SEM / SEO Companies Archives

Most of us have had the client from hell but we often don't like to talk about it. There is a Google Webmasters Help thread which takes us through one client from hell.

If you read through all 60 or so posts, you will see how hard this web designer is working to make this client happy. The designer tells us that the client was very happy with the design, and everything. But when the client didn't see their site in Google, soon after it was launched, the client was extremely displeased. The designer, who was not an SEO, came to Google Webmasters Help to help get the site listed.

The designer learned from professional SEOs and Googlers that the site was done fairly search engine friendly and that over time, the site will be indexed and ranked in Google. But it wasn't soon enough. The designer added more and more SEO changes, such as an XML sitemap, removed some flash, added some links - but it wasn't fast enough. The client then found the Google thread and threatened the designer that they would sue him. So the designer gave the client his deposit back and took down the web site.

Guess what? A day later, the web site showed up in the Google index, only to return an empty site. And now, I am sure it doesn't show up anymore.

We probably all had clients like this. If not, read the thread and you can learn lessons from this.

Forum discussion at Google Webmasters Help.

We covered this topic twice in the past, including January 2008 and December 2007. A post by Ben McKay has 80+ SEO Job Interview Questions, which may be the biggest list of questions I have seen to date.

I am not sure asking 80 questions to an interviewee is good. But clearly, have 80 questions you can ask and fine tune based on how the interview is going, is nice to have. Since we figure there is roughly 7% unemployment in the SEO industry, there are clearly talented SEOs out there looking for work. There are also many companies still hiring SEO talent, so getting the best talent should be key. Interviewing is just on step of that process.

There are many blog posts on the SEO interview, just see Google.

Forum discussion at Sphinn.

Jill Whalen, in her High Ranking Advisor wrote a piece named Setting Up an SEO Shop Overnight! Jill goes on a well-deserved rant about how SEO companies are popping up left and right, even thought the people running these SEO companies know very little about SEO and have no real experience offering SEO services.

Here is a blurb:

What I don't understand is why people think that SEO is something they can perform as a business without knowing anything about it!

Certainly I give this person props for wanting to know about SEO *before* they set up shop. But what is it about SEO that attracts people with no knowledge or skills? While it's definitely not rocket science, if SEO were so easy that any hack could successfully start an SEO biz overnight, then every webmaster and company owner could easily learn it and do it themselves.

Regardless, new SEO companies keep popping up like dandelions in Spring.

I love that last line there, too funny. SEO is a great business these days. Organic search is surpassing paid search according to Hitwise and advertisers and marketers know this.

So what gives people the right to start a company offering a service that they have no skill in? Well, it is a free world. Trust me, I see plenty of companies selling things from SEO to postal stamps, and they nothing about it. It is how come so many companies fail and how come people have a distaste for certain professions.

Ultimately, it is not about people getting into businesses they have no business being in. It is more about people hiring these businesses to save a buck and ultimately getting burned by them.

Forum discussion at Sphinn.

In any business field, making sure to protect your business from being taken advantage of through the legal arena is something that every company must be prepared for. The larger you are, the more chances you are to be hit up with a lawsuit.

John Andrews started a Sphinn thread discussing the topic of SEO liability. He sums it up as follows:

I bet you never saw this kind of lawsuit coming! As a professional service provider you obviously know you can be held liable for your performance, for negligence, and for making mistakes. You probably include something in your consulting agreements that addresses that. Your clients want assurances that you are responsible for your actions, and you want to be free to act in good faith on behalf of your clients, working to gain a competitive advantage in the search engine results pages. But the very nature of SEO is competition. For every winner in the SERPs, there are going to be losers. Are you ready to be sued by the losers?

Whenever I think of SEO liability, I always think of Jill Whalen. Why? Well, I am pretty sure her husband is a lawyer and she has been in the SEO space for longer than some of us owned computers. In addition, Ian McAnerin is very active in the forum and he has a degree in law. In any event, if you are looking for some legal advice, I might recommend High Rankings Forum for that reason.

The discussion at Sphinn is just getting started. I suggest anyone with both experience and knowledge to get involved in the thread because for many people, being sued is a scary thing that can have a serious impact on one's business and family.

Forum discussion at Sphinn.

Last week we asked if SEOs need coding capabilities based on a controversial Sphinn thread. The results are now in and I am surprised to see just about 80% of the responses said that to be considered an SEO, you need some coding abilities.

Here is the break down of results for the question, Do You Need Coding Skills to be an SEO?

:: Yes, Some Coding Abilities To Be Called An SEO said 100 respondents or 65%
:: No, No Coding Abilities To Be Called An SEO said 33 respondents or 21%
:: Yes, Expert Coding Abilities To Be Called An SEO said 21 respondents or 14%

I would have thought more would say that SEOs need no coding experience to be labelled an "SEO." Of course, having coding skills helps, but a requirement?

Forum discussion continued at Sphinn.

This article was written earlier this week and scheduled to go live April 16th.

A HighRankings Forum thread asks a question that likely applies to most professions on the web, what does one do when a client messes up your portfolio. For example, you provide SEO copywriting services and that content is used on client X's web site. Then a few months later, the client updates the content here and there and forgets to consult you for those changes. Now, when you want to show your work to future prospects, they are reviewing work that has been mangled by your client.

The same issue applies to when clients make design changes to web sites or when they make SEO changes in terms of title tags, content, and even link building. This can apply to other industries, including even building homes.

The big question is, how do you keep your portfolio in order?

The simple answer is to screen capture the work you have done. A local Wayback Machine, if you will. There is nothing wrong in taking a local copy down of the web site and using that to demo to prospects. In addition, it is always good to have a local copy, that you can use for staging the changes you made to the site, before uploading those changes to production.

Personally, I typically demo sites we built to prospects on our test servers. Why? (1) The content is sometimes cleaner. (2) I can safely make changes to the site without impacting the live site. (3) I don't run the risk of sharing real information and intellectual property with potential competitors.

Do you run into this issue?

Forum discussion at HighRankings Forum.

Two days ago, I asked our readers to vote on how important it is for an SEO to specialize within a specific industry. For example, you have doctors who only work with kids (pediatricians) or doctors who specialize on the brain (neurologists). You also have web developers who specialize in industries as well. I asked if SEOs should specialize and with over a hundred votes in already, I can tell you, SEOs are split on the decision.

I asked "Should SEOs Specialize in Industry Sectors?" and 50% said "no," while 47% said "yes." The other responses were mostly "yes" but iffy on that response.

The pie chart above shows the results.

Personally, I think there is a lot of knowledge to gain by focusing on an industry or two. Learning the history, the keywords, the way the industry works and how the trends impact Google's search results, can give you an edge. But yet, not SEOs can specialize nor do they want to, due to boredom. In addition, SEOs can be missing knowledge by focusing on a specific industry.

Remember Yahoo's Tim Mayer's famous SEO quote?

You don't bring a sword to a gun fight

He said that when talking about a specific industry that uses very dark techniques to rank well. Tactics from industry to industry differ in some search engines and specialization does make a difference in some cases.

Forum discussion continued at Sphinn.

Two recent articles sparked some discussion around the question if SEOs that specialize in an industry or two are more qualified then SEOs that do not specialize. One article was from Search Engine Land and the other from Top Rank Blog.

Lee Odden said:

Experience in a particular industry may be important on one level, but a company that specializes in a particular vertical warrants questions about conflict of interest. How can a company specialize in “real estate” for example, without working for competing firms? The biggest advantages that come industry specific experience is the ability to quickly ramp up on client key messaging and audience needs as well as connections made online for content promotion, online public relations and link building.

To me, there is nothing better then having an SEO that is 100% devoted to your site and has been an SEO in your industry for a couple years. These SEOs have the experience of seeing, day in and day out, what has been working on your site and your competitors. But if you can't afford to hire a full time SEO, then hiring a company is a good alternative. Should that company have direct experience in the industry that you are in? You can see the pros and cons to that. Direct experience means they have other clients that are your competitors but yet they know what it takes to rank you well.

So let me ask you, should SEOs specialize in a specific industry or not? This really applies to all work categories, from lawyers to web developers to doctors and caterers, but still, let's poll you guys:

Forum discussion at Sphinn.

Late last week, I polled our readers, asking them how are you weathering the recession. As it turns out, most SEM and SEO companies are saying, they are doing just fine. In fact, most said they have seen a recent spike in sales leads with a recent spike in actual sales.

As I reported then, some companies have noticed a recent turn around in business after being hit by a slow down to the recession. That same day, the market fell to its 52 week low at 6,469.95. But yesterday it rose almost 400 points, so maybe a positive sign? Who knows, this whole economy and recession is confusing and depressing, to say the least.

That being said, many businesses said they saw a recent pick up in sales. Let me give you the break down of the 130 responses.

How Is Business Doing For You Now?:
:: Increase In Leads said 41 respondents or 32%
:: Increase in Sales said 26 respondents or 20%
:: Decrease in Sales said 22 respondents or 17%
:: No Change in Sales said 16 respondents or 12%
:: No Change in Leads said 15 respondents or 12%
:: Decrease in Leads said 10 respondents or 8%

I would like to point out a comment from Chris Elwell, President of Third Door Media:

It is pretty typical in downturns that spending starts slowly in a new year. Decisions are reviewed to death before spending decisions are made. But investing in growth can't be put off forever, and inevitably some initiatives are approved.

Forum discussion continued at HighRankings Forum.

A week ago, we polled our audience asking Are You Still Offering SEO Services Paid By Performance? For example, are you willing to exchange direct payment in exchange for payment on the basis of rankings, or traffic or on revenue earned.

The majority of respondents said they never will or have taken this type of payment in exchange for SEO services.

Here is a breakdown of the seventy-five or so responses to the question "Do You Offer Pay For Performance SEO Packages?"
:: Never said 41 respondents or 55%
:: Very Rarely said 13 respondents or 18%
:: Sometimes, Only Great Ideas said 10 respondents or 14%
:: Very Often, But Depends said 5 respondents or 7%
:: Only Do Pay For Performance said 3 respondents or 4%
:: Other answer said 2 respondents or 3%

I wish we would of had more responses, I guess I should have pushed this poll more. But I do think these numbers make sense and likely represent the industry as a whole.

Forum discussion continued at Sphinn.

I was hoping to reach out to our audience and find out, via an anonymous poll, how your companies are weathering the recession.

Why now? Well, I noticed a HighRankings Forum thread that discusses some SEO companies noticing a recent "jump" in business. In fact, the new thread has three people saying they noticed a recent spike in leads and sales over the past two weeks. One explained:

I work by referral only and in the past 5 months or so, it was dead, very little came in, but in the past two weeks, wow. Is it a trend here? I'm trying to figure out why all of a sudden I'm getting all this new work? I love it, don't get me wrong, but why now? Anyone else notice the phone ringing a bit more these past few weeks?

It is funny, because I said the same thing about my business just the other day. We don't do SEO, but we do provide extensive web development services and in the past week or two, I have been going into more and more prospects, including closing some. The previous month, was pretty dead.

Heck, I listen to the financial news every day and it is very sad. Yesterday was incredibly depressing. But maybe we are starting to see the first signs, via the grassroots, that things may be turning around? Not spending money is important during a recession, but you cannot close your business down and stop innovating and improving.

Please share with us how your business is doing. Check all that apply:

Forum discussion at HighRankings Forum .

There are many ways to price your services. In the SEO world, you can charge a monthly fee, you can charge by hour, you can charge for results, you can take a piece of the action and so on. The Pay for Performance model is popular amongst some SEO firms, while others prefer the steady and secure income of other pricing models.

Search Engine Guide has a very nice write up on this model named Is the Pay-for-Performance SEO Model Still Viable? The article goes into the various forms of Pay for Performance, including (1) Pay Per Ranking (2) Pay for Traffic and (3) Pay Based on Revenue. Stoney deGeyter shares his personal experience with these models and concludes "while some SEOs have figured out how to make the pay-for-performance pricing model work for them, I remain skeptical."

There are over twenty comments on that article and it went hot on Sphinn. I thought we run a poll, asking you guys, do you still offer Pay for Performance payment models in this new economy? Take the poll:

Forum discussion at Sphinn.

Two days ago, I ran a poll asking if SEO companies implement SEO changes or just recommend changes to be implemented. Meaning, does your SEO company normally start with coding changes and upload files to the web server.

I now have the poll results, which shows the majority of SEO companies do both. They will make coding changes and/or offer recommendations, based on what their client wants them to do.

Here is the break down of 170+ responses to the question, Do You Implement SEO Recommendations or Just Make Recommendations?

:: Both, Implement When Asked & Offer Recommendations When Asked said 121 respondents or 70%
:: Offer Recommendations Only said 41 respondents or 24%
:: Implement Changes on Site Only said 10 respondents or 6%

The numbers seem logical to me. I wonder why 6% would only conduct SEO services if they can make the changes themselves on the site. I assume it gives them more control and thus makes them more secure in getting the changes they need done, so they can see results?

Forum discussion continued at HighRankings Forum.

