Why I Talk Most Folks Out of SEO Projects

Agree with Mark article below--- some accounts might not be the best for your firm and we need to learn to move on.

Why I Talk Most Folks Out of SEO Projects

Mark Jackson, August 13, 201221 Comments

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After reading that headline, perhaps you’re wondering to yourself, “has Mark lost his mind”?

The answer? Not yet.

I've been involved in search engine optimization since March 2003. In that time, I have seen every angle and talked to just about every type of SEO prospect that there could ever be. One thing that hasn’t changed much, unfortunately, is that there are still a ton of people who are trying to engage in SEO, but hardly even know what SEO stands for.

Case in point:

Had a call this week with a prospect. Prior to the call, I had run a few reports and did a little research/digging around, so that I could be prepared to take them through what I believed to be “reality”.

One of my first questions on an initial sales call is “what are you trying to achieve?”. I might also phrase this as “what are your goals” or “how will you determine ‘success’”?

The answer? “I want 5,000 hits per month”.

Once I corrected them on what I believe they meant “5,000 unique visitors”, we moved on to what I thought it might take to grow traffic to those levels, and whether I believed that a sound ROI (that stands for “return on investment”, for those “SEOs” out there) could be achieved, at least in the short term.

After reviewing their competitive landscape, we find that the space (rankings) is dominated by government websites. That is to say, any keywords that have any amount of search volume and are “on target” with who we’re trying to reach, have official government web results dominating the top 4-5 positions. If we were going to make any headway, we would need to (at least in the initial phases) build out content to target the long tail until we earn the right (and Google’s trust) to gain any traction on these competitive keywords.

Oh…and did I mention that this was a new website with all of three websites linking to it?

As I explained to this prospect, “this could take a while”. And, “while the perception is that search engine optimization traffic is ‘free’ traffic, that is not the case…you’ve gotta earn it.”

After years of “selling” (have I mentioned that I really don’t like using that word?) SEO, I had a gut feeling that this prospect had no idea what SEO looked like, how it was done, how it should be measured, or much anything else. Mind you, I’m not throwing this guy under the bus.

SEO can be a challenging thing to wrap your head around. It’s not as “easy” as buying traditional media and many people are still trying to evolve to the “new ways” in which companies should be marketing themselves (i.e., getting into marketing programs that can be measured and optimized).

One other thing that I knew? This guy was not going to wait months for results…he needed leads, today, and needed ROI very soon.

When you’re building your initial presence into the search engines, you can expect it to be an investment of time and money. Did you catch that? An “investment”, meaning that you’re not expecting quick returns…you’re going to invest time and money into something that you hope will one day be a sound investment and provide ROI.

Feeling that I was on the right track, I helped this person understand ROI. And, when you take into account the cost of their employee(s) working on the SEO initiative, the cost (time/money) of creating content, the cost of an agency assisting with SEO efforts, etc., SEO was not going to provide an ROI for this particular prospect for quite some time. So, I recommended PPC. And why not?

When you get into PPC, it can provide some great information that you can – one day – take into your SEO efforts. You might learn which keywords “work” (convert into leads) and which do not. You might find which ones convert better than others, and decide to build additional content into your website, based upon this information. You might find that your website doesn’t convert traffic into leads/sales at all (which is great to know, before you work 12 months on obtaining that coveted number one ranking on that highly competitive keyword).

Our industry has matured, but there are still many prospects out there trying to “get into this SEO thing” without much thought as to why, how, how much, etc…

I ask each of you out there who own/operate or otherwise influence decisions at SEO agencies to help these folks. Sometimes helping them involves walking away from money. As a small business owner myself, I know that’s hard to do…but, often, it’s the right thing to do.

Many prospects still feel “icky” about our industry. Who can blame them when prospects, such as the one above, can call 10 companies and find 8 that would gladly take their money without providing any insight on how results can be achieved, how long it might take and let them know if it’s even possible/reasonable to expect ROI?

Let’s all do our part by walking away from business that we shouldn’t take. Let’s commit ourselves to being honest about expectations and the work necessary to see results.

http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2198225/Why-I-Talk-Most-Folks-Out-of-SEO-Projects?wt.mc_ev=click&WT.tsrc=Email&utm_term=&utm_content=Why%20I%20Talk%20Most%20Folks%20Out%20of%20SEO%20Projects&utm_campaign=08%2F14%2F12%20-%20SEW%20Daily&utm_source=Search%20Engine%20Watch%20Daily&utm_medium=Email

Is Anyone Home?? A look at companies that neglect their Facebook fans

Is Anyone Home?? A look at companies that neglect
their Facebook fans
Chase Gregory
Sr. Partner
NSG Consulting Inc

Neglecting your Facebook fans and subscribers just boggles my mind when I see it happening
on pages where every “Like,” should be, and could be a subscriber for life. How do
you neglect your fans like that? You buy booth space at shows and events, tell them
to follow you on Facebook and Twitter, yet when they ask you questions about your
business on them, no one answers…..

