect it to benefit the most … your website, or the other website? That’s right, you want it to benefit you more than the other guy. Now, when people come to you seeking a link exchange, don’t you think their answer is the same?
Links Are Not Equal in Value
According to Google Webmaster Tools, this blog you are reading has just a little over 50,000 links pointing to it. It is a small number compared to a lot of projects I work on, but large compared to a lot of one-person blogs. The number is not the part which matters the most, and not the point I want to make. They are not all “awesometacular” links from “amazinglicious” websites, but there is not a single one of them that comes by way of a reciprocal link exchange. These links exist because I concentrate on providing value to people first, and search engines second.
Not a Single Link Exchange!
Links are not created equally. I could demonstrate this in about as many ways as I can chug a beer, and I am Irish, so that is a lot. Only a limited percentage of the links to any website will provide significant value. As an example of this, just compare the more than 50,000 links referenced in Google Webmaster Tools to the 8,774 which are measured by the respected SEOmoz Open Site Explorer. A huge number of the 50K links are not even visible by most measures. That is the same kind of links that comprise the vast majority of reciprocal link exchanges!
aWebGuy.com Links Measured by Open Site Explorer
Consider the the ratio of quality links created “organically” because somebody saw value in your website, compared to “junk” links. If you can measure it, don’t you think a search engine such as Google can as well?
Have you ever been hit by a stroke of Genius, telling you that automated directory submissions will help your ranking in search engine results? Maybe you thought that some nicely crafted meta tags would help your search engine ranking. I may be a bit too hard on people at times, but common sense just completely eludes many people when it comes to SEO (search engine optimization). Many website owners want to rank in the top of search results so badly that they will try almost anything. Well, as long as it is cheap, easy, and sounds techie-fancy.
When I started to write this, I was going to rant about automated directory submissions. Then I realized that I have touched on the topic of directory submissions before. I still have something to get off my chest, and I still have something to say about the toxic lies and misinformation that have been created surrounding the SEO industry. It is often fueled by greed and hope of getting something for nothing.
It is easy for liars to make something believable to people who know little about the topic. This has created an ugly monster of the SEO industry.
The SEO Monster Eats, Every Day!
In just the last spin of the clock, I have had several people ask me for information about automated directory submission services to improve their search engine ranking. It reminds me that most people really do not understand SEO. Judging from the glazed look on their faces, I can tell that many people really don’t want to understand. They just want it to magically work. I understand that, and I can imagine how frustrating and stressful it must be for non-SEO people to filter reliable information about search engine optimization through all of the common SEO lies (although this may help: 7 SEO Lies: How to Know When the SEO is Lying).
Outdated, Outrageous, and Downright Dishonest SEO Garbage
There is so much bad information and outdated material spread across the Internet that I think it would frustrate the heck out of me if I was trying to feel my way through it for the first time. What bothers me is how many people are out there trying to earn a buck by selling things that do not help, and even more commonly, severely damage paying customers’ hopes of being found in a search engine.
The world of SEO truly is like a foreign language to most people. They read something about SEO and meta tags, and they think they are on to something revolutionary. It just stuns me that with all of the great information out here on the Internet, how many people are fooled by the first scam they come across.
For some people, I think there is a sense that if it is written, it must hold some truth. Once they find out the hard way that it was a scam and it didn’t work, they either give up and hate everything about SEO, or they take the time to learn the difference and read something sensible and logic-based like “Good SEO vs. Bad SEO: How to Tell the Difference“.
Even in large corporate settings, I have often found people in the role of search engine optimizer collecting a nice salary who got their job just by spouting out a few industry buzz words. The people hiring them are either enamored by their “vast knowledge”, or just give up and offer them a job on blind faith.
A really hard pill to swallow is that most of today’s SEO “experts” have never ranked for anything significantly competitive. That is not a gouge against my industry, and these people are not my competitors. It is a statistical truth. To make this point clear, just have a look at the backlinks to most SEO websites and then see where they rank for the first four words of their home page title. Try this with the website of the SEO who reaches you by email, on the phone, or in a paid advertisement, instead of you finding them through a search.