The other day we wrote about being your own SEO client isn't easy, but clearly that doesn't stop the bulk of you from working on your own solo projects. We ran a poll, asking which would you rather do? Either work with clients or do your own work? Most of you said, you prefer to do both and mix it up.

Here is the break down of the 126 responses:

:: Both Clients & My Projects said 56 respondents or 44.44%
:: For My Projects said 48 respondents or 38.1%
:: For Client Projects said 22 respondents or 17.46%

The results really do not surprise me at all. Doing both client work and self work give you the advantage of a stable income while experimenting on how you can make yourself rich overnight. ;-)

There are many quality comments in our previous article on the topic of being your own SEO client from first hand SEOs who have done it both.

Forum discussion continued at HighRankings Forum.

Some SEO companies that I know of either offer recommendations in written form, to be handed off to the developers to implement, while others actually get their hands dirty and make the changes for the client. I was hoping to poll our audience of SEO companies to see how they do it. Do you make the coding changes or just offer written recommendations or do you do both?

Here is a poll:

A HighRankings Forum thread asks which is best and what is the best strategy. To me, it depends on the site, the working relationship with the owner and the developers and the knowledge of the SEOs making the recommendations.

You do not have to be a programmer to know SEO and make recommendations. But to implement SEO changes, you do need to know some programming, at least HTML. Plus, there are often issues and constraints that third-party SEO companies are not aware of when they ask to make SEO changes to a site. A developer has more of an intimate relationship with the site, knowing the ins and outs of that site and if a recommendation would be easy, hard, quick, or hurtful to a site. The best of both worlds would be to get a developer who is well versed in SEO to maintain your site day in and day out. But that is often not the case.

So, take the poll above and let us know how your SEO company primarily handles this.

Forum discussion at HighRankings Forum.

I spotted a pretty funny HighRankings Forum thread where an SEO is joking around that being his/her own client is not fun. This SEO said that when you provide SEO services, it is easy to tell your client to not check your rankings 20 times per day, or not to check your site index rate 10 times per day, but when it is your site, you do the same thing.

Here is how this SEO put it:

I have come to realise that I am my own worst client, what's worse is I do everything I tell clients not to do! Having finally decided to go it alone and start my own consultancy i finally launched my site on friday, I have check Google 20 times to see if I have been indexed yet (seriously, I know this is just ridiculous, but I can't help myself) and i have been checking my emails every hour!

But if you think about it, it is less about being your own worst client and more about being obsessed about your new venture. You want the best for your new baby and you go overboard early on to make sure you are giving your baby the best you can. Over time, you will become more hands off, but will you ever be as hands off as you are with another baby?

Many SEOs can't stand working with clients. Some SEOs love working with clients. Which would you rather do? Work with clients or do your own work?

Forum discussion at HighRankings Forum.

I hate it when I see companies in our industry acting unprofessional. It makes our whole industry look bad and encourages ill-informed authors to write bad things about this industry. Why am I upset?

Well, I saw a thread at Google Webmaster Help posted by a site owner who is afraid that his old SEO company will hurt his site in the search engines. This SEO company allegedly wrote him the following email:

Per your request we have shut down both of your web sites to the search engines *websiteName* is ranking fantastic on the front page of google example *searchTerm* with over 9 million competing pages you rank number 3 and number 4 on the front page your other site was ranking equally as well. You are releasing *SEOfirm* from any and all liability for your web site placements. As you know we don't do competitors so before you drop off of Google I have to go out and sign another company and once I show them where I placed you no doubt they will sign. People would give anything to have your rankings. I hate losing clients but in your case I can replace your site on google with someone else. I wish you good luck in the search engines and remember in june or july when google goes through there change it will be nearly impossible for you to return to front page...

What should this person do? Here are the things that come to my mind as I write this:

• Remove access to their domain name
• Remove FTP access or CMS access
• Remove their access to Google Webmaster Tools, Yahoo Site Explorer and Live Search Webmaster tools (here is why)
• Report them to the BBB
• Keep an eye on your links and site for the next month or two

Times may be getting tough in this recession, but to use fear tactics and threats to keep business, seems wrong.

Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.

I've been in the "SEO industry" for a long time, relative to the industry. Over time, the industry and the perception both externally and internally, has changed. I guess that happens with all industries, but quicker in more evolving and newer industries, like SEO. A few years back, I doubt many people would consider "link building companies" as being on the side of "black hat" techniques. So when has that shift been declared?

Jim's WeBuildPages company is trying to change their name from a "link building" company to a "internet marketing" company. In Jim's most recent post, he wrote that one of the most visible link building companies has stopped buying links. Yes, a link building company has stopped buying links. Do I believe it? I think so. Of course, a paid link is not always black and white. So, in order for Jim to change the perception of his company, he must of felt, let's take the extreme alternative and say, we no longer buy links. If we no longer buy links, then we must not be a link building company anymore.

If you want to make the argument that link building companies are not on the "black hat" side of things, then fine. But as Jim said in his post, "I don’t want to risk my business’ future by buying links…and if you’re worried about your site’s future, and you’re buying links, you might want to think twice." Google has come out against paid links and artificial links, with penalties. So it is hard to say that today, a link buy is not something more on the dark side of things, even if you don't believe it or I don't believe it.

But why and when did this happen? Clearly a milestone is when Danny posted Official: Selling Paid Links Can Hurt Your PageRank Or Rankings On Google on October 7, 2007. If that wasn't enough, on November 12th, the first penalties hit sites selling links, including this one. And the penalties continued. So by then, I would think it was clear, link building companies might have shifted over to the dark side.

Before October 7th, 2007 - a link building company, to me and many others - would have been considered white hat. But that has changed, changed with the nofollow attribute in 2005, changed with the October 7th announcement and changed with the real penalties coming down.

Looking back, I just find it interesting it has come to this. We Build Pages, one of the most well known link building companies decides to send out a press release that they are no longer building links. They hire top names in the industry to blog, make widgets, and get social, but do you hear of We Build Pages letting employees go? They can be retraining all their "link ninjas" in the art of getting non-paid links. But how? Link exchanges don't work, three-way links aren't as good, you can't buy links anymore - are you training them in content development. Jim said they are still going to be getting links, but they won't be buying them. It just seems very odd to me.

Some are as skeptical as I am at the Sphinn thread. Don't get me wrong, I really like the folks at We Build Pages, really. But something just doesn't seem right. I hope this transition works for them and it is sad to see it come to this, on some level.

When did it all come to this?

Also read SEO Book and SEOish (SEOish works for Jim).

Forum discussion at Sphinn.

Want to be an SEO? Well, we asked SEOs what degrees upcoming SEOs and SEMs should obtain.

The overwhelming number of responses were for marketing and programming degrees. Here is the breakdown of the 265 submissions:

:: Marketing said 126 respondents or 48%
:: Programming said 66 respondents or 25%
:: Statistics said 34 respondents or 13%
:: English said 22 respondents or 8%
:: Other said 10 respondents or 4%
:: Math said 7 respondents or 3%

The other results were, Multimedia Technology and Design, Humanities, Journalism, Deception and scamming, Special Forces, Journalism, Finance, Physics, and none needed. Some of those responses were funny.

Forum discussion continued at HighRankings Forum.

A HighRankings Forum thread asks which type of degree should a person looking to go into SEO or SEM pursue?

The logical answers, at least to me, would be either marketing, programming, maybe math or statistics. Copy editors might want to get an English degree. But core SEOs or SEMs, what would be the best degree for them?

Here is a poll, please vote on it, and you can select multiple:

Forum discussion at HighRankings Forum.

The Bruce Clay blog has had one of its most shocking blog posts in awhile -- The Lisa is moving on. Lisa has decided to move back to the east coast (she's from Long Island and she went to school in Boston!)

Since Lisa is like my favorite SEM blogger ever, I know I'm going to miss her Bruce Clay contributions to the SEM community. As Rhea Drysdale says on Sphinn, "Bruce Clay blog without The Lisa? That's like peanut butter without the jelly!" Similar sentiment is echoed on the blog post's comments, where Melanie Nathan says "This blog will *not* be the same without you."

Eric Lander describes the type of blogger Lisa has been on the Bruce Clay blog:

For as long as I can remember, Lisa, you've defined search industry blogging.

While other exceptional writers are in our space you have always written with a flow and style that no one else could touch. Your writing was the perfect way to infuse life to what I'd say is a pretty plain site design. That's not a knock either... Bruce Clay's blog remains one of the few that I refuse to read via RSS.

I'll miss your honesty and values the most. Search writers often try too hard to please the masses, kiss up to the personalities or just write what's safe for others to regurgitate. You've never seemed to be afraid to take an unfavorable stance and back it up with legitimate points

[snip]

Matt Cutts also bodes his farewell:

Hey Lisa, you've been an honest, authentic voice in the search world and I have an enormous amount of respect for you. Trust and credibility can be hard to come by on the net; it has to be earned over time. I'm not sure you realize just how much cred you have with so many people in the search community. All that and a great/entertaining writer to boot--that can be even harder to pull off, but you do it with style.

Well, at least the East Coast gets her now. In fact, I think Search Engine Roundtable would love to steal Lisa for some conference liveblogging. Are you up for that, Lisa?! :)

Best of luck, Lisa!

Forum discussion continues at Sphinn.

Patricia Skinner is a hard working SEO with a dilemma: she has run into a few clients who never paid her for her services. She spent hours working on website development, design, and SEO strategy only to be promised fees that she never received. She found profitable keywords to help companies rank well against their competitors.

But her clients never actually paid up.

Sure, you probably had your own clients like this, and most of us are in a position where we could do something that would require them to hire a reputation management firm to fix. She's not entirely happy, and she's likely within her rights to expose them as bad clients, but instead, she ends her article with a good piece of advice:

If you’re reading this and you know you’re a shifty-eyed little bugger who owes someone money for work they’ve done, be a human being and pay them before your karma catches up with you.

The discussion has moved onto Sphinn where there's a lot of good feedback with regards to what should be done.

Barry Welford says that with the Internet being more open, we're held to higher standards and that "[i]t's better to create a good reputation than to have to manage your reputation in order to control damage caused by less than honorable acts."

Another suggestion is to strongly enforce contracts. If that fails, there's a small claims court. IncrediBILL gives some pretty good advice about the courts:

If you're in the US, small claims court is your friend. It's cheap, no lawyers involved, and most people settle right away once they know it's serious. Forget online reputations, most people don't want a judgement against them screwing up their credit.

Barry adds that credit agencies will also go after people who don't pay up, and they'll take a percentage. That's also useful to know.

Forum discussion continues at Sphinn.

In a High Rankings Forums thread, forum members discuss whether they meet with their SEO clients or not. It must depend on how the business is structured (and if the client is local), but in the latter case, if the client is local and you're charging hourly, most people don't see why this would be a problem.

The frequency of meetings is also discussed. Again, the geographic location plays a role here, but it also depends on how deep you are on the project. One forum member says that if they're in the middle of working on changes, their meetings are more frequent than if they are in maintenance mode.

Some others don't take local clients at all because such meetings are too time consuming. Can you relate to that?

How many of you meet with your clients in person?

Forum discussion continues at High Rankings Forum.

The very smart Sarah Bird at SEOmoz has recently blogged about the importance of managing client expectations when working in this area. She says that it's normal for people to overpromise and underdeliver. If you run into a client who has extremely high expectations, what are you to do when they aren't getting what they want?

She says that it's important to have something in writing (a warranty):

Including solid warranty language in your client contracts serves two important purposes. First, it helps manage client expectations. Clients forget and/or misinterpret verbal conversations. If it is written down, your client is more likely to remember that you didn't promise the moon and the stars. Thus, your client will be less upset on the day their rankings drop by five results for no apparent reason.

This is a great way to manage expectations and keep yourself out of any possible legal entanglement.

If you manage SEO clients at all or operate a consulting business, this jargon is very important and it can make sure you have covered yourself in the event of any problems.

Forum discussion continues at Sphinn.

When you're in the hiring phase for an SEO expert, you should get to know a little about the potential candidate you're considering by asking the right questions. The SEOpranos blog has 10 questions that should be asked at every interview. One of them in particular resounds well for webmasters:

Can you tear this website apart?

Chance are, if they don't find anything wrong with the site, they're not ready for "SEO expert" work. That's not to say they can't be trained, but they're beginners, not experts.

Other questions include asking what types of blogs they read, how would they go about building links, how they track results to prove success, and others.

While some folks have trouble believing that the list is accurate at Sphinn, a good number of Sphinners believe it to be very useful. And if you're not an SEO expert, it definitely provides advice on how to hone your craft. You can't really go wrong with having some knowledge of these questions and their answers.

Forum discussion continues at Sphinn.

A Sphinn thread has discussion on if an SEO is worth $350 per hour. The Sphinn thread is an off branch of a blog post that portrays an SEO who seems to not be such a great SEO but is yet able to charge $350 per hour for a minimum of 2000 hours per year. Yes, that turns out to be $700,000 per year, before taxes.

In this case, it appears that the SEO consultant is getting away without providing that much value to his client. It is hard to tell for sure, because we only see a small snap shot of one specific meeting but it just seems that way from the blog post.