Is anyone home?

Ignoring social signals for your business needs to stop. So many companies pitched
to social media say that they are fine with doing it in house on their time with their
employee(s). But what they fail to realize is that their employee(s) already have
a full plate, and when you catch them on social media where you don’t think they
should be, whether you think its important or not, you give them “something better
to do,” and that’s not how the best social media guru’s do their best work. They
do the best work because it really does take that extra link click on another page,
or other comments and likes on industry related sites and SM pages that pay off.
It takes thought, and maybe you need to discuss this in your pitches so the client
understands what Google calls “organic content/pages.”

If you represent your company with SM, please….please talk to your customers. For
the love of your business, if you just don’t have the extra time to do SM the right
way and with the proper etiquette, hire a third party marketing firm and start with
their lowest package that also moderates the page at least once a week if not once
a day. If you don’t, you wont see the lack of sales coming, it will just happen, and
you’ll blame your finances on poor marketing and cut social media because you
don’t think it is working. Lack of sales happens because you are not doing something
right.

www.nsgconsultinginc.com

How Manufacturers use LinkedIn to Improve Their B2B Selling

Natalie Davis July 9, 2012 Social Media Marketing 0

When you think “social media”, what sites come to mind?  Facebook?  Twitter?  While these social media sites are important when it comes to B2B selling, perhaps the cornerstone of all social media is LinkedIn.  LinkedIn is all about connecting businesses with other businesses (B2B) rather than connecting businesses to consumers (B2C).  What we’ll talk about here is exactly how you can use your LinkedIn account to help draw people to your manufacturing business and how your LinkedIn account can help bolster your sales.

How to Get Started

How well your LinkedIn account will perform depends on how well you set up your account, as we talk about in our free Ebook “Social Media Tune Up”.  Here are just a few things that we’ve put onto an easy to follow checklist to ensure that your LinkedIn account is set up and ready to sell:

Complete your Personal Profile

1. Include a Profile Picture: This is particularly important, given how anonymous the internet can be.  Even if you are doing B2B selling, businesses still want to do business with people – not faceless companies.
2. Include your Employment History: This is an important one, since your employment history will immediately reveal your expertise in your field.
3. Include your Website: Whenever possible, advertise that website of yours.  Make sure you change the name to your actual company name.
4. Include Recommendations:  This is particularly true for any small B2B manufacturing companies.  If you have a customer who wants to give you a glowing testimonial, then by all means ask if you can include it on your LinkedIn account.

Complete your Company Profile

1. Upload your Logo: Your logo not only helps with brand recognition, but it helps a customer trust you, too.  It only takes two minutes, and it’s well worth your time.
2. Add your Mission Statement: Throw your mission statement into your profile to let people know what you do and what the purpose of your manufacturing business is.
3. Add any Employees: If you have employees who have LinkedIn accounts, by all means add them under your list of “employees”.

Join Groups

1. Network with Others:  When you’re a small B2B manufacturing business, it’s important to network, network, network!  Joining groups on LinkedIn will help you build connections with people in the same or similar industries.  This may help you strike up some good business deals and relationships that can benefit both companies in the future.
2. Encourage Employees to Join:  Again, if you have employees on LinkedIn, by all means encourage them to join in the same groups to help foster relationships.

How to Sell on LinkedIn

Selling on LinkedIn is easier than you may think.  A lot of manufacturing clients that came to us in the past had yet to fully harness the power of selling on LinkedIn, but after we gave them some tips on the information below, they often doubled if not tripled their business.

Status Updates

Just as with Facebook, the status updates that you post on LinkedIn are powerful.  You can share important news articles and industry news that you feel is beneficial to anyone who is involved in your industry.  You can easily share this with your groups that you join too by clicking on the “share” button.  Your status updates will then post to all of the groups you’re a member of, and it can even sent that update out as an email to people who aren’t on LinkedIn.

Sharing your status updates accomplishes two major things:

• Networking
• Prospecting

Watch who comments.  Listen to what’s being said.  Check out the profiles of some of the other group members and see how they think and feel about various topics.

