seo Archives - Page 20 of 27 by Mark Murnahan

SEO Contracts, SEO Proposals, and SEO Espionage

SEO Contracts Should Not Require a Cryptograph — SEO Should Not Require a Cryptograph

Search engine optimization can be a pretty deceitful field. There are a lot of challenges to the SEO every day which can make us look bad as an industry. SEO is a very lucrative field, which makes it prone to excessive competition and it is frequently a target for fraud. The fraud can happen on both sides; from the SEO, as well as from the client. I have a couple ideas on the topic, and I hope this will benefit you, whether as the SEO or the potential SEO client.

Considering that the SEO professional has to look over his or her shoulder at all times, there should be little wonder why even the best SEO with good abilities and intentions can come off as shady. After all, anybody who feels suspicious all the time can appear suspicious, themselves. This suspicion of SEO services prompted me to question how we must seem to potential customers when they read the SEO contracts, proposals, project scope, retainer agreements, engagement letters, needs analysis, non-disclosure agreements, and etcetera.

Many SEO proposals and SEO contracts that I have read lean toward being a bit ambiguous and one-sided. I am “guilty” of this, too, and I have even heard it from clients in my decade plus in this field. What is sometimes hard to overcome are some of the reasons the SEO contracts are ambiguous … and why sometimes they should be.

What to Include in SEO Proposals

The question of what to include in the SEO proposal is a tough one. I think a lot of SEO must have felt that little pang of uncertainty after they have crafted a brilliant SEO proposal and present it to the prospective client. Some of the questions the SEO may ponder are whether the prospective client is just using it to try and implement the proposed work internally, using the SEO proposal to shop around, or even stealing the brilliant work to provide the proposal to their shady SEO who was too lazy or incompetent to do the research themselves. I suspect that every good SEO is cheated at least once.

How much can you include in the SEO proposal before the client thinks they can implement it themselves (which seldom works well for them), and how little can you include in the SEO proposal, yet still convey a high value? There should be a balance, but my approach has often been to just put all the cards on the table and give them the gold. The problem here is that so many people view SEO as a science (see “Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – Art or Science?“). Clients do not always realize that SEO implementation is not created equally, and there is also an artistic side to SEO. There are many degrees to doing the job right, and even the same strategy implemented by two different SEO will yield different results. After a potential client ends up hanging themselves on that rope you give them, they lose faith in you and even the whole prospect of hiring out SEO services.

The other side of the coin is to show very little strategy in the SEO proposal but provide a lot of proof. In this case, it may look like the SEO strategy is weak and not show enough value. Proof of concept and SEO case studies are fine, but many people cannot relate that into their world due to inherent doubts about SEO.

What to Include in SEO Contracts

A great SEO proposal must be backed up with a great SEO contract. Putting too much information in the SEO contract can have the same results as with the SEO proposal, but worse, this time you are asking them for a signature and money. Leaving any ambiguity may look unprofessional or dishonest, but making it too rigid comes with a risk of not being able to provide the right responses the client needs under changing market circumstances. Just imagine the contract that says exactly what the SEO will do, but then you find an instance where market changes say that you should do something different.

The SEO contract can be a deal-breaker, especially if it is going before a board of directors with a bunch of people who do not have a clue about SEO, or marketing at all for that matter. When you have a company filled with a bunch of people doing all they can to be sure they still have a job tomorrow (most companies), the last thing you want is for them to vote something down just because they didn’t understand what they were approving. This applies to small companies and large, and even a one-person company has a “board” of sorts.

Consider What the SEO Contract Represents

Everybody wants to avoid a lawsuit. It may sound too simple, but let’s look at what the SEO contract really represents. It is a contract that says that the customer agrees to pay “x” money in exchange for “y” services. If everything goes just as planned, and everybody involved is on the up and up, the contract should actually be a very useless piece of paper. Looking at it this way, you can see that the contract is mostly in place solely to make everybody comfortable in case it has to go to a court to be upheld. This is the bottom line with a contract. It is really useless as an instrument unless or until it is contested by one party and is brought to a courtroom or mediation.

With the purpose of the contract in mind, it should be easier to prepare your agreements in a way that addresses these basic components of “x” money for “y” service. A lot of the fluff beyond that is mostly there to address irrational fears. Not all of it, but this is the case with much of the content in most of the SEO service contracts I have read.