In any event, are any SEOs out there worth $350 per hour? I believe so. But at what point. I am not sure I know many SEOs who charge $350 per hour with a 2000 hour commitment. Normally, an SEO with such a huge commitment will come down on price - i.e. more hours, less per hour. An SEO can drive an incredible amount of relevant and converting traffic to a site. Yes, it can be worth much more than $700,000 per year for a client.

So how much are SEOs worth? Is it industry dependent? Is it skill dependent?

Here is a poll. How much would you pay a top top SEO, if you couldn't do it yourself?

Forum discussion at Sphinn.

A Cre8asite Forums member tells us his client is about to leave him for another company. The reason is because this other company claims to be a "Google partner" and proved so through a letter they received for participating in, what appears to be, the Google Video upload program.

The Cre8asite Forum member claims that this other company came in, pointing to a letter from Google that they host on their web site proudly. The letter reads:

On behalf of Google Video, I'd like to commend [Company Name] for being an early adopter to the terms of the distribution of video content online. We're happy to host your videos in our index and make them accessible to a worldwide audience, resulting in greater visibility for [Company Name] and the subjects of your video.

I look forward to continuing this relationship into 2006 and beyond.

Regards,
George Strompolos, Google Video

To be fair, it appears that all this company is doing is saying they will help them get ranked well in the Google organic results with a Google Video result for their company name. Now that is not too hard. But the thread claims this company is using the "partnership" with Google as the selling point. Google, as we know, was eagerly pushing the video upload program, see Search Engine Journal's write up on that. Dated in 2005, Google did not yet own YouTube and was trying to play catch up. They did what they could to encourage people to upload videos directly to Google Video. Now, since they own YouTube, it is a different story.

The thread asks if the company who is pitching the Google partnership bit being unethical.

Forum discussion at Cre8asite Forums.

Traffic Power is the name of an SEO company that most SEOs probably still remember. They sued Aaron Wall of SEO Book for writing about their SEO practices. You can see the details of that civil lawsuit over here.

Well, Traffic Power is back in the news. SEO Company CEO Arrested, Jailed: Accused of Foreclosure Scam from Search Engine Watch reports that Traffic Power's CEO, Matt Marlon, was accused of a major foreclosure scam in Las Vegas. The KVBC News reports Marlon was "accused of preying on those who were about to lose their homes."

At least sixty valley homeowners thought Marlon could help them. He offered to save them from foreclosure. "He would locate victims by doing a search of the public records on the Recorder's Office (website) for notice of default that are recorded then contact the victims saying he was interested in purchasing your home," Ellsworth explains.

"He'd come to the house with a notary in tow," Ellsworth continues. "He'd give them documents saying he'd take care of everything. Take care of the payment, take care of paying off the mortgage and I'll pay you some cash too. He'd have them sign a contract of sale."

Shocking!

The Aaron Wall vs. Traffic Power lawsuit was actually a beautiful thing. The SEO/SEM community go together and backed Aaron with their support including money, links, advice and guidance. Even more, Matt Cutts of Google went above and beyond and helped Aaron Wall by officially confirming Traffic Power was banned by Google, something Google never did until that date. So the whole process, although very problematic for Aaron, helped the SEO industry grow tremendously. Finally in April 2006, the Traffic Power vs. Aaron Wall case was dismissed.

Now Traffic Power's CEO is behind bars. The Secretary of State's Securities Division asks if you recognize Matt Marlon as the person who tried to buy your house or you thought bought your house, call them at 702-486-2440.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums.

I have been following a WebmasterWorld thread that has a site owner asking why his SEO company is requiring him to remove his verification code and add only access to Google Webmaster Tools for the SEO company.

Again, Site Owner A has hired SEO Company B. SEO Company B is requiring that SEO Owner A drop his verification for Google Webmaster Tools and then add SEO COmpany B to that access. But they are saying only they can have access and not Site Owner A.

What is the rational of this SEO company? And I quote:

We need to change our Google web master account due to some technical reasons, we have informed you to change the Google site map verification code. We will not be able to verify the site if more than one verification code is added in the server.

This seems extremely weird, since most of us know that it is perfectly fine and acceptable to use two verification files to give multiple access to your Google Webmaster Tools data for your site. In fact, Google recommends it over here:

How can I give other people access to my Webmaster Tools account?

Each person that needs to access data for your site in Webmaster Tools should be verified separately.

There is even a way for a site owner to manage who has verified ownership of your site.

So either this SEO company doesn't know that two verification files is doable or they are indeed hiding something. Either way, it seems way to sketchy for my taste. Either they don't know their business or they are not telling the truth about something.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

A Cre8asite Forums thread asks if a PPC company has the right not to hand over their client's keyword list for the PPC campaign they are running for the client.

For example, ABCChairs.com hires XYZPPC Inc, to set up a paid search campaign for the company. ABCChairs.com asks XYZPPC for a copy of the keyword list that they set up for the PPC campaign. Can XYZPPC tell ABCChairs.com no?

Personally, I never heard of a PPC company who owned a client's campaign. But I suspect it is possible. How so? Well, if a client only pays a percent of spend to their PPC company and the PPC company spent a month setting up the perfect campaign. What happens if the PPC's client drops the PPC company after all the hard work is done? What is keeping the client there?

That is why typically a PPC company would charge a set up fee or set up a contract for a minimum term contract. But I guess if a PPC company doesn't want to set up either a set up fee or a minimum term contract, then they can hold the keyword campaign 'hostage.'

Projectphp got it right in that thread, it is totally based on what the contract between the two parties has in it.

Forum discussion at Cre8asite Forums.

SEMPO is running a short in-house SEM survey to get more information about the "salary and structure of in-house marketing teams," according to their blog announcement.

Why a survey? There's too much guesswork when it comes to in-house SEMs.

Urban legends of someone who knew someone who got a $300,000 a year job mixed with stories of large companies looking to hire a director of search marketing for $80,000 a year, [SEMPO co-chair Duane Forrester] said.

But don't worry, your answers are confidential.

The survey is still in process and SEMPO plans to release the results in November, so if you are an in-house marketer and want to provide your input, take the 20-question survey.

Forum discussion continues at Search Engine Watch Forums.

Yesterday, Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz announced that there were big changes ahead, and he's right. SEOmoz, a search marketing firm in Seattle, has decided to take in venture capital funding. This means that SEOmoz will begin to focus on a lot of exciting projects among other things.

Rand is active in the forums world, and Cre8asite Forums members wish him well. They're really excited for SEOmoz. I am too. This should be good.

Congratulations, Rand, Gillian, Rebecca, Jane, Jeff, Brandon, Scott, (Matt: I'll miss you), and the rest of the new team.

Forum discussion continues at Cre8asite Forums.

An interesting Cre8asite Forums thread sprung up over the weekend. Miriam (aka SEOigloo), a respected Cre8asite member, has a client where he has been provided web development work over the past several years. Miriam never provided any SEO services for her client, just standard web development services.

Miriam learned that her client was using, whom she felt, was a shady SEO company. The SEO company provided services that are typically found of SEO companies that fall under the "shady" practices. Let's assume this SEO company is a shady SEO company and doesn't offer their clients any SEO value - I am not saying that, let's just assume that for the case of this article.

Miriam presented her concerns to her client, explaining that this SEO company is not providing them any value in increasing their search rankings. Miriam's client was shocked by what she learned and now understands the issues with her SEO company but she is not ready to drop her SEO company. Miriam's client is concerned that if she stops paying her SEO company, her rankings may drop.

So Miriam decided to post a thread at Cre8asite Forums to get advice on what her client should do in this situation. Should the client drop this SEO company or should the client continue with the SEO company?

So far, the responses are saying Miriam's client should drop the SEO company. But put yourself in this client's seat - it is a tough decision indeed.

Forum discussion at Cre8asite Forums.

An article about lack of research into sales pitches has Cre8asite Forums members reeling.

A new study by the Intelligent Business Group, a UK-based marketing think tank, provides a devastating critique of the performance of most advertising and marketing agencies ... Eighty-five percent of the survey respondents believe that the agencies pitching them do a lousy job of researching their basic business issues before making their pitch. Astonishingly, 61 percent believe that the agency did no research at all.

That's a huge number. The forums discussion wonders how much time members spend to pitch their SEO or SEM services.

Everyone says that they do research in some form or another whether to determine the industry, the type of product or service being sold, and information about competitors. Some of the participants don't generally make sales pitches at all; instead, people seeking services call them.

But this much is true:

The statistics are staggering but not unexpected. Too many people want to do their job w/o doing it.

Forum discussion continues at Cre8asite Forums.

A Search Engine Watch Forums thread reports seeing the first ever Search Marketing commercial on CNBC. I am not sure if this is the first ever commercial on TV offering search marketing solutions, but I have personally never seen any by third-party SEM shops.

Here is the commercial, via YouTube:

The date on the YouTube upload is from a month ago. I am not sure if it was first aired on TV yesterday or before.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums.

It appears that Network Solutions, the domain name registrar, is now in the search engine optimization. They have a page guaranteeing top search engine results or your money back.

Here are the various plans:

• You can pay $1800 and get no guarantee to rank 10 keywords well
• You can pay $2800 to submit 20 keywords of which 5 are guaranteed to be top ten
• You can pay $3800 to submit 30 keywords of which 10 are guaranteed to be top ten
• You can pay $5800 to submit 50 keywords of which 20 are guaranteed to be top ten

There is fine print, of course....

• No flash sites
• No adult keywords
• No hosting service downtime allowed
• No changes can be made to the site
• Top ten rankings in any of the 12 search engines within 10 months from completion date
• And more

If you look at the process they laid out for their top 10 search results plan, you can see a bit more. For example, they recommend their "Link Building Service package and/or an optimized Press Release" with their "Top 10 Search Results package." So right there, we see that link building is not included in the main package. They conduct keyword research and a site analysis, they write the content for you, they submit to search engines (I don't know why), they make links from your current home page to your new "optimized pages," they do reporting and then watch.

I am honestly considering giving it a try, just to see the quality of work. Should be fun. Any ideas for a site topic?

Forum discussion at Cre8asite Forums.

A Search Engine Watch Forums thread has discussion about a service one member was offered.

In short, the service is composed of two offerings:

(1) Damage your competitor's search engine rankings
(2) Protect your own search engine rankings

They use threats in their email marketing message, such as "Pay up or have your forum spammed!" and "Your forum will be spammed in the next few days" and then "Pay up to this url or have your forum heavily spam."

What should you do if you get such an email? Forward it to Google or let me know.

But seriously, all you need to do is "just hit the delete button," as forum administrator, Robert Kerry said.

The big question is, can a competitor hurt your rankings? We discussed this most recently in August 2006 and October 2006. I mentioned that Google has a FAQ that addresses just that.

What can I do if I'm afraid my competitor is harming my ranking in Google?
There's almost nothing a competitor can do to harm your ranking or have your site removed from our index. If you're concerned about another site linking to yours, we suggest contacting the webmaster of the site in question. Google aggregates and organizes information published on the web; we don't control the content of these pages.

"Almost nothing" are the words used here, so technically, it is possible.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums.

If you are in the business of doing SEO, what is an appropriate job title for you? I'm sure many of you have grappled with that question, similar to a member at the HighRankings Forums.

Tough question, really. I've seen people spend a ridiculously long time explaining what they do.

thanks for asking about something I've struggled with. I call myself a SEO consultant, but than I end up having to explain myself to the general population. You call yourself a plumber or a realtor and people know what you do. You say you do SEO or SEM and they get a blank look on their face.

Some people try to say that they work in "Marketing." Others, like administrator Jill Whalen, use a more specific and to-the-point title:

o the general population (like what I tell people I meet at a wedding) I just say that "I help businesses get their websites found in Google."

To businesses, however, I'm pretty much an SEO Consultant or Search Marketer.

Another good one is a business card with the following text:

WEB OPTIMIZATION The art and science of producing targeted website traffic and converting that traffic into sales.

What do you use?

Forum discussion at HighRankings Forum.

There is an excellent thread over at Search Engine Watch Forums that discusses how one Google AdWords advertiser is too busy these days to manage his account. He asks, what is the safest way to delegate those responsibilities to a third-party company.

For the last several years, I’ve always setup and managed my own Google AdWords campaigns and ad groups. In the early years, when I could devote the proper time, we did very well with AdWords.

As time went on and I got pulled in many different directions with other non-PPC-related aspects of the business, ROI declined. I sense that Google AdWords could still work very well for us, if someone competent would just put in a good 10-15 hours/week.

So I’m looking to outsource this task.

There is some excellent feedback in the thread.

(1) Agency reputation is critical. Speak to people in the SEM community, do searches, speak with their clients, try to track down past clients, just get as much information about the SEM company that you can, so you can be comfortable with your decision. If you are second guessing yourself, you will probably end up spending more time reviewing the work of the SEM company than just doing it yourself.

(2) The Google AdWords interface does not enable someone to view the full credit card number, after it has been entered. So you do not need to worry about your credit card getting into the wrong hands. However, most PPC companies will put the bill on their credit card and then bill you at the end of the month for the spend.

