seo pricing Archives - Page 2 of 3 by Mark Murnahan

SEO For Hire: The Worst Job for an Honest Person

I have been in the business of SEO (search engine optimization) for over a decade, and it has provided me a very handsome living in that time. I fell in love with the SEO field with the excitement of having nearly anything I ever really wanted listed at the top of search engines reach the top, and remain there. I still do that, today … every day.

In the time I have been in the SEO industry, I have accumulated so many stories of winning that it is no wonder it feels like a bad drug habit, and I am addicted. Through the 2000’s, SEO was the basis of my means to sell millions of dollars in Internet access and web hosting services to over 2000 Internet access providers and web hosts. I rocked that market and earned squillions as the CEO of a wholesale Internet services company. SEO was really fun, indeed!

Adding to all the fun and games, I have enjoyed things like a relatively small client crediting me for increasing their new home sales by over $82 million in the first year they were my client. That is like an intravenous drug to me, and hearing how many jobs it created for that somewhat small organization means that I have done something meaningful.

I have a lot of stories like these, which keep me going and keep me seeking that next “drug” high.

When SEO Became the Worst Job

I have really had a blast performing my work for clients over the years, and I still love performing the work. However, it was a lot more fun back before every con artist jumped in and said they could do the same thing for pennies, and then cheat customers out of their money. Liars and cheats have made a mockery of the SEO industry, and given people reasons to doubt the truth.

Of course, a good SEO can see right through the lies, but many business customers cannot tell the difference between good SEO and bad SEO. Although I have tried to warn many people, lies about SEO have lead a lot of people by the nose (and the wallet).

I have often said that business is great, if not for all of these damn customers.

For much of my career in search engine optimization, I have worked as the man behind the curtain, as a sub-contractor for other firms. That is largely because I have often felt, and said that “business is great if not for all of these damn customers.” What I mean by that phrase is that in a field where I am quite deeply engrossed and knowledgeable, it can be very challenging to bring SEO down to a level that people will relate to and understand. I am simply not a good person to ask if it is helpful to be listed in the top of search listings when somebody searches for something in your industry. I am a really bad guy to ask whether marketing is a commodity and if everybody can do it just the same.

I have written my thoughts of dealing with prospective clients who do not understand, nor wish to understand, what it takes to develop really effective SEO and social media marketing. I believe I said it well in an article titled “When I Go to Hell, They Will Have Me Selling SEO“.

SEO is Like a Drug Habit, and I May Relapse

Although I may have a relapse from time to time, I have finally decided to set a course to end my services for hire by mid-2011, in order to focus on other endeavors. As I have indicated, SEO is like an addiction to me, so I know that if I do not actually say it in public, right here on my blog, I will probably never quit it.

The fact remains that the field of performing SEO for clients has lost much of the joy. I am tired of having people return to me for cleaning up the messes of another SEO after they decided to go with the cheap guy with a pocket full of fairy dust. More than that, I am tired of defending the truth while realizing that the truth is not what people really want.

For the past couple years, I have sought to gain retail clients to work with directly. I decided to take on a small group of clients who understand what it really means to build success. The ignorance (don’t know), apathy (don’t care to know), and dishonesty (will lie about it) that I have witnessed in the last couple years have caused me to lose much faith in the SEO industry and in the popular business mindset of the day.

Unfortunately, I find that far too many business people are not interested in creating real success when they can settle for just getting by. As a web guy who really does care about delivering results for a client, I have decided that the ignorance, apathy, and dishonesty of the SEO industry, and much of the SEO shopping public are not worthwhile to me.

I am tired of explaining the difference between doing something, and doing something well. Being able to prove results and giving factual proven data, but then having people too indifferent or scared to take the best actions for their own benefit drags me down and quite honestly makes me very sad. I see the actions of the large number of businesses who reach out to me as a microcosm of what is wrong with our business world and our economy today.

There are still a lot of myths to bust and lessons to teach, so I intend to continue blogging on topics of the SEO and social media marketing industry, for now. Besides, I still plan to perform search engine optimization.

Maybe once I officially do not take clients, people will have more trust when I say that the majority of what you hear about SEO and social media marketing is bullshit. It actually does require work, and it actually does require marketing talent to build success.