I have spent a significant amount of money having contracts reviewed and prepared over the years. I recall something one of my attorneys once said when I asked him to review one of the contracts I used for my customers. He said that the contract looks great, but that he could not “bless” the contract, and for that I would need a priest. He went on to say that any contract is only as good as the people signing it or in the worst case, the judge who makes a ruling on it. Looking at it this way, I may suggest that you just be sure to use waterproof ink before you splatter it with holy water.

SEO Espionage is an Irrational Fear

To the SEO: Collaboration between SEO is great, but sometimes the SEO has to know when to watch his or her back. Right? Well, the answer is yes and no. Most of the time the fear is irrational. I know that many SEO have used my work to build upon their services and their knowledge base. They have used my contracts, my proposals, and they have used SEO espionage to take food from my kids’ mouths. Should I concentrate on that, or the fact that I have done my little piece by using integrity and ideas to make the industry stronger?

I place providing value to the industry very high. I have been giving away information and putting my ideas out here on the Internet since the 1990’s and somehow people still pay attention. They flock to things like my very old article on h1 tags, and constantly find me when searching for SEO contracts. Being useful and providing value is a good thing … a very good thing. When you look over your shoulder with fears that somebody will get a leg up on you, it is easy to miss the big picture. There are enough SEO clients out there, and even if somebody takes your prized prospect away, there is always another one better suited to be your client.

A better way to look at it is that if you are working with a good spirit of collaboration between SEO, the whole industry becomes stronger. When the industry becomes stronger, your business becomes stronger. The market for good SEO will never be saturated. Really, pay attention: “The market for good SEO will never be saturated.”

Why SEO Contracts Don’t Matter

If contracts were ever a deal breaker, it should be with the credit card industry. If people actually read everything they agree to by using a credit card, spending habits would surely be a whole lot different, and the credit card industry may not even exist. It is not because they are all that bad, but reading the contract can be a bit scary.

Think about this and tell me if you can relate. I have purchased a lot of things over the years. I love buying stuff! When I think about the things I wanted the most, I recall that I barely even paid attention to the contracts. I already knew that I wanted to buy, I had a pretty good idea of who I was dealing with, and I knew that I would not have the “thing” I wanted until I signed the contract.

An extreme example is when I purchased the house I live in. I went to the closing at about 4:00 p.m. and signed about a squillion contracts by the close of business. I did this with little more than a brief explanation from my real estate agent of what I was signing. If you have ever purchased real estate, you surely know what I mean. Your hand probably got cramped before you were done, right? Now consider whether you read and scrutinized every line of those contracts.

As I consider the people who signed contracts with me over the years, I recall that some of the happiest ones barely even scanned through it. They had an absolute faith in my work, my integrity, and they wanted the help that I can provide them. The ones who got hung up on fine details of the SEO contract simply did not have that faith in me. I had failed them long before it was time to sign the contract.

I hope that you will consider this, whether as a prospective SEO client or the SEO provider. Getting the job right and having a signed contract is really the last thing that should matter. Gaining the client’s trust should never come down to the contract, but rather all of the gains that the SEO contract represents.

SEO Contract Examples

If you would like sample SEO contracts, proposals, or other documents, just leave me your comment here on my blog. Let me know what you think of the matter, and what kind of document you need help with. If I have something I believe will be useful to you, I will post an example here in the comments. If you can provide some input to help others, whether as SEO or client, add your piece. Collaboration is a good thing, and usually a whole lot more useful than coming off as shady to avoid somebody stealing your work.

Do Potential Customers Know They Need You?

Will Your Customers Wait for a Flat Tire?

Do your potential customers know that they need your product or service offering? You may be surprised to find that many marketing shortcoming are not only in lack of exposure, but also because potential customers failed to see a need … or enough need to do business with you. Maybe you have addressed this question before, but perhaps I can help you with a different spin.

Imagine First Generation Drivers

Back when cars first gained popularity as a mode of transportation, most people did not know much about them. The first generation drivers were pretty clueless about the new “horseless carriages”, but they sure were eager to learn. They had a lot of crashes back in those days. I can imagine why they crashed. Just picture the kids back then having to actually hand write their text messages on paper!