Productized SEO Services Created a Monster
I think that productizing SEO and selling easy to understand pre-packaged SEO services has created and fed this monster. As an industry, those of us who sell SEO services realized a long time ago that it is much easier to package things up and say “Here is your price, and here is what you get.”
This certainly makes it easier to sell SEO. After all, it is easier for clients to choose from a list and compare it to what others offer. Also, it is a lot more profitable for the SEO to create something once, and sell it many times. The truth is that it is seldom what is best for meeting the customer’s objectives, and it creates a mentality that ranking well in search engines is merely a predefined set of SEO tasks.
This is not to say that things like SEOmoz’s SEO tools, SpyFu, and the squillion other SEO tools are not just great. These are tools, but like a paintbrush, they are only as good as the person using them. A tragedy that happened is when a lot of SEO realized that they could sell far more, and easier, if they promised something such as top ten ranking for “x” number of keywords and then price it and put it in a shopping cart for people to buy. There are countless types of SEO services being promoted with a “buy it now” approach, without any consultation, without any strategy, and with a promise of easy results.
Do you really trust anything that is so easy? OK, rephrase … Do you really trust anything that is so easy in 2011?
Directory Submission Service Example
I started my rant with directory submissions, and I will still use it as an example. “What is a directory submission service?” I hope that is what you are thinking, but in case you did not already know, I will explain it. It is a once-heralded way to automatically submit a website to long lists of search engines and directories, with a hope that it would help search engine rankings, bring more visitors to a website, and boost sales.
I suppose it seems logical to a lot of people that if they use SEO directory submission services to add their website link to a squillion directories and search engines, it will produce magical results. Now let’s clear this up. Seriously, do you think that a magical automated fix like directory and search engine submissions will be your pink pony ride to success?
Oh, and nobody else ever thought of that, so it will be revolutionary! Right? Search engines will suck that up like grape soda and will count all of those backlinks (links to your website) as proof that your website is valuable.
Rub a lamp, sucker! Maybe a Genie will come to your assistance, too.
The Productized SEO Monster Awakens My Inner-Sailor
There are just a few things which make it hard for me to hold back my inner sailor and refrain from dropping severely foul language all over my blog. People falling for things like automated directory submissions and other simple tricks helping their SEO efforts is one of those things. I just don’t think I can even be nice about this. Shit! Call it a temporary case of Tourette’s Syndrome, but this inner-sailor in me is wanting out pretty badly.
People who actually fall for things like this drive me nuts. I just want to say “Hey, Genius, do you want to know the truth, or would you rather waste more money and time to screw up your website?”
If you want the real truth about SEO, slow down, pay attention, and stop breathing those SEO fumes in the air. Spend some time to learn things that will actually work, and will help you to grow your business. For example, those links in the text of this article are not just there for me, and they may help you, a lot. Better yet, here is a link for some relatively easy SEO tips that can save you a lot of time and frustration: SEO Lessons You Should Know.
These tips will not cost you a penny, and will only take a short time to read. Maybe I am just full of hot air, but if so, go ahead and search Google for SEO lessons and see where that link I just gave you shows up in non-advertised, relevance-based organic results. Hint: It is not number two on the list.
I do not write about this because I am seeking a bunch of customers. I only work with a couple clients at a time, and I turn away far more than I work with. Yes, writing about SEO helps people to find me, but it is not just here to help me. This is here to help you.
Just one more thing! Have you subscribed to aWebGuy.com yet?
I suspect that you want to know, “is Twitter good for SEO?” Either that, or your bum is feeling pretty sore, and you are willing to try anything. I am happy to help with the Twitter part, and I am sorry about your rump. Try pistachio, but don’t blame me if it doesn’t work.