Your comments and/or well wishes are welcome here. If you can relate to this, I would love to hear your stories! If you would rather throw tomatoes at me, that is just fine as well.

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Enterprise SEO Services: How Enterprise Justify SEO Cost

Enterprise SEO Sounds Great: But What is Enterprise?

I often find myself visiting with everything from small emerging SEO clients to mid-market SEO clients and large enterprise SEO clients. A commonality I find is that each of them have a hard time justifying the initial cost of SEO services, but I want to help explain how they are able to do so. In each instance, there is a clear understanding that they need SEO. After all, it is what makes them visible to more people searching to buy what they sell. Let’s not get silly and start questioning whether SEO works or not.

We surely all know that SEO provides an excellent return on investment when it is done just right. If you don’t know this already, there are a squillion solid case studies to back it up. If you are reading this, you know very well that it works. I wrote this and SEO’d it for you, and now you are here to read it, so let’s not be coy. You want more people to see your brand and your value proposition, and this is something that enterprise search engine optimizers do well. The challenge lies in how to justify the stroke of a pen that puts your money into the SEO’s bank account. So let’s look at that and consider how everything from the enterprise SEO service level all the way down to a “let’s fail fast and get it over with” marketing budget is justified.

What is Enterprise SEO?

Let us first look at the term, enterprise SEO. What does it really mean? Somehow the word enterprise has been used to define an elite level of businesses that spend a lot of money on marketing and have thousands of employees in huge skyscrapers. Let’s put that definition of enterprise to bed right now, and start looking at this a bit differently. I like the definition provided by Princeton University which states as follows:

Enterprise: “a purposeful or industrious undertaking (especially one that requires effort or boldness)”

Using this definition, it seems more obvious how we can categorize SEO and create a description of “enterprise SEO” as opposed to other SEO … call it “hobby SEO” or maybe “wasteful SEO”. This is because, as the definition describes, it is a “purposeful or industrious undertaking”, which is too often not the case at all with SEO. I often witness huge errors when the initial cost of SEO overrides the value of good SEO. I mean, let’s consider this: If you are shopping around for search engine optimization services, are you likely to look for the SEO with the highest cost, or the one with the lowest cost? If you do not recognize this as an absurd question, you should. If low cost is the biggest deciding factor, you have it all wrong. Instead, I want you to imagine seeking the search engine optimizer with a better strategy and a bid that you can justify to yourself, your company board members, your wife, or whomever you answer to.

Tragically, the initial cost of SEO is a big factor to a lot of people, while the “effort or boldness” part of the enterprise definition is devalued due to fear of loss overriding expectation of gain … even when it is substantiated with logic. I stand behind what I said in the article “Fear Affects Success in Marketing More Than Logic“, because I know from experience that it is true.

Common View of Enterprise SEO

Considering a common view of enterprise SEO, it is easy to imagine a team of bright and creative marketers gathered in a meeting room providing consultation to the big company’s internal SEO staff. They craft plans based on a lot of facts and figures, they meet repeatedly to define objectives, they strategize at great length, and they carve out a huge piece of marketing budget justified by real-world estimates based on known variables. Then it is time for implementation on a grand scale to put all of those great plans into profit-producing action.

Enterprise SEO starts to look really costly, but the risks also start to look smaller with all of that valuable data and planning. Most people agree that search engine optimization would be a whole lot easier to justify in this scenario of the enterprise-level SEO campaign. After all, it is no longer a unicorn hunting expedition or an elf-chase … it is a real-world Internet marketing campaign. Large enterprises like Amazon.com, Intel, Pepsi, and eBay would not spend all of that time, effort, and money if it did not improve their bottom line. An important question is how to bridge the huge gap between your efforts and enterprise-level SEO efforts responsibly and without waste?

Bridging Unicorn Hunting SEO and Enterprise SEO

A big difference between the large-scale enterprise SEO campaign and lower-level efforts is how far it is pushed to the point of diminishing return. Let’s look at the bell curve and understand that enterprise SEO strives to reach the top of the curve or a little beyond, while cautious SEO is generally at the very bottom of the curve before the big rise. In any market, and in any medium, there is a point of optimum value to the company. While many smaller or fearful companies are out to “test the water” with their SEO campaign, the bold and purposeful enterprise is pushing forward as closely to the point of diminishing return as possible with their SEO, and often just a little beyond it. All the while, the cautious company is often only reaching the beginning of the curve and wasting time and money. In the process of either instance, much efficiency is lost along the way. There must be a good balance, and reaching that balance is where SEO is most successful.

