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.
If you are not going to eat that Digg fame, may I have a bite?
I was feeling a bit down about Twitter yesterday after remembering those days when Twitter was the next big Digg.com-like traffic-generating left-coast geek craze. If you were there, you would know it as the days when everybody who Kevin Rose (of Digg.com) had worked so hard to encourage to get their moment of Digg fame had become Twitter-stunned. It was back when anybody who had been kicked off Digg.com professed that tweets were the new diggs, and it was time to adapt to the new rules.
What The Heck is Digg?
For my readers unfamiliar with Digg, I will explain it in simple terms. Digg.com is a massively important … no, wait … monumental piece of Internet marketing history. It is a largely bullshitopotomus platform for zit-faced Star Wars fans to gain importance by stroking each other’s ego. The primary demographic are 17 year olds pretending to be 30, and 45 year olds still wearing Scooby Doo pajamas. Digg users can be largely summed up as semi-adult with $200 per hour talent getting paid $13 per hour to submit “diggable” stuff without looking like a “business digger”. They will carefully digg a squillion things per day while they sit in their mother’s basement passing time until she kicks them out on the street to get a real job and stop playing on that damn computer.
Typical Digg Users Need Jobs
A typical Digg user would be more inclined to plagiarize somebody’s good resume and hack their way into a real job, but there is a catch. They are hard-pressed to find time in between potentially popular photos of Lego sculptures and celebrity gossip to throw their Digg authority upon and earn another $0.43 per click for that advertisement which is cleverly placed between that badass Lego sculpture of The Empire State Building and Jennifer Aniston photoshopped making out with their buddy. When they have time to eat their bologna sandwich and chips (thanks mom), they sit there thinking “Damn those Lego statues and funny photos of the dude crashing his skateboard. I could have been somebody! … and Damn You Jennifer Aniston!
The Big Point About Digg
So the point of this article was actually this: I wrote something yesterday to tease Twitter users. I titled it “How To Become Popular on Twitter Without Actually Being Useful” and it was pretty well-received. Fame? No, not fame really, because I used to see many times as much attention to an article on Twitter … any article on Twitter. Heck, I could tweet about blowing my nose and see 100 retweets back when Digg was supposedly dead.
Damn it … those zit-faced kids went back to Digg, but I still found some people amused by my Twitter humor and snarky insight. What I have done here is to point out yet another typically popular thing to do. If you have something popular come out of your blog, it is often a good idea to follow it up with something of a similar nature that people can relate to. It really is an important practice, because your audience will tell you what they want, and you should be willing to deliver it.
I was going to blog about something totally different today. Blame the 40-something year old in the Scooby Doo pajamas and those knucklehead Twitter people who surprised me with their signs of a heartbeat yesterday.
By the way, I should add that those zit-faced fellas on Digg really don’t have a sense of humor. They just act like it for $0.43 per click. Sorry … this is one blog post the Digg fellas probably will not like very much, but you are welcome to Facebook it!
If you have used Twitter for very long, you surely know the type. It is the popular Twitter user like that jerk in high school all the kids wanted to be like but nobody could really say for sure just why. Fortunately for you, I have taken it upon myself to tell you how to become popular on Twitter without actually being useful. This is that secret recipe all the cool and popular people on Twitter did not want you to know about, but I am telling you. Let the death threats begin.
Now Let’s Make You One of the Popular People on Twitter
Follow along, because you don’t want to do this wrong. If you tweet the wrong thing, people will hate you. They will rip you up and make you wish you left your iPhone on the night stand and never downloaded that fancy-schmancy Twitter application. They may even unfollow you, and the “unfollow” on Twitter is worse than a bad fart on an airplane.
If you follow this list without deviation, you are sure to become massively popular. Just remember that if anybody says “I hate you and hope you die a miserable death” or “You deserve a really bad case of herpes” … those people are just jealous because they will probably never be as popular as you. Just as long as they don’t “unfollow” you … that is when you know it has gone beyond jealousy and they may actually hate you.
Here is the secret list. It is not an all-inclusive list, but it will get you started. If you want the whole story, I guess you will just have to buy the book.
Become Popular on Twitter: Tip One
Tweet everything you ever see about breaking news. Those news sites like Google News, CNN, and etcetera, just don’t seem to have enough ways to reach people. If you put it on your Twitter, people will respect you more as an authority because you will always seem to know everything before anybody else.
Become Popular on Twitter: Tip Two
Tweet anything new about techie stuff. If it is about an iPhone, iPad, or anything else with a partially eaten apple on it … Tweet it! If you see it on Mashable.com or TechCrunch.com, tweet it twice … per hour. That stuff is hot, and any popular Twitter user knows it. If it includes people complaining about something techie, it is even better. People love to join into bitter battles over Google security vulnerabilities, Facebook privacy, Mac vs. PC and other juicy stuff like that.