I am surprised that more people have not discussed the topic of Twitter and SEO to provide their opinion-based answers. I think that a lot of people are afraid to touch on this, for fear of giving an unpopular answer, or being wrong. Well, leave it to me to tell you this: “Yes, Twitter helps SEO!”
Twitter can help with SEO efforts, directly, as well as indirectly when Twitter users share the information in places such as blogs, social bookmarking sites, and elsewhere. If somebody tells you otherwise, you are listening to the wrong SEO advice.
I read an article on the widely respected SEOmoz.org blog today that addressed the SEO value of Twitter. It reminded me how much I sometimes forget the importance of bringing things down to a very simple level. I guess I just forget that not everybody has done this “Internet thing” to earn food for the past decade and a half. I try to keep things pretty simple, but I know I can wing one over readers’ heads some days. I try to provide useful marketing and SEO tips, but if I ever forget to make them simple, I apologize. This one should be nice and easy.
I thought that the value of Twitter for SEO was pretty obvious to most users, a long time ago. Sometimes, when I see what other people are saying, I recognize that details like this can slip by some people. Here is a quote from the recent article on SEOmoz titled “The Social Media Marketer’s SEO Checklist“:
“So for a long time, most SEOs blew off links from social sites like Twitter and Facebook since they didn’t have much direct SEO value because the links are almost always nofollowed [learn more about nofollow]. Now that we know that Google and Bing use Twitter and Facebook to influence regular search results, it’s time to start thinking about how the person in charge of Social Media can start to think like an SEO as well.”
The article had some good points, but it really did take me back to grammar school. Quoting the article, “Now that we know” … what? Holy hemorrhoid! I guess I assumed that we knew this kind of thing years ago. Links from my old Yahoo chat groups in 1998 helped my SEO, but is that revolutionary, too? It was kind of funny to me how much it resembled something I said in early 2009 when I wrote the book “Twitter for Business: Twitter for Friends“. Here is a statement I made in the book, and I stand by it today:
“Many search engine optimizers (SEO) will overlook the value of Twitter for improving search engine penetration. If they miss this part, they are making a big mistake. A reason many SEO will dismiss this value is that Twitter uses the “nofollow” attribute in outbound links. Make no mistake; Twitter can greatly enhance your visibility in search engine results.”
Heck, maybe the Internet is coming up to speed, or maybe I am just one of those people who are as strange as a pickled duck fart and foresee things in some uncanny way. I don’t know … maybe it is a combination.
Do More Tweets Help SEO?
This should be obvious, but the impact of more people tweeting your website content may be even higher than you imagined. Whenever somebody tweets your linked content, it creates links to your website. The quality and quantity of inks to a website are the most important factors that search engines use to gauge the importance of a website. Also, the links Twitter produces are not necessarily only on Twitter. There are a lot of services which aggregate Twitter’ed content, as well as many widgets and other syndication through RSS in which it may appear on other websites.
It will be far more important for other people to tweet your content than just tweeting your link a squillion times. Don’t bother with that, because it is not going to make you a ton of new friends. A few times is fine, but let’s not go out of the way to garner death threats, and insults about your mother.
Do More Twitter Followers Help SEO?
I am the last person who would wish to promote a “Twitter follower-frenzy”, so I almost hate to say this. Many indicators will suggest that more followers on Twitter can improve the SEO value of a tweet. Yes, a high follower count does correlate to higher SEO value, but I believe it correlates even better with the number of Twitter lists a person is on and other measurements.
I know that a lot of people want to become popular on Twitter, but before you implement some off the cuff plan, be sure to read the article titled “How To Become Popular on Twitter Without Actually Being Useful“. If you do the things that many moronic marketers suggest, people will wish a bad case of herpes on you and throw you on a flaming bed of nails before they will care to listen to you … or buy your stuff.