(3) If you want to test the waters with the company, maybe set the daily spend lower than you normally would. One thing is that this may restrict the PPC company from strutting their true potential.

(4) Sign a legal contract detailing everything you are worried about and then some. Spend amounts, daily budgets, keywords, and so on.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums.

A WebmasterWorld thread revisits an old topic and debate on if SEOs should request from their clients a site credit link. You know a link that says, "services provided by Company ABC."

We covered this topic in November 2006; Should Search Engine Optimizers Request Site Credit Links? and my personal thoughts were:

I am not sure which way to go on this. I see both sides. In my opinion, I think, that it is up to the client.

As we noted, Google themselves recommend:

You should never have to link to an SEO.
Avoid SEOs that talk about the power of "free-for-all" links, link popularity schemes, or submitting your site to thousands of search engines. These are typically useless exercises that don't affect your ranking in the results of the major search engines -- at least, not in a way you would likely consider to be positive.

Quadrille recommends that if you do link your client site to yours, you should nofollow those links.

Marcia said she sees "nothing wrong with "consulting services" in the anchor text back."

Good, old, debate that will continue for a really long time.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

A topic that is often revisited in Search-related forums is how to pick the right SEO company. This is a subject that would fit just as easily in other industries' forums, as business owners are constantly wrestling with how to best pick service-providing vendors. Since SEO is still a relatively new field in consulting, it is possible to find people that may seem to know as much about the subject as others, but in fact are lost in tactics that were successful years or even months ago and no longer carry much value.

A recent thread at Cre8asite Forums started with a member asking how to find a good SEO in the Denver area. Moderator Bill Slawski (bragadocchio) started off by suggesting local resources such as the Denver-area Craigslist. He also asked exactly what he was looking to accomplish, which is an important question to help determine of the need to outsource actually exists.

Li Evans (storyspinner) ads a good point, agreeing with Bill that looking local first may be the best method for finding someone you can work with face-to-face.

Have you contacted your local Chamber of Commerce? …Being from a small town upbringing I'm a big proponent of using local folks - sometimes the best people aren't the biggest or the priciest. A lot of time you can really find a "diamond in the rough"

If someone is worried about getting into SEO, it is best to try and schedule a face-to-face meeting in order to get a feel for the vendor that may prove priceless. Naturally, if your account is only going to generate a few hundred dollars a month, the likelihood of the vendor visiting from afar is much lower. The Digital Point thread goes on for quite a few posts and was rejuvenated in early December with some more interesting observations. Highly worth a read, and it includes some links to some other good resources and sites about the outsourcing SEO.

It gives me great pleasure to congratulate Patrick, Bill and the rest of the Text Link Ads team for being bought up by a bigger fish named MediaWhiz. The good news is that the folks who run TLA, including Patrick and Bill, will continue to be running the company. The Link Building Blog and Search Engine Watch Blog have more details on the acquisition.

Text Link Ads was our first ever advertiser here at the Search Engine Roundtable. But more importantly, my company, RustyBrick, has a huge part in the growth of Text Link Ads. We are proud to have helped, from a technology standpoint, in making the text ad business grow into a main stream advertising solution for many businesses.

Congrats again to the whole Text Link Ads team and those in the industry as a whole.

Forum discussion and congrats are currently at WebmasterWorld.

A WebmasterWorld thread asks, Can any SEO company be black hat free from google view? Well, we know from a Yahoo! employee's view, what makes for a Luminescent pearly white SEO.

Tim Converse from Yahoo! explains;

Luminescent pearly white: This would be a case where the SEO designs a site to show up for relevant queries and not to show up for irrelevant queries. Do luminescent SEOs exist? Well, Jon Udell is one anyway.

What about simply a white SEO?

White: The SEO starts (if lucky) with a site full of content you can't find anywhere else, and that answers a need that searchers actually have. Then the SEO makes sure the site is crawlable, and that titles and internal links make sense and are descriptive. Then the SEO thinks hard about the queries that really should pull up this content, and tries to discover if the right terms are present. Then (the hard, artful part), he or she rewrites content with a dual consciousness of the infovorous human reader and the termnivorous spider, making sure that the most important terms and phrases for the spider are present (in all their forms) and forefronted for the spider, without degrading the quality for the reader.

He goes through 9 different shades between black and white to describe the colors of SEO; Dark inky black, Charcoal, Dark gray, Slate gray, Gray, Light gray, Off-white, White, and Luminescent pearly white.

But he has created definitions. This may be the first time any search company employee (obviously Tim is not representing everyone's thoughts at Yahoo or even Google), on defining the different types of SEOs.

That is the problem. One "white hat" may consider himself/herself to be a white hat but in reality, they may just be a form of gray.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

I received this email this morning from an individual who asked, "Is the below mentioned email id belongs to any of your company official?" The email was sent from web.rustybrick@gmail.com and read as follows:

From: Rustybrick [mailto:web.rustybrick@gmail.com] Sent: Monday, October 30, 2006 1:37 PM To: [removed] Subject: Cost for SEO and Link Building

Hi [removed],

I saw your Website its quite rich in content and also ranks on some keywords i am the marketing consultant in usa and i am having various Link building and SEO projects which i wanted to outsource in India.Can you let me know about your Link building and SEO charges in brief and also the portfolio of the websites which your company have been handled.Do you also provide web development services if yes please let me know in breif

Thanks&Regards

rustybrick
Marketing Consultant
web.rustybrick@gmail.com
skype :webrustybrick
aol:[removed]

I was shocked by this, RustyBrick is such a unique combination of words, why would someone in the SEO business use that for their gMail account?

The email is incredibly hard to understand, based on the English used in the email. I emailed this email address asking if they are the official RustyBrick and they responded very quickly saying, "sorry i am not the Concerned person." He then later emailed me a gmail invite, to my gmail account?

Imitation is a form of flattery but I don't want others to think that my company is emailing people trying to sell SEO services or outsource them.

I am not sure what I can do to prevent this?

Forum discussion at Search Engine Roundtable Forums.

There are many ways to seek the right SEO company for you.

1) You can search on the keyword phrase you want to rank well for, and find the top ranked sites, then dig deep to find out who they hired (if they hired anyone) to make that happen.
2) You can go to SEO Consultants and search by a lot of criteria.
3) You can go shopping at an SES or WMW conference during exhibitor hours.
4) You can go to the forums and post a RFP (request for proposal)
5) You can go to a directory listing of SEO companies or search on "seo"
6) Go to a local directory like Craigslist

Members at Cre8asite Forums are discussing this now.

Some related topics we covered in the past on this subject:
- Outsourcing Search Engine Marketing & Optimization? Questions To Ask
- Hiring an SEM: Is it Hard?
- Stuck with a Bad SEO Company; Here are Some Tips

Forum discussion at Cre8asite Forums.

Google does some sort of update and your client's rankings fall. The client is furious and angry and ready to leave you. What do you do?

That is the topic of a thread at WebmasterWorld.

I have a seo client. All the client's keywords are in top 20. Their website is targeting a very competitive niche where they have to compete with many embassy and consulate websites as well as branded services and networked websites. In some keywords they tries to rank in top 10, there are 8 listings from embassy and consulate websites. In the previous updates, embassy and consulates websites took more top 10 listings. As a result, some of the keywords falls out of top 10, but still in top 20. Now the client threats to dump my service. Do you think their expectation is too high? What do you think I should do?

Well, if it is a "very competitive niche" then maybe the client should leave. :) But seriously, if this was due to one single update and the client use to rank well, why should they leave if they had positive experience with the SEO in the past? This is most likely the case with you and I am sure you had such cases. So how do you encourage them to stay?

I always felt honesty and a sense of caring about your clients rankings would be enough. If the client feels that you are a partner and friend and you truly care about their success, they most likely will stay. Oh, but of course, you go those who have no soul. Do you really want them as clients? If you do, SEOcritique at WebmasterWorld says you should try sending them this style of email.

Continue reading "How to Convince Clients to Stay After Rankings Drop"

A Search Engine Watch Forums thread tells a tale of what I see every now and then from an SEO. Basically, if you mess with an SEO, they can put up a page, optimize it for your name plus a negative keyword and ruin your reputation.

For example, let's say I bought a car from a local dealer and I was very upset with the whole process. I can create a web site or even post an entry on a blog with the title "Car Dealer Name Ripped Me Off." Typically, ranking well for a company name is easy, unless they are huge brands. But when it comes to a local guy or even a person's name, typically, it is easy.

SEOs can do this almost at any time and some may. Scary? Well, many jobs have their perks. :)

Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums.

So you are considering outsourcing search engine optimization, and you have in front of you a statement that guarantees you will get rankings. Should you be impressed? Should you laugh out loud? The answer is and always has been "buyer beware." It is virtually impossible to trust a guarantee of true organic listings within any search engines results page for any keyword phrase, no matter how obscure.

A recent thread at WebMasterWorld Forums has a member posting a promise that comes up about every few months in the big forums:

I was shown an SEO services offer with all the normal submission to 400+ engines, resubmission, keyword research etc. etc. etc. but with one strange new entry Guaranteed Google Listings

The bogus 400+ submissions jargon aside, this is just an invitation to disappointment, in the opinion of many of the responding members. One of the best replies came quickly from 5400 post monster TrillianJedi, who says:

Never trust any SEO (no matter who they are) that says they can guarantee you a position in the SERPS.

Personally, I feel this is not only an invitation to disappointment, but actually a possible invitation to disaster. If you enter into a business relationship with any company that guarantees search engine rankings within the organic (free) results, you may become the subject of future Google or other search engine bans, because if someone is guaranteeing rankings, chances are they are not doing it legitimately within the webmaster guidelines. OK I’ll get off my white hat horse now and let others comment.

Please join the discussion at WebMasterWorld Forums. There is also a nice older thread at Search Engine Watch Forums related to this, and you can find an even older thread back at WMW.

WebmasterWorld has a featured thread named Three Warning Signs of a Nightmare Client. I find this thread very important for most business owners to read. I have been living by these signs for a long time now and I believe it works well. So what are the three warning signs of a bad client?

"I need to do this as cheap as possible"

If price comes up right away in a phone call or email, I am not afraid to tell them. I know my company does not offer cheap services and if they are looking for cheap services, then they will tell me we are over budget. The thing is, when I give a price and then they try to pick it apart. "Well, if I just wanted this piece, how much would that only cost?" I tell them that we do not build sites in "pieces" if you want to use us, we build out the site from scratch. Now that is me and most companies do work on portions of sites. But having this policy, of only working on brand new sites, makes it much easier to say no to the "cheap client."

"I need it yesterday"

Good thing we are busy, I tell them an ETA of a few months and then they jet. Anyone who needs it yesterday, and seriously needs it yesterday, has not properly done their planning. If they have and they have the budget to cover expedited services, then go for it, if you want the stress. But often, the stress is not worth it.

"My current web designer won't call me back"

This is classic and I have fell for it in the past. I got a big brand client, who hired us and soon we learned that the design they are using was from another design firm. The thing is, any changes we want to make to the design, we had to do on our own. The design firm was not available to make those changes on our behalf. That made me think, why? Guess what, 75-percent through the project the client became horrible to work with. The deliverables were not there, the people in the company did not respond to our needs and we had a deadline to meet for the VP. What happened? I gave them a full refund and walked away. Learned a lesson and moved on. Why a full refund? That is just how we operate and we are fortunate enough to be able to do that.

It is often not feasible to walk about from a project 75% through, so it is important to look at these warning signs.

Let me be clear, after they become a client and do continued work for you. You can expect that the client may want to cut some costs and have the occasional "need it yesterday" email or call. That is expected. And since they are a client, you do your best to meet those needs. Building a client base is also about building a relationship. You want the best for your client as you do for yourself. So you work through these times with them. But before you have established a relationship with a client, they should not be asking you for the above three, in my opinion.

Continued forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

There is a good new thread at Search Engine Watch Forums named Some questions to ask when souring an SEO/SEM company. The thread creator posted a dozen or so questions that he feels it is wise to ask a SEM/SEO company in order to make an informed decision about which company best suits your needs.

Lee Odden in the thread also points to two past cases of helpful resources on this topic, one at Stuntdubl and the other at Search Engine Watch Forums.

Continued forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums.

A Cre8asite Forum thread asks SEO training- is it worthwhile? There are many ways to train oneself to become an SEO, they include;

• Seminars
• Conferences
• School
• Books
• Forums
• Friends
• Trial & Error

A great way to begin is to pick up a basic book and follow that up with a seminar or conference. Then once you get the core principles down, joining a forum and reading and sharing in the discussion is often very helpful. Make friends and then experiment through trial and error. Finally, go back to the conferences and also read the more technically written books. Rinse and repeat.

Ammon warns;

The one thing I would caution against is if anyone were considering a course being an investment to make them an instant SEO. It won't. The course is merely a fast way to get all the basic principles into your mind so that you can then set off to learn more advanced and specialized skills from there.

Does the order I listed above matter? I don't think it has to be in that order, that is why it is listed in bullet format and not number format.

Join the discussion at Cre8asite Forums.