Become Popular on Twitter: Tip Three
Tweet about a cause. It does not really matter if it is just another charity to feed starving kittens in the latest place with a natural disaster. Twitter it with passion (preferably with frequency and urgency) to show that you really are a person who cares. Those kittens are getting more hungry by the hour, after all.
Become Popular on Twitter: Tip Four
When in doubt, retweet it! People love people who retweet (repeat) things they say! Didn’t you hear about those starving kittens? You should pass that along, because it is a really important cause. Any extra funds raised will go to buy the latest iPhone for the kittens.
Become Popular on Twitter: Tip Five
Watch what is trending on Twitter. Trending means it is hot stuff that nobody else on Twitter knows about yet, and you should tweet it over and over … but only until something new is trending.
Become Popular on Twitter: Tip Six
Create a trend on Twitter. It is best to seek something from other networks, because Twitter has not heard about it just yet. Watch Google Trends, Digg, and Alexa’s “What’s Hot”. This stuff is practically un-twittered, and can make you look like a totally amazing Internet Einstein!
Become Popular on Twitter: Tip Seven
Get more Twitter followers. It is like a virus! If you get more Twitter followers, you will look more important and then more people will follow you which will make you look even more important … and all of the sudden you will be so popular it will blow your friends’ minds. Best of all, you don’t even have to ever actually be useful and do anything unique. Just be sure to retweet anything that says “#followfriday” in it.
Become Popular on Twitter: Tip Eight
Join one … no … ALL of those programs to get more Twitter followers. They will even send out automated messages to tell people the stuff you sell, and there is a good chance you will get rich with that!
Become Popular on Twitter: Tip Nine
Remember … It is all about the numbers! Marketing is just a numbers game. If you can put yourself in front of enough people, you can sell damn near anything. Trust, creativity, and talent do not matter if you can get enough spam out there. People say they hate spam, but the secret truth of Twitter experts is that those haters are just jealous of you for being more popular than them!
Summary of How To Become Popular on Twitter
If this does not make you more popular, just don’t blame me. If you use this list, you are the one trying to imitate instead of being an individual and doing something different. I can’t fix that. The best I can do is to offer some encouragement. Do something different and stop worrying about being popular.
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.
Blogging from experience may not seem all that revolutionary. After all, I suspect that if you write a blog, you probably already understand this. It is best to blog things you know, and know well. I want to drive the point a bit further and inspire you to use your experience, and to pull from the experience of others around you.
I will tell you where I find much of my inspiration, in hopes that it may help your creative process. When I reflect on my work, it is pretty easy to find blogging material directly from my daily life. I blog about things I know, but not just something I pulled out of the back reaches of my mind. I blog about things I have actually encountered … usually recently. Some of the best stuff comes from questions people ask me. When I hear something a few times, I start to think to myself “I’ll bet there are a lot of other people who would like to know more about this, too.” A great benefit of blogging this way is that it becomes “evergreen” blogging material which is useful for more than just the moment. It often becomes something people can look back into my archives and find useful months, or even years later.
Blog What People Ask You … They Are Not Alone!
If your work inspires questions from people, blog about it. It is usually true that others have the same questions, too. Listen to things people ask you over the phone, in email, or even in the grocery store line. If you are paid for answering the questions, don’t worry about giving something up for free. If you are not answering the question, you can bet that somebody on the Internet is willing to, and they will be a lot closer to getting the new customer if they are the one being helpful.
Blog from Others’ Experience, Too!
Do not limit it to just your own experience. Ask your receptionist, customer service representatives, sales staff, service technicians, customers, and others in your line of work what people are asking them or what challenges they face in their jobs. Keep in touch with your front line so that you will know what people want to know. These are the things people also ask when they sit down at their computer … with their favorite search engine.
Make it Easy and Make it Useful!
Don’t mess this all up by trying to sound too impressive or trying to use the most amazing industry buzzwords. In some instances it is best to keep it really simple and write it as if search engines don’t exist. Word it similar to the way it is posed to you. If you are an attorney and somebody asks you a legal question, blog about it in a useful, human, and conversational way. Don’t make it a lecture filled with a bunch of legal industry terms that we don’t understand, and don’t keyword it up just hoping to land people from every possible search engine query.
If you make it useful, easy to read, and it is something people want to know about, they will find it. Once they find it, the real search engine optimization comes into play, because it is relevant to people’s questions. Relevant enough that people will share it with others and all of the sudden you have yourself a blog that becomes popular. Then the SEO keyword stuff and assumptions about SEO being a bunch of tricky programming code and geeky witchcraft starts to look pretty darn silly. Sure, that stuff matters to a degree, but if it clouds the view of the people, you will be doing them a disservice.
Use your experience, and do not assume that just because it seems obvious to you that it is not useful to somebody else with a different background.