There is not much that I dislike more than a bunch of bad marketers out there with nothing useful to say. I think that millions of Twitter users would agree with me on this. Don’t take this as any suggestion that you go and try to gather as many Twitter followers as you can. Instead, I recommend, as I always have, that you be useful. As with anything SEO-related, being useful and providing compelling information is what matters the most. If you can do that, many of the other factors seem to magically fall into place. I am pretty sure it can also help hemorrhoids, even better than ice cream.
Twitter Changed, But it is Still Useful for SEO
Although I still really like Twitter, it changed a lot over time. Twitter had a huge growth spurt, and as the new users poured in, much of the real value of the service dwindled. It is still good for SEO, but what so many people do not grasp is that if you expect people to tweet and retweet what you have to share, it had better be pretty damn awesome to be heard over the excess noise.
How much did Twitter change? I could write another book about this, but I would rather stick needles in my eyes. I will just offer this: I wrote about Twitter retweets on February 29th, 2009. It was titled “Twitter: The Tweet About Retweet” and it received many hundreds of retweets. Tweetmeme says 420, but that data is old, and it was actually many more. In another case, I wrote a really short and basic article (approximately 250 words) about Twitter username selection on April 8th of 2009. It also received a ton of retweets and 158 reader comments. Back in the earlier days, I would measure between 500-1,500 clicks on darn near any link I tweeted, within minutes. Now, a hundredth of that would buzz my radar.
Maybe I just became less “brilliant” with the things people love to share, but I am pretty sure that is not the case. Many Twitter users just don’t see it when they are trying to follow a squillion other people, with hopes of being followed back.
Today, when I tweet something from my blog, I do not count on Twitter to pass it along. In fact, Twitter directly accounts for under three percent of my website traffic. Moreover, I have measured that the website traffic coming directly from Twitter has a low probability of participating and adding their comments to a topic. I think this is because of Twitter-enhanced attention disorders which were there before Twitter. Twitter just made it even more “old fashioned” to actually read things and pay attention. My study on this is forthcoming, but let’s just start the study with whether you will take the time to finish reading and add your comment.
Since the time of these popular Twitter-related articles, I have written hundreds of very compelling and useful blog articles which far exceeded the relatively minor value of those. I can effectively measure the value of Twitter from a conversational standpoint as much lower than it was. The SEO value of Twitter and the Twitter “retweet” is still there, but if you want to break through the noise, it better be something stunning.
“I do not rely on any single SEO tool too heavily, and I do not recommend that you do that, either. There is not a short list of SEO tools and tricks that will make you famously successful with search engines.”
If you came here about the ice cream, I am sorry about your bum. Perhaps you could try eating it really fast to take your mind off the ‘roids. If you came here about Twitter and SEO, please add your comments on my blog. Just type it in and let’s have a good old fashioned ice cream social.
Many companies will face the question of whether to outsource SEO (search engine optimization) or to hire in-house SEO professionals to improve, manage, and monitor search engine optimization and other Internet marketing efforts. Of course, some companies will overlook the need for search engine optimization, branding, and online reputation management altogether, but don’t worry about them. They will not likely steal away any of your market share, so whichever of these options works best for your company, it is better than overlooking the question.
I have witnessed many arguments on each side of this topic, but most do not give fair and unbiased consideration to each viewpoint. I intend for this to be useful to companies seeking to hire SEO services, freelance and agency search engine optimizers, and in-house SEO who may not be getting what they are worth. My goal is to remain as objective as possible and to discuss something of a potential trend in the online marketing industry.
First Consideration: Who Needs SEO, and How Much?
I want to address one very important consideration right upfront, and that is the question of “who needs search engine optimization?” I do not want to carry on with this part too long, because it should be obvious, and otherwise you would probably not be reading this. There is scarcely a company in existence that will not benefit from proper search engine optimization and Internet marketing. The benefits are measurable, and the factual data proves the importance. A challenging part of the question is in how the SEO efforts you put forth will most greatly increase the bottom line of your company. You would probably not pay a sales representative more money than they return for the company, and SEO is not so different in this respect. You should expect more profit.