Develop a Rapport

If you’re checking out the profiles of people on LinkedIn and participating regularly in groups, then you’ll be able to find out a ton of information on them.  For example, you may find out that someone’s interests include F1 racing, dogs, and the Mets.  And what a coincidence – you also are a Mets fan and have a German shepherd you love at home.  Just having those common interests can help foster a good business relationship in the future.  A recent client of ours said that she made a great business connection on LinkedIn because they both loved oil painting and even having that one thing in common allowed her to trust this other business contact more than others online.

Key Takeaways:

If you’re a manufacturer who really wants to benefit from LinkedIn, then you have to do two things:

• Fill out your profile completely
• Learn how to sell by building personal relationships with other companies online
• http://www.impactbnd.com/how-manufacturers-use-linkedin-to-improve-their-b2b-selling/

Need Help?

If you’re a manufacturer interested in maximizing your LinkedIn presence, contact us today to schedule your free marketing analysis.

Posted by Natalie Davis, @natalieIMPACT

How To Use LinkedIn To Improve Organic Visibility

Sep 1, 2011 at 1:14pm ET by George Aspland

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I was recently doing some link building for a client and noticed that a LinkedIn profile for their top competitor appeared in the listing of strong incoming links in one of the review tools we use.

But our client also has LinkedIn profiles pointing to their website, so I wondered, why weren’t those links appearing in the strong link listings too? So, I set out to look at the differences that might affect the strength of incoming links from LinkedIn.

In this article, I’ll cover a couple of steps you can take to help improve the visibility of your LinkedIn content with search engines as well as within the LinkedIn community, increase the exposure of your LinkedIn updates, and improve traffic to the Web content you point to in LinkedIn updates.

It’s important to realize that LinkedIn isn’t only for B2B. It’s effective for any company to network with connections in the industry, with vendors and partners, to find resources, for recruiting, etc.

Setup A LinkedIn Company Page

One of the main differences between our client’s LinkedIn Profile(s) and the profiles of that top competitor was that their competitor has a LinkedIn Company Page with employees associated with it. Our client has some employees with profiles that link to their website, but they do not have a Company Page.

What are LinkedIn Company Pages?

From Linkedin: “Company Pages are a company’s profile of record on LinkedIn and a powerful way to speak to millions of professionals through word-of-mouth recommendations and trusted testimonials. It’s like a LinkedIn profile for a company.

Company Pages present an opportunity to reveal the human side of your company. Provide a peek at the individuals behind your brand and highlight how members use your products.

As an example, here is Search Engine Land’s LinkedIn Company Page.

How To Setup A Linkedin Company Page

A current employee whose position is listed on their own LinkedIn profile can setup a Company Page. You’ll need a company email address (e.g. john@companyname.com) that is one of the confirmed addressees on your LinkedIn account.

Start here and follow the steps to setup your Company Page.

Here are some helpful resources about Company Pages:

LinkedIn Learning Center article on Company Pages

LinkedIn FAQs about Company Pages

Associate Employees With Your Company Page

Once your company page is setup, have some of your employees associate their LinkedIn profiles with your Company Page.  Here are the steps to associate a profile with a Company Page:

1. Click Profile at the top of your home page.
2. Click Edit next to your current position at the company.
3. Click the Change Company link.
4. Type the full company name.
5. Select the correct company name from the dropdown list.
6. Click Update.

Have Your Employees Optimize Their Public Profiles

Having your employees optimize their profiles helps make the content on their profile more visible to others within the LinkedIn community and with search engines.

Here are the steps to optimize a profile:

Login to LinkedIn.

Hover over your profile name in the upper right corner of the profile screen and choose Settings

Hover over profile name and choose Settings

In the Settings section, choose “Edit your public profile“

Choose “Edit your public profile “

Check “Make my public profile visible to everyone”. Then select as many of the options below as you are comfortable with.

The Headline, Summaries with specialties, Additional Information / Websites are helpful for search results.

Check “Make my public profile visible to everyone”. Select Options

Have Your Employees Share Your Updates On Their Profiles

When you have important updates to share ask some or all of your employees to post the update on their LinkedIn Profiles.

For example, when you want to announce that helpful video you put up on YouTube or that great how-to article that was just published (such as we talked about last time in The Guide To Effective Article Marketing ) ask your employees to Share the Update on their profiles with a link to the content:

1. Paste the URL to your content in the Linkedin “share an update” window.
2. Then overwrite the URL with a note. After you see the snippet of the content in the window below you can erase the URL and put a note in:

Share an Update on Linkedin

Having employees share updates on LinkedIn can get your update in front of thousands of people on LinkedIn who may in turn share it, bookmark it, Like it, link to it, etc.