I'll admit I like a good juicy story, especially one when crooked SEM companies are involved. They seem to have some of the most creative ways to bend the truth about search engines. There is a entertaining thread on SEW Forums about the ways that SEM companies bend the truth in order to get more business. First off, the main problem is the difference between experts and the average user. The experts are supposed to have the knowledge and information that will enable the average website owner a better chance in ranking in the search engines. When the supposed expert doesn't have this information, or has false information that he is selling, he becomes a liar and crook.

The members at SEW explore some of the "truths" that SEM companies could use to convince you of their capability.

1. With Yahoo and Google you can do Paid Inclusion and get higher ranking. We can get you in top 10 quickly.

2. Our engineers know what Google will do with their algorithm in the future.

3. Google Site Maps is a great thing to get better results in rankings.

4. Our expertise includes a SEO Knowledge Transfer session for your development team.

5. We have several Fortune 500 clients on our portfolio

6. That was the fault of an overzealous junior optimizer who is no longer with the company.

7. We have extensive connections within the SEO industry that are on hand for consultation.

8. We share a deep rapport with industry experts such as Danny Sullivan, Matt Cutts, Tim Mayer

I am sure you can think of some rebuttal for all of those. Some are really really bad representations of the truth that anyone worth their salt should be able to recognize as false. Yet some of the arguments are harder to root out the truth. Take the last one. How can you prove they don't know the celebrity ring of experts?

Interestingly enough, the fact remains that even though years have passed where these tactics were quickly identified, there are still plenty of SEO/SEM companies deceiving the public with tactics the schew the truth and disrupt the progress of those businesses on the web.

If you have opinions on the subject, continued discussion at: Search Engine Watch Forums

A WebmasterWorld member posted a thread asking how critical it is to register a domain name for longer than a year. He asks, because his hosting company claimed that registering a domain name longer than one year, will improve his rankings in Google.

First, there is no conclusive evidence that the patent that Google issued that shows how a search engine can use domain registration length to determine the 'spamminess' of a site will be applied to Google results.

Second, if it did, why wouldn't spammers who can potentially make millions a month, spend an extra few hundred bucks to register a throw away domain for ten years.

Three, it is not right for a hosting or domain registration company to profit off of this, in my opinion.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Chris Boggs, our Associate Editor here, has announced that he will be joining Avenue A | Razorfish as their "Search Strategist." This is a major move for Chris and I am very happy for him.

What is very interesting, in terms of our community, about Bogg's move was that part of his conditions in joining Avenue A / Razorfish was to remain a part of the SEM community. He has expressed to me that this was part of his conditions in joining the company. G3 Group, his previous employer, also allowed and encouraged Chris to be involved in the SEM community. I am so happy to see large, medium and small SEM companies understand the importance of being a part of the community that they are working within.

Chris Boggs not only writes valuable articles here, he is a moderator at Search Engine Watch Forums and speaks often at the Search Engine Strategies conferences. Expect to hear a lot more from Chris Boggs in the coming weeks.

Congrats Chris!

Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums & Search Engine Roundtable Forums.

SearchKing has regained its PageRank valyue for its Web site, after a four year penalty. The Search Engine Watch Forum thread, Four Years Later, SearchKing Regains Google PR has Danny Sullivan providing the historical guide as to explain why this is important. In November 2002 Google was sued over PageRank decrease by SearchKing. Since then the PageRank value came back but soon went away. SearchKing case was the first of its kind.

Bob Massa, owner of SearchKing, is a frequent visitor of Search Engine Watch Forums. I would not be surprised to hear a comment from him at Search Engine Watch Forums. Also, on a professional note, he is a wonderful person to work with.

We all know about Google calling folks to sell them AdWords assistance directly, we reported it back April 2005 when Top PPC Names Say No to Google AdWords Professionals. Heck, even cartoons were created Explaining the SEM & Google Relationship. But reports at WebmasterWorld show that since Google opened an Israel office Google is now calling Israeli AdWords customers that already have PPC management companies.

WebmasterWorld member Yelled_Boy says that Google has called every client of his (for whom he already manage AdWords campaigns) and attempted to convince them that they would do a better job then his company. He said after speaking with Mayer Brand head of Google Israel, he confirmed that Google was contacting "selected clients." Now is that fair? No, but it happens all over.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

There is a new SEO scam out there, one that seems honest and forth coming. A reported SEO calls site owners that have well-established rankings in the search engines. They warn them that Google will be banning their Web site and that they should switch over to his SEO company so they can fix the issues prior to being banned. The so-called SEO lists reasons why the site will be banned, such as some bad links (that are out of the control of most site owners) and then gives examples of other sites that have been banned, such as BMW, BigMouthMedia and Traffic Power.

The thread at HighRankings Forum documents this very nicely. After the Web site owner discovered this person was up to no good, and declined the person's services. The scammer sent the Web site owner back and email; "I make sure to report you to Google for link farming. I'm sorry. Your website will be banned and you will not be able to be found on Google not even with your company name." How professional?

Forum discussion at HighRankings Forum.

Yesterday, I covered at the SEW Blog a ClickZ article about SEM Salaries. Here is a quick summary on how much SEMs get paid based on the ClickZ article.

• Entry-level SEM position; $30,000 to $45,000 or about $10 per hour.
• Three to five years of experience; $50,000 to $75,000.
• Expert-level; $75,000 to $90,000
• Senior managers; $70,000 to $120,000
• SEM Directors; $95,000 to $150,000
• VP level positions; $100,000 to $200,000

Danny then broke out a thread at Search Engine Watch Forums he named SEM Salaries - What People Are Paying. The thread has real SEMs talking about what they get paid. A person who is in France with 5-years experience is earning $24,000. AussieWebmaster said that Amex was offering $95k base with bonuses up to 15% of salary and options. Joe Morin added that he knew of two companies with a job open for a VP of Search with a salary of $250K+ with the top one willing to go as high as $315K.

It seems like salaries do vary widely based on job requirements, location of job, and the place you work at.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums.

Wondering why you can't find any SEO company? The following article below examines the reasons why you may not be an ideal SEO client and the reasons for that. I wrote this article based on some experience I have recently with some people that I have turned down but still insist on hiring me. How do I tell me I am not interested? This is a letter addressed to the unwanted SEO client. For more forum discussion on this see SEroundtable Forums.

Dear Unwanted SEO Client,

As I see it, you have two options. One you can run yelling and kicking to the next SEO company complaining that the last one didn't like your website and you need them to sign you up at a low low rate because you don't have an SEO budget or you think you don't need one. Can you survive for a time on free SEO Handouts? Eventually you may realize this probably isn't the best option.

Your second option is to realize that while you may have a website that no one wants to work with (really, its possible), you may have no money, you have ambitious dreams that not even you can justify, and that for once you might just have to do this SEO work yourself. You will have to create and find value in this SEO work or else it will pass your by and any hopes of ranking highly in the search engines.

In the last couple weeks I have been petitioned by a couple of "psuedo SEO clients" that insist on calling me for information on what to do with their website. Now I am a nice guy and I always give new clients a free 30 minutes of my time. Sometimes more if I know they need it. I have to pay the bills like everyone else and there becomes a point when "free advice" needs to become "paid advice". If you don't want to pay for "paid advice" then move on. So the client moves on...

Read the Full Article here - What To Do If You're The SEO Client Nobody Wants

Matt Cutts write Confirming a penalty where he specifically is talking for Google in his post. He said in a bold statement;

I can confirm that Google has removed traffic-power.com and domains promoted by Traffic Power from our index because of search engine optimization techniques that violated our webmaster guidelines at http://www.google.com/ webmasters/guidelines.html.

This is not only huge for Google, in that they have started calling out names of those they ban. It is also huge support for Aaron Wall's Defense Against Traffic Power.

As you can imagine, there are many forums talking about this including;

• Search Engine Roundtable Forums
• Search Engine Watch Forums
• WebmasterWorld

A Search Engine Roundtable forum thread asks How much client need to know? Bruno in the thread tells us that his client is demanding the he writes everything out "and send that every morning with all explanations, tactics, examples, just everything." The two other responses say that a client doesn't really need all that information. They both explain that with trust and earning a client's trust you won't need to do that. Chris Boggs adds that you can "charge the client a premium for additional consultation."

I added my two cents to the thread by explaining that I have set it up at my company to keep the client in the loop at all times. Now, I do not do daily SEO work but the same can be applied from Web development work to SEO work. If I was to change a title tag from ABC to XYZ, I would create a ticket or as we call it "task" in our system. The client will get the email with the information on exactly what we will be doing. The changes will take place on our test server and email will go to the client to review the change and approve it before updating. All questions and comments about the task is associated in the database and tracked so that the client can get his "explanations, tactics, examples, just everything" about the specific task.

Of course this can get overwhelming, but 99% of my clients opt in for these emails. The rest, well they trust us a bit too much. :)

Forum discussion at Search Engine Roundtable Forums.

Search Engine Watch Forums has a thread asking members What's Your SEO Daily Routine? Now, I know many SEOs, some are morning people, some are evening people and some are sporadic. So typical in the SEO community, as with many other industries, is not so typical.

I pattern I see in the responses include;

• Most read blogs on a daily basis.
• Some devoted listen to podcasts
• Many obviously check forums
• Meetings
• Work Work
• Phone Calls & EMails

One member posted his strict SEO schedule;

8am - 10am give or take 1-4hrs: Check client rankings with proprietary tool, get my SEO news fix through my 27feeds on Google reader, and check and respond to emails.
10am - Noon give or take 1-4hrs: Optimization tweaks, link building, competition research
1pm - 3pm give or take 1-4hrs: Keyword research, web design, blogging, forums, etc
3pm - 5pm give or take 1-4hrs: New client research, optimization, meetings
5pm: Go home.
5:30pm - 10:30pm give or take 1-4hrs: Webdesign, SEO, and PPC for my own personal websites and clients

My Routine?
6:30am- 7:15am: Respond to emails
7:15am-8:00am: Get to work (few stops on way)
8:00am-9:00am (maybe longer): Blog here
9:00am-6:00pm: RustyBrick work and sometimes check forums for more stories (if time allows)
6:00pm-7:00pm: Either go home or stay at work
7:00pm-?: More work or Play basketball or go to NYC to see fiance.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums

What should an SEO consultant wear daily? That is the question posted by randfish at a Search Engine Watch Forum thread he named Dress Codes in SEO. He asks specifically;

In the SEO Business, what do you believe are the dress codes for:

1. Going in to the office?
2. Meeting with a new client?
3. Speaking at a conference/event?

For me, even though I am not an "SEO", its always nice pants and nice button down shirt. Randfish says he goes casual for all but a meeting (2). For meetings, he wears a suit and possibly a tie.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums.

Joseph Morin started a thread named SEM Hiring 101. In that thread he links to an Internet Retailer article named Searching for Searchers by Mark Brohan. The article basically describes how its hard for in-house marketers to find SEMs.

Forum Editor, Elisabeth, says that this is because most of these companies are not willing to pay the salaries required to hire top talent. However, some argue that the salaries are fair.

Should make for a nice thread if your an SEM working for a larger company.

Old time WebmasterWorld Moderator, Jim Banks's company, Web Diversity LLC was purchased by WebSourced. The press release is here;

CGI Holding Corporation d/b/a Think Partnership Inc. ("THK") (AMEX:THK - News; the Company) today announced that the Company has entered into a letter of intent to acquire privately held Web Diversity LLC, ("Web Diversity") (see www.webdiversity.co.uk), a London-based leader in paid search management and organic search. Web Diversity uses proprietary technology for online advertising campaign management and has extensive worldwide multiple-language campaign experience.
The letter of intent contemplates that THK will acquire Web Diversity for an upfront consideration of $1 million in cash and $1 million in common stock of the Company priced at 120% of the closing price per share on the last five trading days prior to the closing, plus certain earnout payments based upon the aggregate pre-tax earnings of Web Diversity during the first twelve full calendar quarters following the closing.

Now, in the past we had Jason Dowdell's company bought by WebSourced, Mike Grehan's company Smart Interactive purchased by WebSourced and many more. Plus we have seen many big names hired by WebSourced, as well as some big names leave WebSourced including Andy Beal, Pat Martin, Jason Dowdell and others. I wish Jim Banks all the best and so do many others at the featured thread at WebmasterWorld forums named WebSourced Acquires WebDiversity.

On a side note, older news at DigitalPoint forums that Jux2 Search Engine For Sale On eBay, it sold for $101,100.00.

We have all seen Web design companies that say something to the effect of, "We are too busy designing sites for our clients, to make our site professional looking." Personally, I understand that, but I think its unprofessional to have a site that doesn't represent your design abilities as a design company. In my case, we are an automation company and we have invested a lot of time automating our processes. Why? Not because we want to necessarily show it off, but mostly because we believe in what we sell. :)

So when it comes to SEO firms not ranking well for keyword phrases, what does that mean? Does it mean that the SEO firm is too busy ranking its clients well? Does it mean that they are bad SEOs if they don't rank well themselves? Does it mean they don't want the leads?