In an unbiased fashion, I want to make it really clear that success mostly depends on the skill level implemented and dedication to the campaign. Even very small companies can benefit from either a full-time in-house SEO (search engine optimizer) or outsourced SEO if it is a skilled effort with the company’s interests at task. Believe me or don’t, but the real numbers bear it out that a well executed long-term online marketing campaign has the potential to make nearly any size or type of company very successful. The list of case studies and stories of success is longer than you will ever be able to read, because the list grows each day. I have witnessed it in my own corporation, and we turned a tiny company into a phenomenal multi-million dollar industry success. Proper online marketing should not be viewed as wasted cost, but rather as an investment. It is a very important investment which should not be taken lightly, because the list of failures grows even faster than the list of successes.
Why This SEO View is Unbiased
I have a sincere cause to pose questions about outsourcing SEO vs. hiring in-house SEO and base it on minimal bias. First, I will explain why my comparison is unbiased, and I hope you can see that it is provided for maximum value and not serving the agenda of one side over the other.
I have been a company president and/or CEO for a long time (over 20 years), and not just a CEO. For over a decade, I have been the CEO of a successful Internet company which offers SEO services. I look at this from the perspective of a corporate executive who seeks SEO talent, and also as somebody who has regularly been approached by “headhunters” seeking to bring me into their in-house staff. I was approached recently, and it was enticing enough to really make me consider the two sides of this topic and try to weigh them carefully.
I want to address the topic of hiring internal SEO versus outsourcing freelance or agency SEO consultants in a way that is as cost-aware and benefit-aware as I can determine from my viewpoint. I would also appreciate any input you may provide on the topic, because although I may wish to know everything, I still need people to help me prove it.
I will focus on eight segments plus a summary, and address the company needs and the employee or outsourced search engine optimizer (SEO) independently because I want to make a purposeful case for each. This format should help me to make these high-level pros and cons of each option as unbiased as possible. I will not touch on every point, because this could get very long, but I will address some of the top advantages and disadvantages. My arguments for and against outsourced SEO or in-house SEO will be categorized as follows:
Outsource SEO: Advantage to Company
Outsource SEO: Disadvantage to Company
In-House SEO: Advantage to Company
In-House SEO: Disadvantage to Company
Outsource SEO: Advantage to SEO
Outsource SEO: Disadvantage to SEO
In-House SEO: Advantage to SEO
In-House SEO: Disadvantage to SEO
Summary
So let’s begin to look at this from the standpoint of a company who wants to be more visible in the Internet marketplace, with a more effective message, increased profits … and to do this with the highest effectiveness and the least amount of failure.
Outsource SEO: Advantage to Company
The most advantageous aspect of outsourcing SEO is not what most people may think. It is not a way to save money, because let’s face it, the outsourced SEO has to eat just as much as an in-house SEO. The good ones eat much better. In fact, the expense to outsource comparable results is generally significantly higher than in-house SEO. I see what in-house SEO people are paid by many companies and I wonder how they can do it for more than a couple months without seeking a different field. Then I remember that the lower pay scale usually equates to experience, regardless of the level of talent. Fair or not, that is often the way it is. The underpaid SEO with significant talent should always be seeking more opportunity, because they deserve it. You cannot expect them to earn success for a company without enjoying some success of their own. It just doesn’t work that way.
The greater advantage of outsourcing is that companies can pull from a greater talent base of people who are more highly specialized in the field of marketing and SEO. They are often people who were previously in-house SEO and developed enough talent to fire their boss and go freelance or with an agency. With greater specialization, experience, and overall industry skill, it should be no surprise that the cost is higher (although it actually is a surprise to some). More skill equals more cost … just like it should be. When hunting success, it is best to seek success where it lives. If the SEO has a success record, they are not likely to put themselves in the pool of eligible employees to work for small earnings and punch a time clock. The real benefit here is in the selection, and being able to purchase talent that a company cannot otherwise afford. They may even be able to afford it, but they lack the means to justify SEO to other decision makers.