Try to imagine the days before anybody had a father to nag them about checking their tires. Cars need maintenance, but in the beginning, most people didn’t know anything at all about tire care. Drivers overlooked maintenance and had a lot of breakdowns. My father told of his first car, which was a Ford Model T Roadster. Stop right there, I am not all that old. My dad was about a hundred and twenty something when I was born. Anyway, he said it seemed like he blew a tire every time he turned a corner. This created a need for better tires. Not just a need for better tires, but also used tires, tire repair, tire changing, and of course some good tools for changing the tires. All of the sudden, there was an emerging market. It became a pretty huge market that made many people such as the Firestone family abundantly wealthy. Tires were expensive, and people tried to use them as long as they could. They would drive them until they blew out. It is why the term “tire kicking” is still used today. Back then, people would kick the tires because if the tires had been repaired, kicking them would help them to know if there was a “boot” in the tire. No, not the kind of boot on your foot, but a piece of rubber that was used inside the tire to repair it.

Now, back to the Firestone family, the Firestone’s did not get wealthy only because there was a market need. They helped people to understand their need, and they did this better than the rest of the tire companies who competed with them.

How Would You Market Tires?

When you imagine your market, try to think like the earliest tire companies. Pretend that you are the first company to try and explain to people about tires. What would you do, and what would you say? Would you wait until their tired blew out and they knew they had a need, or would you try to help them to be safer by knowing when their tires were getting too old? Would you teach them about tire pressures and how to make their tires last longer, or would you hope they wore them out sooner so you could sell more? TIP: Even tire companies selling the same tire but who help customers prolong their tire life have “better tires” because they last longer.

Think about how you would reach those early drivers. How would you let them know, not only that you exist, but how you would impress upon them that they need your tire store and not just the closest tire store to where their next tire blows out. How far would you reach to grow that market if the big obstacle was to help people understand that they are safer when you are their tire guy?

Exposure is a huge component of marketing, but never forget that there are already a lot of people who know about you, but do not realize how much they need you, or why you sell “better tires” than the others.

People Don’t Repair Good Tires

People do not repair good tires that hold air. This occurred to me as I consider the Internet marketplace. A lot of people who really need the marketing services which I provide just don’t know how much it can help or how bald their tires are. Do you need a better tire seller?

Are You Too Good at Your Job?

Being too good at your job can damage your vision. What I mean is that when you are too closely involved, it can become easy to miss something that is right under your nose. It seems that a lot of people are their own worst enemy when it comes to their business, and especially as it relates to their marketing. I hear it all the time that a client will hold onto delusions that they know their market inside and out. They blame the industry, their customers, or the economy for problems instead of realizing they have made some mistakes. The truth is that they are often just too closely involved. I am sure you have seen something that you can relate this to, right?

I even feel this way in my job a lot of times. Since I know a lot about Internet marketing and search engine optimization (SEO), I forget that a lot of people are just not so familiar. If you are good at something, it is easy to forget that the world is made up of all types and that the more you specialize, the more you become blinded. Addressing this with clients is an interesting challenge to me, because I frequently provide concrete evidence to show them just how wrong they are and how much business they have been missing. Then I have to present it in a way that does not make them feel stupid for not seeing it and addressing it sooner. People hate feeling stupid, and I don’t always have such a soft hand at pointing things like this out. I am that guy who will tell people what they need to hear rather than candy-coating a turd and telling them what they want to hear. I am a great marketer but because of that, I lack the wasteful schmoozing that some people expect to get when they spend a lot of money. This is my example of being so focused that I don’t see so well. I hope that you can realize it if there are instances like this in your work, too. Recognizing it is a good step in the right direction … I think … or rather, I hope.

It is common to use bad judgment or to be complacent when addressing matters within your own industry. It is why people use the analogies of a cobbler with barefoot children or a plumber with leaky pipes. It is easy to just think we are so good at something that we know how long we can put a task off before things break. It can also be easy to think we are doing all the right things, while we are actually just making things worse. Allow me to share an extreme real life example.

Jeff is Too Good at His Job to be Sick

I am reminded of many years ago when I had a roommate who was a physician. He woke up one morning and he was very sick. He could barely stand up, but of course he didn’t need a doctor. He figured that since his abdomen hurt that he just needed some antacid. He swigged a big dose of about three different over-the-counter antacids and headed to work.