For example, if you have 50 employees with LinkedIn profiles each with an average of 100 connections and most of them posted an update about a great article your company published on its website, thousands of connections on LinkedIn, many who are familiar with your company and (hopefully) favorably predisposed, may see that announcement.

Tip: Think twice about allowing too many Automated Updates

Like most social networking sites, you can have updates from other social sites, such as your blog posts and tweets, automatically updated on a LinkedIn Profile. I’d think twice before allowing too many automated updates to appear on LinkedIn (or other social networks). I have some connections that have so many updates appearing (mostly from Twitter) that I’m afraid to say I ignore all their updates. There’s just too many.

Yes, all these updates increase visibility on LinkedIn, but too many updates may keep your human connections from noticing the important ones. I’ve turned off auto updates from Twitter to our Facebook and LinkedIn accounts long ago.

I submit most Facebook updates about important blog posts, articles, etc., manually so as not to overload our Facebook connections with updates. Plus, I can then craft a custom note about each update. I may start doing the same on LinkedIn for only our best blog posts and turn off the auto updates from our blog.

The End Goal

Having a company page with associated employees (each with optimized profiles) who are active with a large  number of connections, can increase the visibility of your content both on LinkedIn and with search engines, while giving you a effective online networking tool to communicate with hundreds or thousands of connections.

Sharing updates with these connections should help increase awareness of your messages and the Web content you link to in your updates, and possibly increase the rankings of that content as your connections share, bookmark/like, and link to your content.

Opinions expressed in the article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land.

Related Entries

• The Ultimate Guide To "LinkedIn Today" & How To Optimize Your Presence On It
• How To Use Linkedin To Generate Business
• http://searchengineland.com/how-to-use-linkedin-to-improve-organic-visibility-90219

Content Marketing 101

Content Marketing 101:
How to Build an Audience that
Builds Your Business

Content Marketing means creating and sharing valuable free content to attract and convert prospects into customers, and customers into repeat buyers. The type of content you share is closely related to what you sell; in other words, you’re educating people so that they know, like, and trust you enough to do business with you.

The primary goal is to obtain opt-in permission to deliver content over time, preferably by email. Repeated and regular exposure builds a relevant relationship that provides multiple opportunities for conversion, rather than a “one-shot” all-or-nothing sales approach.

While copywriting techniques are often applied to content created for marketing purposes, we’re not talking about advertising in the traditional sense. In contrast to “interruption” marketing such as television commercials or direct mail, content marketing involves delivering requested information with independent value that creates trust, credibility, and authority for the business that provides that value.

There are many ways to profit with content: blogging, video tutorials, email newsletters, white papers, free reports . . . and yet many people are confused about the entire concept. So, we’ve put together this quick 6-part tutorial that lays out the basics in plain language.

1. What’s the Difference Between Content Marketing and Copywriting?
2. The Three Essentials of Breakthrough Content Marketing
3. 49 Creative Ways You Can Profit From Content Marketing
4. How to Use Content to Find Customers
5. Why Content and Social Media are a Powerful Match
6. The 10-Step Content Marketing Checklist

Remember, content drives the Internet, and consumers are looking for information that solves a problem, not immediate sales pitches. The trust, credibility, and authority that content marketing creates knocks down sales resistance, all while providing a baseline introduction to the benefits of a particular product or service.

The individuals and businesses that are having the most success online tend to take an approach that involves a high ratio of valuable content that seemingly has no sales agenda, mixed with periodic promotional messages. There’s a lot more to discover about effective content marketing, so sign up for free updates from Copyblogger to learn more.

About the Author: Brian Clark is founder of Copyblogger and CEO of Copyblogger Media.

http://www.copyblogger.com/content-marketing/

How to Outrank Your Competition in Google

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Lee Odden

In order to learn about the secrets behind ranking high in Google, I turned to Lee Odden, who is the author of Optimize: How to Attract and Engage More Customers by Integrating SEO, Social Media, and Content Marketing. For over fourteen years, he has consulted with companies ranging from start-ups to Fortune 500 companies on how to attract and engage customers with a holistic approach to marketing online. He writes for ClickZ and is editor of TopRankBlog.com, recognized as a leading marketing blog by Advertising Age, Junta42, and Social Media Examiner. He speaks on integrated SEO, social media, and content marketing topics at conferences around the world including SES, PRSA, BlogWorld, Online Marketing Summit, and Content Marketing World.