That is the topic of discussion at a Search Engine Watch Forums thread named The importance of your own firm's rankings? In this thread they discuss the pros and cons of ranking well for keywords like SEO or search engine optimization. The number of leads and that conversion rate of those leads can be extremely low. At what point does your SEO firm become a sales firm? A good discussion I have not seen in a while.

A Search Engine Watch Thread featured late last week, asks the question, Why Should a Business Outsource a PPC Campaign?

The reasons listed:

• A SEM firm has years of experience managing PPC campaigns.
  
• Automation. SEM firms have software to manage it (is that a good thing?)
  
• SEM firms can create targeted landing pages.
  
• SEM firms have sophisticated tracking capabilities and are able to specify which keywords are performing better.
  
• Many SEM companies have a wide range of marketing experience across many industries.
  
• Time...is it more economically feasible for them to employ a person in house to do this or outsource it?
  
• A dedicated consultant is more skilled at scanning the environment to determine if there are threats or trends that require incremental or fundamental strategy shifts.
  

Join the discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums.

Most companies, SEO or Web development, have had to deal with a client requesting that they give a 3rd party SEO company FTP access to their site. Basically, a client registers a new .com, that list is used by dozens (if not hundreds) of companies to pitch different online services. The client gets a phone call or email from an SEO firm, promising outstanding rankings. The client wants to go with the SEO firm but the SEO firm needs FTP access. You as the person who manages the site, as the person who has the keys to the site, are you willing to give this seo company access?

That is the topic of a thread at HighRankings forum named Seo "expert" Hired By Client -do I Give Ftp Acces, What do others do.

Let me tell you what I would do.

(1) Research this SEO company and if everything seems good on the outside...
(2) Schedule a conference call with the SEO company and the client.
(3) Then explain the pros and cons of using this SEO firm, if the client wants to proceed with the SEO firm
(4) Set up a plan for the SEO firm to work off of a development environment, so all changes can be first reviewed by me. (This can be as easy as having the SEO firm write up a list of changes or setting up a versioning system to track changes).
(5) Review changes and make suggestions to client, with client approval...
(6) Upload changes.

If the SEO firm demands full FTP access, I would tell the client to host the site on some other server (especially if it is a shared box).

I wanted to wish the following forum moderators and administrators a happy birthday. This is the list I have, so I am sure I am missing a bunch. Feel free to let me know if I missed yours.

- Respree, Garrick Saito, Site Administrator at Cre8asite Forums, who is celebrating a birthday today!
- Phoenix, Ben Pfeiffer, Moderator at SEO Chat Forums, who is celebrating a birthday on September 29!
- Black_Knight, Ammon Johns, Administrator at Cre8asite Forums, who is celebrating a birthday on October 01!
- Adrian, Adrian Lee, Site Administrator at Cre8asite Forums, who is celebrating a birthday on October 02.
- Nacho, Nacho Hernandez, Moderator at Search Engine Watch Forums, who is celebrating a birthday on October 03!

Happy birthday guys, your dedication to the SEO/SEM community is much appreciated by us all!

First it was Jason Dowdell, then Andy Beal and now the CEO of WebSourced, Pat Martin, who has all resigned from WebSourced. There are rumors being discussed at Search Engine Watch Forums & at ThreadWatch.

A HighRanking's Forum thread named I'm Stuck With A Bad Seo Company, what to do now? offers some advice to a member who took the wrong action when selecting an SEO Company.

Jill Whalen, a well known SEO, offers the following advice;

If you really feel like they're not doing what they're supposed to be doing, you should document it all in a long email to them and tell them that you are firing them. Then don't pay any longer, and move on.

It's possible that they might sue you, but if you have good evidence documented, they probably won't bother. It's not going to be worth their time and trouble. If they do, you can decide what to do from there.

If you are going to cancel an automated billing on your credit card, "You'll need to provide written notice the the credit card company, and probably state reasons." Or you can file "a complaint with the BBB often yields decent results: http://complaint.bbb.org/."

The member was persistent and reported;

After repeated e-mails and documenting problems, they finally agreed to let me out of the contract. Not sure if I can get back any of the $ already paid, but at least I'm no longer stuck with them. Thanks for all of your advice. If I hire another company, I will be MUCH more careful this time!

A fun thread at Cre8asite discusses the Top Ten Things You Don't Want To Hear From New Clients. I'll just quote a dozen or so here, the rest you can find in the thread.

Our last web designer went broke, but thats cool, we never paid him.

Its not really plagiarism, is it?

I will get the website content to you shortly.

If you do a really good job on this website, I know heaps of other businesses who want one.

Can we put something on the front page about asbestos compensation?

Yes, I've written out all my content and I printed out a copy for you and put it in the post this morning.

Actually, you know what, I think I like the orginal version better.

We'll want you to tie your system into ours, but we can't give you access.

We want to go with your bid, but we don't know where the money will come from yet.

I'm sorry I haven't got back to you for 3 months, can you re-bid?

What is this "beta test" thing? If the site is running, it's done!

We want splash pages! No, there can't be a "skip" link!

My nephew says...

know I said I wanted that bit removed, but ...

Great stuff...

One I get often (probably once a month).

Remember me? You quoted me 8 months ago but I didn't go with you then. Instead I found someone cheaper. Now I have a site, can you make it work the way I wanted?

I tend to think the title is a bit harsh, but a thread at Search Engine Watch forums named What Are Your Favorite SEM Client Lies? discusses just that. The thread creator, Todd Malicoat, works at We Build Pages, a SEO company that does SEO day in and day out. He complied a list of some lies, or as I like to say, misunderstandings, that he heard from clients prior to starting SEO services for them. I thought most of you would get a kick out of it. Others add to the list as well, here are some.

• I'm new to SEO (on third SEO company)
• I don't have any other domains (well only 17)
• I don't interlink my sites (well only 23 of 'em)
• I have a great business idea (but no money)
• I've never signed any guestbooks (only 4k blog comments)
• I'll help write content (twice a year)
• I have a good informational site (about viagra)
• I have a great business model (selling MLM loans)
• My design company will work with you (to overwrite your changes)
• I'll pay for consulting (but not when I'm telling you about my great business ideas)
• I don't cloak (well only to the 3 majors)
• My CMS system is SEO friendly (except for the session ID's and 10 versions of every page)
• We have good programmers (who know frontpage)
• It's not an affiliate site (it's a "reseller site")
• I've had good luck with 2nd tier PPC (really, it converts!)
• My site runs itself
• We've never been banned
• I have a guy from Google starting next week and he is bringing all the code with him.
• I don't care how much it costs (because I'm not planning on paying anything but the deposit)
• You're the expert (but everything has to be done the way we've always done them)
• I have no idea why we were banned - the site is clean (well, except a, b c, d, etc...)
• The cheque is in the mail (nuff said...)
• I know exactly what my keywords are (my 1 page site should be number 1 for "mortgage")

More at the thread of lies.

The SEM & SEO industry is flourishing. New SEO companies spring up each day. So what stops anyone from starting an SEO company? Well, nothing really. Since the industry is so unknown to the public, most people still don't understand what SEO really is, anyone can really start a company. Most of you know that I won't sell "SEO services" to anyone. That is just my comfort level of building out large dynamic sites that do well in search engines. We build the site and do our best to make sure it does well on all level's, especially the back-office components.

A thread at Search Engine Watch Forums named Starting SEO business. Any advice? kinda steamrolled from advice on how to start one, into why the heck would you want to start one without SEO experience. Jill Whalen remarks; "I'm confused as to why people wake up one morning and say "hey, I think I'll open up an SEO shop" whoo hoo!" Andrew Goodman follows that post up with; "He's an SEO company now! To me it just screams that he's between jobs." But Mikkel deMib Svendsen plays devils advocate; "Off course, it depends on what kind of person you are. I am the jump-in-the-water-and-see-what-happens kind of guy - and so far I survived just fine."

A featured thread at Search Engine Watch forums named What Degrees Or Professional Backgrounds Do SEO/SEMers Have?

The thread is thirty-one replies long and it makes for an interesting read. If you ever wondered what the typical SEO did before he did SEO, you might want to check out the thread.

Nacho, SEW Forum Moderator, posted an excellent thread named Suggestions for the ideal SEM/SEO RFP Guide. He offers the following questions to ask in an RFP process:

Organization's background (history, business model, etc.) Website's target audience Organization's primary goal with an SEM/SEO campaign Overall marketing strategy Human Resources: Who's involved or who will be involved? Competitors Alliances or business development opportunities Budgets Deadlines and development schedules Design, creative and content Level of risk Other: __________ [fill in the blank]

Other's add to it at the thread.

A search engine optimization consultant posted a heart-breaking story (well not heart-breaking but it does sound good on paper) about how his client fired him due to stating the facts. The thread is named Beer Google's and is situated at SEO Chat forums. All you need to read is the documented (by the SEO) conversation between the SEO and his boss:

Boss: "Mr. Holland, would you please explain why we mysite.com sucks for organic search results? Are you not the head of the SEO department?"

SEO: "My assumption is that your decision for the design department to lead the website project seriously undermined are natural position in SERPS."

Boss: "Oh I see�its' blame the design department day Mr. Holland."

SEO: "That's right."

Boss: "I think the layout on mysite.com is beautiful! The design team spent three weeks on that assume flash intro, not to mention the incredible genius of a navigation bar coming out of thin air by a simple mouse rollover! Head quarters think mysite.com stands alone in the Internet Advertising Market. We expect to win Awards with this beauty!"

SEO: "It certainly is a stand alone because it is all alone at the bottom of the SERPS."

Boss: "Your Fired! Holland!"

SEO: "What's new?"

How sad...

The popular SEO Inc. search engine optimization company who recently had their site penalized in Google and went through some controversy at SES NYC has been up to new things.

SEO Inc has announced the SEO Inc. Forums, it seems as if the first post was by "CEO SEO Inc." on April 5, 2005 about the Acquisition of Urchin by Google. In addition, it seems the first registered member registered on March 25, 2005. So it is a fairly new forums.

Forum discussion at SEO Chat under the thread title SEOInc ... they have forums!

One thing I have learned in this industry is that many of the SEOs/SEMs I deal with use PayPal in a large way. Most of the advertisers at this blog, prefer to pay via PayPal over a normal credit card. Personally, there is something about PayPal that I do not like. About every other day I get an email from PayPal about this or that, I know that 90% of them are phishing for something. I simply do not trust PayPal. Does that mean I never use it? No, I use it when I have to. Just recently, my WebmasterWorld Subscription ran out and I received about 3 emails from PayPal telling me I needed to update something in order to renew my subscription. I did not update it and my WMW subscription expired. I am a strong believer of Webmaster forums and I like to do what I can to support them. So I went to WebmasterWorld this morning, the day after it expired, and renewed there. I am glad to see that I do not have to pay through PayPal again. So I placed my one year subscription and I now await access to the supporters forum again.

Call me old school, but I just do not like PayPal.

About a month and a half ago we reported on the controversy over the SEO Inc. The controversy was over have "Expo Babes", women in attractive attire standing by the both to promote SEO Inc. Danny Sullivan was able to track down SEO Inc.'s people and ask them a few questions in regards to the "Expo Babes". He posted his Q & A session, at the SES NYC Expo Center a Joke? thread. I will just reprint the first question and answer here:

Question: Did they find in the end that it was worthwhile to have these women in the booth?

Answer: SEO, Inc.'s purpose at SES was to raise brand awareness for our company and overall interest in Search Engine Optimization as an important and growing segment of Search Engine Marketing. We feel these goals were accomplished, and done so within boundries approved by Jupiter Media for this trade show.

You, as an SEO or SEM, what does it read on your business card? Or, what would you like it to read? That is the current topic of a thread at Search Engine Watch Forums named What title do you use on your business card?

Some of the suggestions include:
Director of Search
Director of Web Analytics
SEO Specialist
Web Analyst
Internet Strategist
Web Strategist
SEM Manager
Ecommerce Manager
Chief Traffic Officer
Chief Search Officer
Director of Search Marketing

So which one would you prefer? :)

They say a picture tells a thousand words, words I and many other have been trying to paint. In the recent news about Google Stealing PPC Clients from SEMs and the Double Standards Set by Google for High Spend AdWords Customers, seomike contributed a cartoon image at ThreadWatch that says it all. Well, at least Mikkel deMib Svendsen believes so.

Well, you can't buy a person, so the next best thing was to buy Mike Grehan's company Smart Interactive. Andy Beal, from Keyword Ranking, released this information at his blog, Search Engine Lowdown. Andy says:

WebSourced today announced our continued growth and expansion will take us further and deeper into Europe. We're extremely delighted to bring Smart Interactive on board and assist them in their growth in the UK. Oh and you may be familiar with Smart's Managing Director, a charming chap by the name of Mike Grehan. ;-)

We're extremely excited to have Mike join us and are 100% committed to establishing a true presence (that means offices, staff etc) in the UK and Europe.

Mike is one of the most recognized individuals in the SEM industry, so this is not a bad move on Keyword Ranking's part. They have "assimilated" many well known names to the company in the past, but this one is by far the biggest.