Later that day as he was doing rounds at the hospital, it got worse … a lot worse. I got a call from an old school friend’s mother that evening. It kind of surprised me because I had not spoken to this woman in the prior 15 or more years. She was calling for professional reasons, as she is a nurse who worked with Jeff (the roommate). She called to let me know that while Jeff was at work, he had become so sick that he needed an emergency surgery. His appendix had perforated and he was in really bad shape. He made the mistake of diagnosing himself and it finally took a doctor friend to force him to go to the emergency room where a formal diagnosis was made. His condition was worsening fast, and if not for the intervention, it would have been life-threatening in very short order.

Jeff is a sub-specialist with over 15 years of post-secondary medical training from some of the most prestigious medical schools in the world. He is extremely talented in his field of medicine, but he was just too close to see the problem. I am not a doctor, and even I knew enough to tell him to stop by the emergency department to drink a GI cocktail just to see if the pain went away. If not, it would be a sign of something worse. He didn’t take my tip, nor several coworkers advice throughout the day, and he suffered a lot for it.

Jeff’s instance makes a good example of just being so good at a job or too closely involved to have good judgment. I see business instances similar to this often enough to believe that most people can find a similar oversight in their work.

My work involves a lot of different markets, and I am always thinking about how to best reach my clients’ prospective customers. Not so unlike Jeff, I am my own worst patient. I think a lot of us are this way but we become too blind to recognize it. We get so wrapped up in our respective jobs that we put things off or make costly mistakes.

It is very likely that you are overlooking a lot of potential in your business, too. Recognizing the ailment is an important step to recovery. Don’t be a “Jeff”! Putting things off will often make for a much longer recovery.

Tylenol Cyanide Murders Reflected in Social Media

In 1982 when the world heard that somebody had laced Tylenol products with potassium cyanide, many people were terrified to take a Tylenol for their headache for fear it would kill them. Some caution was in order, for certain. I remember my mother dumping out any Tylenol we had in the house after watching the reports on television. Was it realistic to believe we actually had laced Tylenol in our own home? Probably not, but similar types of unrealistic caution and chaos are still happening every day in social media. Can you imagine how many more people would have been trying to capitalize on those news stories if Twitter was around back then?

The Tylenol cyanide murders of 1982 changed a lot of consumer views. If you don’t believe me, just take a look at the packaging of nearly any product. Before 1982, product packaging was much less secure. Many products could easily be tampered and you would never know it. This created a lot of change in the world, and it resembles changes that we see in social media. From location-aware service causing home burglaries to swine flu (H1N1) killing millions, to social media marketing, the Internet is wrought with fear-selling. I will give you some examples and hope you see the similarities.

Location Aware Social Media

There have been a handful of reports of people’s homes being burglarized after they made a Foursquare, Twitter, or other social media service update while away from home. This is a very personal matter that I neither strongly advocate nor oppose, but as an observer, I think the reactions are a bit overzealous. All of the sudden, there is a huge wave of concern for home security making headlines. It didn’t take many burglaries to see a mob mentality take shape and for people to use fear to spread a message. A smaller number of people made the point that only because you make an update away from home does not mean that nobody else is home. Even fewer made the point that it may be better to be away from home while the burglar is at work.

Swine Flu Put Twitter Over Capacity

I blogged about the Swine Flu (H1N1) spread on Twitter very early, on 25 April 2009. It was an amazing case of how quickly things can be passed along, but also how little vetting and how much corruption can happen in communications. I also wrote about concerns of real-time social journalism vs. professionally vetted journalism. Fears are easy to promote, while facts are often a bit harder to produce.

Social Media is a Great Marketing Tool

When the world heard that social media is a great marketing tool, the masses rushed in. It seems that every public relations rep, advertising rep, or SEO who was starving in their line of work decided to starve selling social media services instead. Note that those fields are not dead. There are still successful PR firms, advertising agencies, and even SEO who do not sell social media consulting and marketing services at all. Although each of these services are deeply intertwined, many of the people who made significant efforts to focus on social media above their previous focus did so because they were already at a low production level. It seems that since many of them saw a bunch of people talking about their business on Facebook, they signed up for everything they could get their hands on and hung their shingle as a social media expert. That should get them rich beyond all belief, right?