In this interview, Lee talks about ranking high in Google, the best way to optimize your online presence, how SEO (search engine optimization) is changing, and more.

Do you think anyone pays attention to any search results after the first three in Google? How important is it to rank #1 for a term or phrase?

Actually they do, but as a general rule the top positions garner the most attention. One study conducted by the Chitika advertising network indicates a #1 position is worth double the traffic of the #2 position. A more recent study cites a much lower difference between positions 1, 2, and 3 but with the top spot commanding the majority of click through attention.

Before anyone gives up hope thinking that being #1 is the only goal and the seemingly impossible odds of getting there, a few important considerations are worth noting.

The user experience for the same search query can be significantly different from one person to the next. These variances are based on the search phrase itself, the geographic location of the searcher, whether the searcher is logged in to Google and past search history or Google+ social network activity. When a company is considering its “ranking” in the search results, they must understand that their experience may be notably different than what their customers see from other parts of the country and with different Google usage.

Another consideration is whether author verification is in effect for a search result. If the #1 and 2 positions are all text but #3 includes an author image, #3 is a more attractive search result, assuming each has equally relevant titles and descriptions.

In the end, the top position is best but it’s also important to optimize every opportunity to be the best and most appealing answer to the users’ query.

In order to optimize your web presence, why do you have to focus on content, social media and SEO?

Traditionally, SEO has been very focused on optimizing content and attracting links for the purpose of achieving an advantage in search results. The focus was more on search engine placements than optimizing the customer search experience.

Today’s best practices SEO focuses on connecting brand content with people that are looking through the optimization of the things that have the most influence on the customer journey. Content is the reason that search engines exist and content is also the most common outcome as a result of social sharing.  Search engines are looking beyond basic web page text and links from other websites as the determining factors for serving up the best search results and so should marketers that expect to be found online. Search and social media drive discovery of content that can influence transactions and sharing.

How has SEO changed in the past year? What matters now when it comes to Google PageRank?

Over the past year Google and Bing have made substantial changes in terms of adding social signals that can influence which content is presented in search results and how that content is positioned.  Additionally, Google has begun implementing a series of periodic updates called Panda and Penguin to address various issues around content quality and web spam that have had a significant impact on search optimization.

Google PageRank is an algorithm that some speculate has been diminishing in its influence as a ranking signal. Many SEOs are reporting a significant increase in the influence of social signals from Google+ and other social networks as a counter to the influence of PageRank.  Marketers need to worry less about Google PageRank and more about creating, optimizing and socially promoting content that is useful to their customers.

Or, is it better to have fewer more high quality articles/posts?

The approach I’ve advocated for years is a quantity of quality content that is optimized and socialized. A lot of my book, Optimize, digs into the mechanics of how to do that.

With Google’s Panda updates, there’s been more focus on quality content versus a quantity of content as the price of admission ino top search results. Understanding what customers care about and even persona development can lead to an editorial plan as the most effective way to create a continuous stream of relevant and useful content that both search engines and consumers will respond to. Essentially, the answer is to find a way to have both – especially if you are in a competitive industry.

Do you think people will rely more on using social networks over traditional search engines for finding information in the future? Why or why not?

The path to purchase is no longer linear from search to transaction. Like media coverage and advertising, social media and content are influences that drive search queries. In my experience working with companies large and small, the question is less about whether people will rely more on search or social for information, but more about what situations call for search and social visibility and how can we get them integrated to create an experience that guides the consumer along the sales cycle.

A great example is a consumer going to Facebookwhere she asks friends for restaurant recommendations. After getting a few recommendations, she’ll Google those restaurants to find their locations, menus and reviews. The search results might show Yelp and local listings as well as the restaurant website. From there she might check in to the restaurant on Foursquare, then share photos of her meal on Facebook and Instagram so her friends can see the great (or bad) food she’s having. The customer experience involves multiple influences that likely include both search and social networks. Companies need to consider both search and social networks as complementary drivers to their content to attract visitors, grow sales and revenue.

Dan Schawbel is a Gen Y career expert and the founder of Millennial Branding. He speaks on the topic of personal branding, social media and Gen Y workforce management for companies such as Google, Time Warner, Symantec, CitiGroup and IBM. Subscribe to his updates at Facebook.com/DanSchawbel.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/danschawbel/2012/08/14/how-to-outrank-your-competition-in-google/1/