Forum discussion at Cre8asite, where Kim posted a new thread named Mike Grehan has been assimiliated by WebSourced. Hence the reason I used the word "assimilated" above.

I admit, I no very little about contracts when it comes to SEO jobs. I do not sell "SEO Services", I do not offer "guaranteed positions" and I don't pitch that I will rank your pages in the top results. So when it comes to contracts for me, I do not have to worry about things outside of my control (i.e. Google's Updates, Sandbox and others). But that does not mean that I do not put everything I know into ensuring a Web site is properly coded for the engines and have an outstanding internal linking structure. But I sell Web applications and high end Web sites, not top rankings.

For those of you that sell SEO services and you are looking to protect yourself, from what you need protection, check out a thread at Search Engine Watch where moderator (and I believe former lawyer), mcanerin, posts a detailed sample SEO contract.

He warns:

Be warned that it was intended to be a very complete version - I have another, simplified version I use most of the time. This one is so complete it's been known to scare away small business people who are used to dealing on a "handshake" level.


On the other hand, if you are dealing with a large corporation or a client that is in a foreign territory, this can be very useful for spelling everything out.

Plus he is willing to explain the details of the contract if you have questions.

At this point, the contract is not downloading, seems to be down at the moment. I'll check back later.

I don't mean to get on anyones bad side about a thread at HighRankings named "i'm Kinda Busy, Can You Send Me An Email?", Anybody ever hear this?, where well known SEO providers discuss how they often tell prospects to hang up the phone and send them an email with what they want.

I would never do that personally. Someone is looking for information about how my business can help their business, I'll talk to them about it. However, many in the thread prefer and sometimes require the initial discussion to take place over email. Maybe, I do not understand the SEO business. But in my business, I need to first learn about the client, the challenges they face, and get a feel of what they are willing to do to solve those challenges.

At the end of the call, I normally tell them that I will email them with more detail, on what I think will benefit them. Not the other way around. I put the effort into the initial call. Why? Because often, they do not understand what they need, because they do not know what options are available to them.

Again, this is just me. I have enough business at the time to turn people away. But, it does not mean that I turn my shoulder. Note, I am not saying that the people in the thread treat prospects wrong, I might have read the thread totally wrong. Read it for yourself here.

Ammon Johns, someone I highly respect in this industry, has announced that he is looking to hire and (even better) train an SEM who is already well experienced. Normally, I would not post these types of things on this site, but many of you who read here are well experienced and skilled SEMs/SEOs, and I thought this might be of interest to you. This seriously can be the opportunity of a life time for many of you, I would love to join Ammon but it just doesn't make sense for me at this time. My true love is outside of the SEO/SEM field and more in the Web business automation area.

But for you that live and breath SEO/SEM, and have heard the name Ammon Johns, this is something you probably do not want to pass up. For more information about the job based in the UK and the �70,000 price tag, check out the thread he posted at Search Engine Watch Forums.

I seriously hope this does not mean that we will be hearing and seeing less from Ammon. I highly doubt that is the case.

Oh, by the way, I am also hiring two hard core PHP / MySQL developers. More information at Craigs List. I will also personally train you in SEO/SEM, if you like. :) But SEM is a side part of the job, main part is to develop robust Web based applications that automate businesses.

Just got back from the meeting where we discussed how Out-Ranking Negative Reputation Sites. Want to thank Lee Odden and Patrick Gavin for their advice and comments, both were presented and both should be implemented shortly. They will also be starting blogs, adding sub sites but no forum.

The best part of the meeting was that I was able to get the concept that PPC and Natural Search is an area of advertising that they should take seriously. The major players in the room agreed that it is important to move some of its offline budget towards online. In that; link building, site development (including a new product catalog, which is something my firm will do), PPC, and more. So it is really exciting to see those engrossed with "old school" marketing ideas, look towards the Web to revitalize things in that area.

Got to catch up with work, check back later for more posts.

Normally an SEO is looking to reverse engineer the Google algorithm. In a thread at SEO Chat named Is it time to Reverse Engineer our Methods? a member posts a thread about Google reverse engineering the SEO. Some of the suggestions in the thread, I find to be comical. For example; "You [SEO] target your keyword in the title - they [Google] ignore the title" and "You [SEO] collect inbound links BUT they [Google] put more weight on outbound links!!!!"

SPAM is a problem for any search engine, reverse engineering how most SEOs work, will not make for a better search engine. Think about it, Google, Yahoo, Ask Jeeves and now MSN all come to the search engine optimization conferences telling SEOs to put keywords in the title of the page, to have good descriptive anchor text and to be careful not to get involved with spam.

The search engines need to reverse engineer the SPAM tactics out there, not the SEO.

About one and half weeks ago we discussed the topic of Search Engines to Provide Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Services. Today, Shari Thurow wrote an excellent article recapping all the issues and topics related to this story in a ClickZ article named Search Engines and the SEO Business.

Andy reports that Ask Jeeves and Lycos is getting into the SEO business. Andy is not worried for his company, Keyword Rankings. He said:

I don't see a threat here for anyone other than very bad SEO firms. The good ones will still find plenty of clients. Besides, the search engines already offer PPC management solutions, yet PPC management is still being outsourced to third-party, impartial, SEM firms. The same will happen with SEO.

Some of the forums already picked up the news and are discussing it now. Over at I Help You Forums Kal lists the two pages to find these servers, Lycos's Site Side Optimization and Ask Jeeves Direct Marketing Solutions. Lycos clearly lists out the prices on a per page basis, Ask Jeeves does not. If you had a dynamic site with 100,000 pages, it can get pretty expensive.

I think someone asked why don't the search engines sell SEO services at one of the last conference I attended. I thought it was a no brainer, and so did the people who answered the question on the panel. It would be a conflict of interest for a search engine to provide SEO service.

These threads are definitely worth checking out in the following forums:
- I Help You
- Search Guild
- Search Engine Watch

Ever had a client change their mind in the middle of a project and decide to use someone else for their SEO services, and not you? Sometimes without knowing clients can get better or wilder ideas on who can help best serve them. Sometimes they are right, and this hindsight can help reward them for more successful results. Yet, getting this news can seem like a kick in the face should you work your butt off to get them top rankings. Is it right for another SEO company to approach a client, even if they currently already have a consultant? What's the best way to deal with this?

There is a thread over at Highrankings, that details this situation. One of the members had this happen to him. While the member had provided excellent service and several top rankings for the client, they decided someone else could help the situation better. Informative thread, that newer small business owners should probably read. One of the questions raised, was if can you optimize for more than 80 phrases on one site? Jill Whalen concluded that yes you can, and there was no reason why you wouldn't in the first place. Having done so myself on many occasions, a lot of times this is really the value of a good SEO. Are they able to achieve a large number of relevant rankings for keyphrases on your site? Is 4 top placements better than 80 top placements?Ultimately the answer is 80, and without knowing the client could have helped make themselves more successful in the long run deciding to change providers. Luckily the member she is still involved and understands the situation. But some additional good point were raised.

Chirshirst, point out "what's wrong with 25 targeted visitors every day if many of those turn out to be buyers/clients." Very true, I once worked with a website that was catering exclusively to investors with over 1 million dollars in capital to use towards elite investments. Slim market? Yes, but if successful they could convert just one visitor a month and be a very happy firm. Chris also continues to say "vast numbers of sites/businesses don't need dozens of sales a day to be profitable and many small business ventures couldn't care less about the volume of visitor traffic." This is true, but one side of the coin. What if you are selling .50 cent party supplies and favors, then volume is a factor.

Check out the discussion at Highranking on When To Admit Defeat

In a thread posted at many of the forums (yes duplicate posts at different SEM forums) under the title of Why selling SEO is cheating, I used SEO Chat's forum to link to because they are very colorful over there.

Now the thread starter's point is that most small businesses (1) target B2B then (2)target local B2C. In the first case of B2B, he feels that small businesses "are not looking to attract large numbers of Internet users but small, specialized groups of potential clients to their "Venus-Fly Trap"." He explains the "Venus-Fly Trap" as a "marketing tool to develop additional business through online marketing". In the second case of B2C, he argues that "by the very nature that they are small or medium, almost invariably within a restricted geographic area."

I understand this person, and to be honest, most of the leads I get from the SEO marketing side of my business I turn away. But I have landed several large contracts from my SEO efforts. I run a small business that is very focused in a specific niche (custom Web based application development). SEO efforts, for me, is very very cheap. The ROI make extreme sense for my small business and I am sure it makes sense for your small business.

I can see how it can be discouraging for a small service oriented firm. 95% of the leads I retrieve from my SEO efforts are not a perfect match for my company. But there is so much potential for small business B2C efforts. Set up an e-commerce shop and you will see.

"The customer is always right - just not right for you", quoted from Ammon Johns at Cre8site Forums. I do have agree on this, you definately can have customers that are not right for you. But how do you deal with this? What are ways to find the RIGHT customers. Whose best interest are your considering? As this thread points out it was your responsibility for taking the client. In my words, learn to say no sometimes. A very worthwhile thread for all those currently growing your business.

Continue reading and discussing about Are Clients Expendable?

Evil! Dishonest! Downright Wrong! This is not just an issue with SEO firms, but this is the first reported case I have seen in the forums. The case was brought up by Elisabeth, a Super Moderator over at the Search Engine Watch Forums. She said that she found an other SEO firm taking credit for her firm's work. She will be contacting the SEO Firm to take down this false case study immediately.

Please be on the look out for these scams.

For more information on the details, visit the thread at Search Engine Watch.

If you are fortunate enough these days, you have more clients than you can handle. For some the task of starting a new business in SEO/SEM starts with getting new clients and getting those clients to pass on a good word of your good graces. A good and ongoing thread over at SEOchat asks members how they go about getting new clients and keep the stream of clients going. I know from personal experience that I have never done much advertising at all for my services. Most clients come in via word of mouth, recommedations from other clients, or from the occasional fun dabbling of working with PPC. Some of the members detail the top ways they go about getting new business that might be of interest to some. Here are some of the preferred ways SEO's or any business can find new clients.

1. High rankings in the search engines!
2. Word of Mouth
3. Connecting in the forums
4. Article Writing
5. Referrals from Web Designers or other online businesses
6. Establish a newsletter
7. Purchased advertising on other related sites
8. Sales Calls (Telemarketing)
9. Print Advertising
10. Using PPC to attract potential clients
11. Affiliate Marketing
12. Giving away free software or information
13. Public Speaking
14. Give away free SEO services to other business, charities, non-profits
15. Direct Marketing to target businesses
16. Writing excellent winning copy
17. Just being one cool and savvy businessman

As you can see there are more ways to gain new business than probably most people have time for. Its seem that by far one of the best ways to gain new clients is to treat your present clients VERY WELL. Its makes sense, that if the clients you worked so hard to get, love your work, then they will start talking. Results speak for themselves.

Check the the thread How to Get New Business over at SEOchat.

I've been waiting for a thread to pop up on this topic in the past few weeks, and finally one sprung up that caught my attention over at HighRankings. The thread is about a small SEO firm who needs to provides his client with an answer to "Why Should Customer Renew?"

Pretty much all of the on-page search engine optimization (seo) efforts are done or should be done right up front. So let's say you have a client with a five page site. You optimize each page for the client and then sit back. If your not providing any link building services, then in reality your work is done. Of course, you might want to see if the keywords are a good fit for the site. You might need to make some tweaks here and there. But after, lets say, three months, what else is there? Reports. :)

Many of the SEO professionals in the thread agree, that they should only charge for actual work performed. To tell a client that they would drop in the rankings if they don't renew a contract is wrong. Again, this only applies to the on-page seo efforts. I do understand that keeping links up to a site, will require additional money and time.

I prefer to take this one step further. As many of you know, I am big-time into building dynamically driven Web sites. That means, empowering the customer to manage the site themselves. By building a search engine friendly site that can be easily maintained by the customer, he/she can add/edit/delete pages as they see fit. Can all clients write well for search engines? Maybe not, but I want them to try. If I can properly educate the client on the basics of SEO copy-writing, then we have a winner. So there is no reason to even pay a monthly fee or hourly fee to have an SEO review your copy.

Let's say Google makes a major change to its ranking algorithm, they now put a ton of weight on the meta keywords tag (not true). Then, a programmer can make a single change to a template file in a matter of minutes. The site will automatically pull data from a data-source in the database and build keywords for the meta-keywords field. There you go, you can charge for 6 minutes of work. :)

I personally believe that most on-page seo firms should not charge a monthly fee. They should base prices on work performed and not to base prices on reading forums or go to conferences. Man hours = billable.

Disclaimer (before even writing this entry): These are my personal views, I understand some client's don't have the budget, and I am sorry if I offend anyone.

I have just went through two long meetings the past two days (yes on Sunday, as well). These meetings were about how to properly build search engine friendly e-commerce sites. A lot of what my company does is build Web sites that empower the customer to build SE Friendly pages (much like how this blog works, but a tad more sophisticated :)).