This can initially create more of a problem than a solution for the industry. It creates great challenges for people to filter quality. At the same time, there is the positive side, in that it causes the cream to rise to the top, so to speak. Business uses the same law of nature that we call “survival of the fittest” and the weak will starve and eventually die.

As we wait for the weak or less talented to die their slow miserable death, we endure these times of turmoil. Saying that anybody can provide a justifiable service to a company in social media is like saying that any guy off the street can be Tom Brokaw or Walter Cronkite. Sure, they can report something, and they can even make it believable, but is there a sustained value? We shall see, but in the end, I believe it all comes out well.

In the famous words of Walter Cronkite, “… and that’s the way it is.”

The bounce rate of a website, or of any given page, is an important measure of whether you have captured a reader’s interest enough to click and visit another page on your site. It is more important to some types of sites than others, and is often dismissed by considerations of the ratio of returning visitors to new visitors, but it should not be ignored. I know a lot of people understand bounce rate, but I still thought it was worth blogging about because you should hear it from somebody, and maybe I will give you a different angle on this.

Does Bounce Rate Affect Search Engine Rankings

The answer is no … and yes. Although bounce rate is purportedly not used in the ranking algorithm of Google or other search engines, some people will still try to insist that it is. I have heard arguments that even if Google used it, they would keep it very secret because it is too easy to cheat in the ways people have cheated to have higher Alexa rank. I think it is worth considering what Google has to say about bounce rate, and how true it is. According to Google’s Matt Cutts, it is “Spamable and noisy” data, and I agree. There are many things that can cause a higher or lower bounce rate that it is not useful as a single measure and requires other factors to become useful data. The ways that bounce rate can affect search engine ranking are outside of the search engine algorithms, and come down to how useful your site is to people and if it is not useful, they are probably not linking to it. Bounce rate is a symptom and not a cause.

Bounce Rate Factors

Bounce rate is subject to many different diluting factors, and a good example is Wikipedia. If I search for something and I find the answer at Wikipedia, I will likely not visit another page in that same browser session, thus creating a “bounce” for Wikipedia. This is an example of a high bounce rate being a good thing, because I did not need to click around to find my answer. I found it, Wikipedia’s job was done well, and I will still return often. There are a lot of things which may cause a high bounce rate, and it is not all bad. This does not mean you can ignore it, though.

You really should not ignore your bounce rate, because it can still play a role in your SEO efforts and make a difference in your rankings for other reasons. For example, if your bounce rate is on the rise but your site has not changed, it would be best to determine why before you start losing people’s interest any further. Is the information less relevant than it once was? If so, you really should pay attention to this. If people lose interest, they will probably stop returning to your site, linking to your site, and sharing it with others. If it is a blog, maybe you need better content, or maybe the content is so good that they come back every day to read more. Whatever the instance, you should be measuring this and know the answer. An important measure is not only whether the bounce rate is high or low, but whether it is changing.

How Bounce Rate is Calculated

Bounce rate of a website is calculated based on the total number of visitors of only one page in a session divided by the total number of visits to the site. Because it is based on a “session” there are several ways a bounce can occur. Things that can cause a bounce are clicking a link to another site, closing the browser window, clicking the back button to try their search again, or a session timeout, which could mean they just left your page open and went to lunch.

Don’t Bounce Me Just Yet!

I did mention the ratio of returning visitors to new visitors. If you have a high bounce rate, but you still have a very high number of returning visitors, it is easy to be relaxed about this. There are a lot of instances where a high bounce rate can still be a sign of potential improvements, such as emphasizing a further call to action. If you give people a reason to stick around right now, you will also improve your chances of a return visit, that they will bookmark your site, subscribe to your blog, or better yet, share it with friends.

The bottom line is that if you are not doing all that you can to make your website more useful, you are leaving the doors open for the competition. Knowing your bounce rate and knowing why it is high, low, or on the move can be a good step in the right direction.

By the way, while you are here, you may like to take a look at my “Recent Articles” listed to the left of the page. I would also invite you to visit the list of articles in my blog archive. I have worked very hard to make it useful for you.

Tag: seo