The reality is that either level of SEO includes largely the same processes, while one is a matter of taking it to a higher “enterprise level”. At the enterprise level, the data samples get larger, the depth of market research is greater, the manpower is increased, and the action steps are more defined, but it requires the same overall steps and makes use of the same or similar skills and tools. Most waste occurs by failing to optimize the optimization.

Too minimal effort with SEO is the most common problem I find with companies. When they barely reach the edge of the bell curve, it is easy to give up early and assume it was all a waste of time and money. This is all because it was not performed with the “effort or boldness” within that definition of enterprise.

I see it more often than not that SEO proposals are dreadfully flawed on the side of what appears to be caution. It seems so much easier to ask for a smaller dollar amount and present a low-cost (and therefore low-results) plan. The same problem is seen by companies going to a bank for a loan and seeking too small amount of money. They are often turned down because their plan is flawed by seeking too small of an investment. If you doubt this, just ask any Small Business Administration financial assistance person, accountant, or commercial loan officer about downsides of underestimating. Businesses trying to work with too small of dollar amounts are very often doomed to fail, and all because they equate less money with less risk. In the real world, it just isn’t this way. Thinking too small is a common precursor to failure. You can take my word for it and save yourself the trouble, or you can go down that ugly path of failure and learn the hard way. Just don’t ever say I didn’t warn you.

Enterprise SEO Means Less Risk

Companies of all sizes are more fearful than ever to implement effective marketing including SEO, because it requires money … scarce, elusive, and coveted money. So what often happens is that SEO companies, realizing their market, will give in and offer what companies say they want, whether it is the right answer for the client or not. In these instances, the SEO will address the client’s fears and misunderstanding about the business of search engine optimization, and capitalize on those fears by assuring them that even a minimal effort will do a lot to help. The problem here is that the minimized efforts often do not even begin the climb up the bell curve of successful market reach, and will leave the client disappointed by a lack of results. It is hard to call it an outright scam when it is what the client asks for, but it is hard to view it as ethical when it is not providing the best solution for the client.

Attempting to equate lower dollar amounts with lower risk is an easy mistake to make, but also a frequent cause of failure. Thinking bigger like the enterprise in the huge skyscraper is a good start. After all, every enterprise SEO client started somewhere, and they did not grow by thinking small.

*Photo Credit to David Shankbone
via Wikipedia.

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SEO Directory Submissions and Pink Ponies For Sale

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

Pink Pony Rental: $180 Per Month

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

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

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

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

SEO Magic Takes Research, Targeting, and Talent

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

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

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

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

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

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

Real SEO Providers Eat Pink Ponies

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

11 Common SEO Questions Answered by SEO

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

SEO Question One: What is SEO?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SEO Question Three: Can You Reduce the Upfront Cost?

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

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

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

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

SEO Question Five: How Long Does SEO Take?

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

SEO Question Six: How Long Does SEO Last?

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

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

SEO Question Seven: How Can I Measure SEO Success?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SEO Question Nine: Are There Any Guarantees to SEO?

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

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

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

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

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

SEO Backlinks: Why Most SEO Fail at Link Building

Backlink search on Yahoo! for awebguy.com

Backlinks are massively important to SEO because they reflect a consensus that your Website is either great, or it is not. Most people know that it is important to have a lot of links pointing back to their site, and some even know why … but few really understand how. I will draw this out for you and explain just why most SEO really stink at backlinks. Unless you settle in for a good read, right now, you will miss a huge lesson in SEO that you should know before you spend another cent. Get comfortable, because this is information that will benefit your business.

Most SEO Are Clueless About Backlinks

Most SEO fail at link building, and there are a few good reasons. Yes, I said most, and I mean it. Most SEO are failing at this one singular most measurable task that will make the difference in everything from customers finding your Website, to your Website conversion. The troubling thing to note is that they will often not tell you about it, and worse yet, they don’t even have a clue why they are so awful at it.

First, I will explain the couple of terms I use here and how they work for you, since I know everybody is not totally into SEO the way I am. SEO stands for search engine optimization (interchangeable with search engine optimizer, like me).