To my amazement, one of these companies used a fairly well known SEO Firm that, in my opinion, built the site wrong. When building an e-commerce site from scratch, why would you not ensure that the pages are search engine friendly. Each and every one. By search engine friendly I mean, that each individual page is optimized for a unique keyword. So each category landing page, is optimized for that category. Each product or brand page, is optimized for the product or brand.

I can understand where an SEO firm will take an existing site and make tweaks to it in order to optimize some of the pages. That makes sense to me. But to build a site from ground up and then only apply the the principles of SEO and dynamic content to a few hand selected pages, that in my opinion is wrong.

I will of course not mention the company here. It leads me to believe that many other SEO firms are practicing SEO in this manner. I feel its wrong to pitch a search engine friendly e-commerce site that in reality has to be maintained through manual intervention by an SEO.

Automation! Build a system that allows your customer to build pages. They really don't need to know much about SEO. All they need to know is about their product, and if they know their product, they can write very good copy for their product pages.

Empower the customer through simple to use web tools, educate the customer about search engines, and let the customer be in control!

The PPC company Atlas OnePoint (no link on purpose), messed with the blog king, Jeremy Zawodny. Not smart, if there is one person you don't want to mess with when your a PPC company is Jeremy. :) Basically, since Jeremy was on the panel at the SES conference, he some how got on Atlas OnePoint's email list (I did too). He got a spam email and he is not happy. Jeremy wrote about this in his entry named Atlas OnePoint: Spammers, where he posted a very interesting piece of art work.

Danny Sullivan, the face behind the SES conferences commented "I've asked Jupitermedia to look into this. My understanding was that attendee names were not given to third parties. It's not been an issue that I've ever seen come up like this before. So if something's changed, I'll work on my end to change it back."

I have found out from a source of mine how it would be possible for Atlas OnePoint to have received the list of names from JupiterMedia. I heard from
another sponsor that they inadvertently gotten the email addresses and
that it appears to have been an accident on Jupiter's part. So someone slipped up at Jupiter, it happens I guess. (removed some detail as per the request of a few people)

I am all for this - if you promise top rankings then you must deliver. A promise is a promise, so make sure to be upfront with your clients and promise only what you can deliver.

Chris Sherman posted a thread at SEW forums named SEO Firm Ordered to Refund Fees, Pay Fine, that quotes the article at the Seattle Times.

"The [Washington] state attorney general said yesterday Redmond-based Internet Advancement must pay penalties for failing to get its customers top placement on major search engines. Internet Advancement, which also goes by 4GreatBuys.com, must refund customers, pay $24,432 to the state for costs incurred and a civil penalty of $25,000.

"The company had promised to get its customers ranked in the top 10 to 20 results on the search engines for $980 to $1,500 in set-up fees and monthly fees of $79.80 to $89.95."

I am the type of person that refuses to sell anything where there is not a 100% guarantee on deliverables. That is why I keep telling people that I do not offer pure SEO services. If someone wants a site that will rank well in search engines for a broad range of keywords, if someone wants a site that will convert visitors to buyers, is someone wants a site that is easy to maintain - then they can call me. But if they want to rank well for a specific keyword phrase, just for the purpose of ranking well for that keyword phrase, then call AdWords or Overture. Can I, or other SEOs, rank a site well in the natural results for a specific and competitive keyword? Of course. But will it last? Probably but not guaranteed.

I play my own games, have my own challenges to rank my site well for extremely competitive keywords. I do fairly well. But what I get a kick out is giving clients (and myself) the ability to rank well for any keyword phrase they might think of in the middle of the night. The client can login to his or her backend, create a new page and possibly in a few days, the site will rank well for that new page. This blog received traffic from over 4,000 different keyword terms this month. Why target one term when you can target very specific and actionable keyword phrases. As I said above, I do play my games and I do rank well for some very competitive terms.

Anyway, enough about me. This post is all about a thread over at HighRankings, where a member asked this question. "I have a prospect who would like a proposal for SEO. They want to be on page one of Google for outdoor furniture (4.5 million) and casual furniture (1.9 million)."

The responses are, dare I say it, ethical. Ethical in terms of showing the client that targeting one or two keyword phrases might not be the best avenue for long term success. Of course one can give a money back guarantee - which works well. But why not include those two competitive phrases plus 4,000 other phrases for the client?

One member brings up the analogy of a doctor's services:

You walk into a doctor's office, say to him, 'Doc I am in real pain, I mean REAL pain. I have seen 3 pain specialists, and they have all charged me lots and failed. Can you guarantee that I will not feel this pain anymore?'

Doc says yep, $50,000 in cash in advance.

I do not necessarily agree with this analogy but I got the point.

Jill Whalen chimes in with her advice, and I agree completely, "you should never take on a campaign where they only want a couple of phrases."

A thread at Cre8asite Forums named How do you prepare clients for reality of SEO? discusses the challenges associated with the education and reality of achieving success with a Web site venture. The topic creator says "They launched their site which is in a very competitive market, and wondered why they weren't on the top page."

The responses can in quick from some top notch search engine marketers.

Ammon Johns said: "I never assume that a client will know anything that I don't tell them. Even if they do know some of the things, a refresher is always useful so long as it is kept informative and interesting." That is probably the first mistake some SEO companies make.

Barry Weldford: "I always find it useful to look at how the competition is doing. Are there particular competitors who are doing better in the SERP's? If so how are they stronger than your client? One proviso before you do a lot of work is to remember that it takes a month or two for even Google, which is the fastest of the majors, to find and index your website." Without a competitive analysis how do you know what is needed to achieve success in your rankings? You need to set targets and do your best to meet them. Without targets that are reachable, there will always be problems.

As one member said "Educating the consumer can be a daunting task - especially when there are some uneducated website designers that still believe in Field of Dreams web site marketing - "If you build it, they will come"."

Sorry to bring this up again, since its been beaten to death. However, I wanted to add something to this. Let's take a step back and look at what SEM firms do.

SEM firms take Web sites that are not ranking well in search engines and help them rank well. How they do it and the ethics behind that is covered in those other topics in the previous entry. What about the Web design and development firms? Are they to blame for not building a search engine friendly site?

My firm does not charge for SEO services. When we take on a job, we make sure to get the job done right. One of the job requirements for any publicly available site is to ensure the pages of the site are search engine friendly. We then empower the client to target any desired term they wish. Of course for the more competitive terms, link building is required, but that would be included as well.

We do not like to build out e-commerce sites that do not have the following:

• clear navigation
  
• search engine friendly design
  
• self maintainable backend solution
  
• order management
  
• 3rd party integration (accounting, shipping, credit cards, etc.)
  
• customer relationship management
  
• and more...

My point is, the SEM firms clean up the mess. Some do it better then others. But a problem in our industry (the web design and development industry) is that people build and sell poorly designed sites.

Do search engine companies like Google, Yahoo, and Ask Jeeves respect, recognize and like search engine optimization companies? This topic is created at one forum or an other on almost a monthly basis. I do not think I ever discussed it here, so I thought I would give it a shot.

Let me first start with an historical perspective (at least my understanding of how it was early on). Early on search engine companies did not know that there were SEO companies out there. Actually, "SEO" was not even an acronym used back then. Then as the search engine caught on to people abusing the meta tags and white text tricks, search engines and SEO companies were at odds. The search engines at first did not recognize the SEO company. They pitched them as scam artists that did not benefit the industry. Over time and thanks to the popularization of the industry, search engines began to come face to face with SEO firms.

Now we have a level of understanding. There are basic guidelines issued by search engines as to acceptable practices. Search engines in fact now request SEOs to encourage common practice amongst their client sites. Search engines want to find good content and SEOs help. If a site is in Flash and an SEO is onboard, the SEO might create an HTML alternative. That is good for the searcher, which is good for the search engines.

Since the channels of communication between search engines and SEOs are more open (thanks to sites like WebmasterWorld and SearchEngineWatch), there is a better understanding of each other's goals and objectives. Both make compromises and share information. We are heading from the "respect" phase (some might argue we are not there yet) to the "like" phase. I believe there is a common and understood respect between the search engine companies and search engine optimization professionals. We are now moving towards a deep gratitude and liking of each other's objectives.

Current forum discussion at SearchEngineWatch Forums.

I am not talking about those SEO companies that promise and do not deliver. I am talking about companies that make up things and pass them along as fact in order to sell their product or services.

Would you agree with either of these next to statements?
"Less frequent computer users usually search through a search engine."
"Some of us users who are on the computer more frequently search this way." By this way, they mean "Simply type into the Address bar of your Internet Browser what you are looking for."

I was under the impression that novice Internet users search by typing keywords into the address bar of their browser.

A thread at SEO Chat discusses this so called "patch" that is installed on a users browser. At SEO Chat they call this adware or spyware but the person offering this service denies that. I won't get into the debate about the classification of such software, you can make your own decision on that.

But to say that "Less frequent computer users usually search through a search engine" really bugs me.

So you run an search engine marketing or search engine optimization company and you are looking to offer an incentive plan to your employees. You want to establish goals and bonus areas for them to reach. If the employees reach the bonus areas then you give them a reward, if they under perform, you know you need to replace them.

How does one set up these goals and measurements for an SEO/SEM firm? A thread over at Cre8asite discusses just that.

Ammon Jones starts off by detailing that it depends on your firms goals. If your only about top 10 rankings then your goals for your employees should be to achieve those. But if your goals are more about ROI, then those are your measurements.

Several measurements are suggested including:
(1) Rankings
(2) Return on Investment
(3) Traffic Increases
(4) Cost Per Lead
(5) Cost Per Acquisition

Again, this obviously depends on your firms services. I know they vary over the hundreds or thousands of SEM firms. I wonder what SEMPO or KeywordRankings would have to say about this?

In a thread started by Shari Thurow at HighRankings forum, she asks a question that many, many SEO shops run into.

After you conduct a big search engine optimization job on a client's site, the client wants the site back to maintain on their own. Problem is, the client has the potential to 'undo' all the optimization work you implemented without knowing. Besides for the contractual details, how can you make this possibility crystal clear to the client?

projectphp, a moderator at HighRankings, offers what he would do:

1. As soon as any client makes waves about making changes, send a detailed email outlining what errors can occur, why you prefer to maintain sites, and the expected costs to fix things if they are broken. This can be a standard, generic email to save time. If this doesn't persuade them to let you keep maintaining the site, then...
2. Let them maintain the site. If they stuff up, and want to know what happened, refer to your previous email, and point out the costs associated with fixing any errors / problems, and the benefits of continuing to use your services to avoid just these circumstances.

Said very well projectphp.

Do you guarantee your work? Some companies do and some companies don't. During my travels at one of my favorite forums I found a thread where a SEO client felt he got stiffed by a SEO company. The members reviewed the site and what he should and should not do about it. But what was real interesting is that a representative from that SEO company came to the forum to give their side of the story. Check out the thread at Cre8asite Forums on Bowmac Internet.

Cre8asite Forums has a thread that discusses who is the ultimate SEO, Who is da' MAN!!!!!?????. Names such as Danny Sullivan, Ammon Johns, Detlev Johnson, and Jim Wilson (who past away but will always be remembered). Ammon Johns from what I have heard around the industry is today's leader in search engine optimization. He will probably kill me for saying so in such a public area, but I do hear wonderful things.

I spoke with Ammon on the phone a month or so ago. He is not only a great SEO, he is a giving person. Besides for the 4,163 posts at Cre8asite Forums under the screen name Black_Knight (you see he didn't even use a hyphen in his name - he is so humble), he has helped dozens of experts learn more. In addition, he won't ever say he is the best and won't ever say anything bad on an other person. He is someone to look up to in this industry.

Here is to the best!

When does a 'potential' customer become an 'actual' pain in the neck? Some people are genuine, some are dreamers, and others, are out and out scoundrels and timewasters.

Anthony parsons wrote " Just recently I had a person enquire to employ my services which they had picked the package suited to them, contacted me for some extra advice and then decided to push the point and see what they could get out of me all before purchasing"

Would you have replied like everyone else did? take a look here

One staple of search engine optimization forums is the perennial discussion of SEO guarantees. It is a discussion that is often more divisive than needs be.

The Opposing View
Often, those opposed to search engine optimization ranking guarantees state the obvious:

Everyone knows that there is no sure way for top rankings and still they give all types of alluring guarantees.

And sometimes go so far as to say:

This is fraud.

Granted, SEO professionals do not control organic rankings. But many times we do guarantee rankings, and deliver on those guarantees. I personally am of the opinion that I could get top ten ranking on any keyword I chose to, given enough time, money and resources.

My View
My opinion is that anybody paying for any service ought to be guaranteed results. When I pay for my car to be fixed, I don't want the mechanic to make a good faith effort. I want it fixed. Period.

In the web services industries, credibility is at an all time low. I personally look to guarantees to differentiate the credible from the incredible.

I think Phil Craven stated it beautifully when he said:

Nobody can guarantee to achieve a top 10 ranking for a specific searchterm except in PPC engines, and then the client has to pay for clicks. What *can* be guaranteed is a top 10 ranking or your money back.

In the end, a guarantee does not imply the absolute ability to control rankings. It simply means that in case of failure, the SEO will refund the monies paid.