Another advantage to companies by outsourcing is the typically obvious concerns surrounding human resources issues (payroll, benefits, liability, and etcetera). However, it is quite clear from everything I have read and witnessed that those considerations, especially where they relate to a scale of cost for talent still leave the company with a higher expenditure for outsourcing SEO … but also a higher return on their investment.
Outsource SEO: Disadvantage to Company
Aside from the common disadvantage of budgetary concerns and how very hard it is to free up necessary marketing capital, the company has less perceived control. Much is perception rather than reality, but there is some basis to this. For a marketing director or business owner with a need for immediate action and accountability, an in-house SEO is an easier neck to strangle when something is urgent or if goals are falling short. Most outsourced SEO, if vetted properly and found to be reputable, will care very much to serve their clients. However, they also have their own company interests to address. In instances where resources are pooled and the top-level resources are shifted to another project or otherwise short-handed, a client may not have the level of immediate recourse they like, as they may have with an employee. This often comes down to the level of client you have placed yourself as, and if another client is more profitable and needs urgent attention, it should be no surprise how business decisions are made.
In-House SEO: Advantage to Company
I have not been an employee in decades. I have always been the employer, so I can see the advantages of outsourcing SEO from the company standpoint. A commonly perceived advantage to the company focuses on greater control over the SEO and their marketing message.
This is generally more a myth than reality, but many companies will see an employment contract as more enforceable than an independent contractor agreement. The greater control is not in the enforceability but rather the requirements. If somebody is your employee, you can require them to be in a specific place at a specific time. This can make it easier for some companies to feel relatively secure that their SEO is working a specific amount of hours per day, and help to assure that they are working hard on the company’s projects. To my notion, the most valued benefit of in-house SEO to the company is far more human in nature, and it includes pride in a job done well.
The greatest benefit of in-house SEO to a company will really rely on a much more human aspect of business. If employees are happy with their job and they have a passion for making the company successful, many other obstacles are averted. When they can share in a feeling of pride, their effectiveness is likely to reflect that pride. I saw this most profoundly when I was recently contacted to meet with a company in Chicago. I felt a real connection with the company objectives and I can say for certain that I would accept a much smaller contract with that company than I would accept from other companies which have reached out to me. This is not to say that I would work for any company without dramatically stretching out their SEO budget. What I can say is that the right company could offer me $100,000 lower salary than the wrong one and still capture much more of my interest. I know, some people will think it is crazy that I would take $100,000 less to do something I love and work with people I enjoy. This is far less than the huge number of prospective clients I turn away each year because I would rather choke them than make them successful. Oh yes, SEO with a heart and soul … that must seem silly, right? Having a passion for something always makes a difference in success. Overlooking or doubting this fact is a huge mistake! If you doubt it, read this article: “Where Does Marketing Talent Come From and What is the Cost?”
In-House SEO: Disadvantage to Company
The biggest disadvantage that I can see to a company with in-house SEO is if the well eventually runs dry. Creativity can diminish over time if the in-house SEO does not discover new challenges to meet. This can be assisted with maintaining good relationships and keeping open communication with others in the SEO field, but it is often well-augmented by an outside consultant. For companies unwilling or unprepared to provide their SEO staff with the necessary resources, they can often find a dead-end of sorts. It is mitigated by finding the best SEO for the job, but on limited budgets, companies are frequently required to settle for what they can afford. That can mean having an in-house SEO that is a shallower well, and that well may require a refill from time to time. The tragic disadvantage to many companies is that rather than to bring in additional inspiration, they will assume that their in-house SEO has just run out of value. This is often not the case, but rather that they have just not been granted enough resource. Hiring replacement talent is a tragic end to this scenario, which can set a company back a lot of time and money. I guess the disadvantage here is how to properly discover and provide the degree of trust and artistic freedom which will benefit their SEO staff and the company at the optimal level.