SEO is a whole lot more than just making sure you are at the top of the list when people search for what you offer. It goes much deeper, and it has a whole lot to do with another important and misunderstood term. Conversion! Oh, you’ve heard the term, right? In my most simple way of explaining conversion, it means converting searchers into clickers, clickers into buyers, and buyers into raving fans who will take your business to a totally different playing field. Conversion does not mean you conned another sucker into buying your stuff! Conversion could be said to mean that you are converting your business from an “also-ran” to the lead in the race.

Link building, as I am discussing it here, does not mean asking your cousin Sally to add a link to your site about insurance from her site about landscaping. When I say link building, I mean valuable, sustainable proof that you are serious about your business and that other people recognize this fact.

SEO Often Lie About Backlinks!

Now for backlinks; a backlink is what you have when somebody links to your site. It seems simple, right? Every joker who sends you an email offering to sell you backlinks for $49 knows that term. It means a squillion people will come flocking to your Website and enter their credit card number to snatch up your massively important stuff before you change your mind and raise the price. Yeah? Well … NO! This is the way a lot of SEO will explain it, but then, people lie … even on the Internet. By the way, why are they emailing, and why do their Websites never have more than a couple backlinks? I actually think it is not always just a mean-spirited lie, but more because they see this huge market and they are desperate to grab their piece but not willing to learn before they sell it to you. They are trying to earn as they learn, and the customer is often a victim.

Build Backlinks With Talent and Trust

When you have quality backlinks it tells Google and other search engines that others place a trust in you and they like your site. It is a democratic process. It is often faked, just like any other democratic process, but what sets you apart is that you are up for re-election today, tomorrow, and every day. Your business cannot afford to mess this up, and a bad fake in this democratic process can get you banned from search engines and waste a whole lot of your money. The biggest portion of the cost is the money you didn’t earn because you were wasting time with what did not work and your competition got the business.

If you take a creative and well-considered approach to your business and your Website, backlinks are simple. I never asked anybody to link to this site … not even once. I did not have to. I provide information that people want and can use to their benefit. People link here because they trust the content and they believe that others can benefit from it, too. This is the mentality it takes to build backlinks that matter. This is the kind of backlink that is relevant to those people looking for you, and a whole lot more likely to give you that conversion you are seeking. It is the kind of backlink that the SEO who sees you as a meal ticket will never create, because their mind simply does not work that way.

Trust and familiarity can build a whole lot of backlinks. Branding takes time and it takes purpose. When you do it right, you build great relationships. Here is an article that explains the difference that trusting relationships make in SEO and social media marketing: “How the Big Dogs Get Paid”. Have a little faith. I would not link to it if I didn’t think it would benefit you.

How SEO Sucker People: A Simple Explanation!

How does this happen that SEO sucker people out of their money? It is another blog post all together, but it is too commonly because the nature of need, greed, and fear tells people that they should seek the lowest cost in their business. They are out to make money without spending money. They want what sounds great, but for the lowest upfront expenditure. The first SEO to claim that they can do all that those other guys do for a fraction of the cost gets the money. What you should consider is that old saying that you get what you pay for. I would add that sometimes you don’t even get that.

If you are needy, greedy, and scared, do not cry to me or the other SEO who take the job of marketing your business seriously. Until you can get over the anxiety for grabbing fast money from the Internet, you are probably not ready for SEO performed correctly. If you take your business seriously and consider the importance of doing it right, the backlinks will come effortlessly.

Summary of SEO Backlinks

This little observation of backlinks explains a lot of reasons that when somebody asks me (as they often do) “What is your hourly rate for SEO?” I explain that they are asking the wrong question. The cost of SEO does not boil down to hourly rates for SEO or even how much money you wave goodbye to upfront. It comes down to how you look at your business and whether you only plan for tomorrow or plan to take your business to the head of the race. If you want to know my hourly rates, just Google it. If you want some free SEO lessons, go ahead and Google SEO lessons and find out if those backlinks I write about really matter.

If you want it done well, stop and think about these things and bring your lunch money. Doing SEO well does not mean doing it cheap. Real SEO means that you are in business and that you can swim with the sharks, and not that you are just willing to test the water.