Outsource SEO: Advantage to SEO
This should be no surprise that the biggest gain to the outsourced SEO is financial. Although there are a lot of starving people calling themselves search engine optimizers, the big reward comes in the form of money. Most freelance SEO will have multiple business interests, and have multiple income streams. A good SEO knows how to be more visible with a better marketing message. They do not reserve this only for their clients. I like the way Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz described why good SEO is expensive as relating to the cost of the search engine optimizer’s lost opportunities elsewhere. I have said this before, and it is very true that if I spend more of my time working on clients’ projects, it means less time I am spending on my own.
Outsource SEO: Disadvantage to SEO
I described what I see as the greatest disadvantage of being an outsourced SEO in a recent article, and I think this sums it up pretty well. The article is titled “When I Go to Hell, They Will Have Me Selling SEO” and it discusses the challenges we face from people simply not understanding that there is a huge difference between good and bad SEO. When people see marketing as a commodity, it is hard to help them, even when you have factual data to make a good case.
I see a potential shift in corporate thinking about SEO as the market is flooded by bad SEO. The cream rises to the top, and the best SEO are in even higher demand. Before that happens, a lot of people are hurt by the fringe of the SEO industry bastardizing the market and causing confusion among companies in need of the service. This makes it more acceptable than ever for the higher level SEO to consider leaving the rat race and doing what they love on behalf of an employer. Battling for scraps in a market that people strongly want to believe is a commodity and can be bought cheap is not appealing to me in the least. As that trend continues, search engine optimizers who really do know their work and can achieve results have every reason to be frustrated. Good SEO can compete just fine, but there is a point when it is just not fun to explain something to people only to have them learn it the hard way by hiring a cheap SEO and then come back to repair the mess it caused them.
In-House SEO: Advantage to SEO
I think most good search engine optimizers love their work. That is what makes them good at it. An advantage to the in-house SEO which also benefits the company is that they get to do the job they love and develop a full-scale marketing effort rather than the bits and pieces that many clients will opt for. Instead of working on projects that are shaved down by clients trying to save money, the SEO can do more of the work they know works. It allows for a better focus on both long-term and short-term objectives. Any SEO should love that.
In-House SEO: Disadvantage to SEO
An obvious downside to working in-house is that companies often only budget for low-level SEO positions. Yes, the money is a big disadvantage, but there is one thing perhaps even worse. A battle for many in-house search engine optimizers is that they receive friction from multiple departments. This can happen to the outsourced SEO as well, but the in-house employee is often caught in the middle. SEO involves marketing, information technology, and other departments who often do not see eye-to-eye. Depending on the company’s receptiveness and understood importance of online marketing, it can require extreme patience.
If a company wants the best from their online marketing efforts, they must listen to the SEO and be open to good ideas. When this is not the case, the SEO may have to take on a role which is not just SEO, but also office politician. Such is the life of the underrepresented in-house SEO.
Summary of Outsourced or In-House SEO
In summary, I must say that the worst answer is to look away and ignore the importance of the role of SEO in any company. In many instances, it is most logical and effective to make use of both outsourced and in-house SEO as a united effort.
I believe that as online competition for business increases among hiring companies, the importance of the in-house SEO will cause companies to increase their budgets and bring in higher level SEO talent to achieve their goals. This will provide opportunities for independent SEO, agencies, and employment alike.
For the freelance SEO, I see a continued battle of smaller and “uninitiated” companies viewing SEO as a commodity. This is a common challenge. With more people offering ineffective services it is not likely to fade soon, but it will. Companies who want to remain competitive will see greater value for highly skilled professional SEO in both capacities.
The most pronounced trend I see coming is that high-quality SEO has an ever-increasing demand, including all areas of the field. Filtering out the good and the bad SEO has become more challenging for many companies, but when they find good marketing talent, I expect them to take it more seriously than ever.
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!
