SEO Companies Articles by SEO Speedwagon

June 13, 2008

Yahoo to Become Adsense Clearinghouse?

Sean saw it coming yesterday, and little more than a Month ago I thought it a Yang Threat to balance the Microsoft yin of bluster.

Yet here we have it, and have you ever read anything that made Yahoo suddenly seem more insignificant?:

If the Google partnership passes what's likely to be a rigorous review by U.S. antitrust regulators and lawmakers, Yahoo! intends to use its rival's superior search technology to display ads on its own Web site as well as those of its partners' in the United States and Canada.

Let us all give a collective search way of goodbye to the once great king.

Yahoo to Become Adsense Clearinghouse?
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February 07, 2008

Finding The Right Search Engine Marketing Company: Part Two

Questions You Should Ask About The SEM Company's Services

Need help sorting through the scores of Search Engine Marketing companies?

In Part One of Finding The Right Search Engine Marketing Company, I shared my thoughts on questions you should ask SEM companies about their company. Now let's look at some good questions to ask the SEM company about their service offerings:

• What do you consider the main goals of the campaign?
• How does keyword research fit into your SEO process?
• Will you conduct a full site analysis of our site prior to the campaign to evaluate how search-engine-friendly our site is?
• Do you offer guaranteed search engine rankings?
• Changes To Our Site: Will your company be writing all necessary code and content recommendations and who will manage the implementation on our site pages? What happens to the code and content should our company stop using your services? How flexible will you need us to be to make changes to our site to help improve its performance at search engines and increase traffic?
• When should we expect to see the first results from the campaign?
• Link Building: Do you have a web site linking methodology for both internal site links and external, third-party links? What is your approach to building links and what are your thoughts on quantity versus quality? Will you submit my site to top tier paid directories? Will the links you gain for my site be one-way or reciprocal links? What happens to the links in the event our companies stop working together? Do you include advanced link building strategies including XML sitemap generation?
• What are your opinions in regards to “Best Practices” for SEO? Do you utilize “Black Hat” SEO techniques for your clients?
• Reporting: What type of performance reports will you provide us and how often? Do you report on search engine placements, search traffic, conversions, revenue, etc.? Web site analytics reporting will you provide to us? Will you provide consulting to explain what the data means and how it affects our marketing objectives?
• Based on the goals of my site, along with SEO, what other SEM services would you recommend?

Finding The Right Search Engine Marketing Company: Part Two
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January 31, 2008

Finding The Right Search Engine Marketing Company: Part One

Questions About The Search Engine Marketing Company

Back in the early days of SEO, it was much easier to seek and find a Search Engine Marketing company simply because Intrapromote was one of just a hand full in operation. Interestingly enough, many of the questions you should ask a potential SEM partner company today are still the same. We find that most potential clients ask more questions about our services than about us and I think that’s a mistake. With all the companies now offering SEM services, the ‘who’ is just as important as the ‘how’.

Questions You Should Ask About The SEM Company:

1. Tenure: How long have you been in business? How long have you been offering and performing SEM services?

2. Clientele: What types of clients do you currently work with? Can I talk with some of them? Can you show me examples of improved search engine placement and search traffic performance for a site in the same or similar vertical as mine? What is your client retention rate? How many clients do you have with active current campaigns today that have been with you for more than 1, 3 and 5 years?

3. Specialties: Are you experts in specific industries or vertical niches?

4. The People: Who makes up the team that will work on our SEO campaign and will you provide me with a seasoned, dedicated campaign director that not only directs our campaign, but will also be personally working on it? How often can I consult with my campaign director?

5. Communication: If I have questions, what is the process of getting answers and how long should I expect to wait before I hear back from my campaign director?

6. Is my company a good fit to work with your firm?

7. What are the next steps I need to take to get the process started?

8. Do you offer flexible campaigns for small, medium, or large businesses with varying marketing budgets? Do you have a set-up fee?

Coming soon In Part Two, I'll explore the questions to ask about the SEM company's services.

Finding The Right Search Engine Marketing Company: Part One
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January 16, 2008

Less Sponsored Ads = More PPC Revenue? Que Pasa, Google?

One of my favorite clients of all time, with us now going on 8 years and powered mightily by the rare, dual client-side SEO strengths of search understanding and inter-departmental implementation influence, recently noticed the same thing Mark Jackson saw in Google's most recent round of Universal Search peekaboo:

Notice the incredibly disappearing PPC Ads? My immediate explication was that surely this must be to prove, in a small test sample, that someone's bad idea from above would be a disaster, indeed.

Mark, though, has made me think again:

Google may succeed in encouraging companies to bid more ferociously for the top two positions. If universal search leads to more searches because it's fun, this could be a win for Google (higher revenues) and users (better experience).

Sometimes it's hard for us to imagine that there is a finite set of clicks on any given day. The business model in a closed set like this, then, must discover what to do to increase the value of the average click within the set on a given day. Mark's point about less ads likelier driving up value per is on target, I believe, but thanks to him getting me to think again I think the test layout in question has less to do about increasing searches "because it's fun" and much ado about that map, an image mind you, kissing the PPC ads at the right corner of the screen and making your eye immediately jump there to focus.

Take a look yourself and see where your eye is drawn, and then check out what eye tracking heat maps are telling us about how pictures affect focus on a search page.

Less Sponsored Ads = More PPC Revenue? Que Pasa, Google?
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November 28, 2007

SEO Speedwagon Killing In Vegas

Who'd have thought a mere 2.5 years from first post we'd be blogging to beat the band?:

Here's the link for proof this isn't a photoshop job, let's just hope the jump in visits doesn't cause them to wonder what is going on.

I for one am having a T-Shirt made of this, anyone else interested?

SEO Speedwagon Killing In Vegas
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October 08, 2007

Yes, Virginia(,) SEO Philology

I was quite humbled to see via Link Spiel heute morgen that yours truly unwittingly birthed the SEO Virginia genre long, long ago, circa Summer 2001.

And while they say everything changed after September 11, really the only thing the genre lost in the aftermath was the Really Is convention I thought was authentic at the time. Turns out while I had invented Really completely out of thin air, but not the all-important Is, what we really lost in exactly half of the genre along with our innocence was the comma after the introductory Yes I had faithfully inserted at the time.

SEO Virginia genre history buffs will note Danny Sullivan took less than a year to catch, and correct, his own mistake, the only such self-correction on record. He really is that good.

UPDATE: Reader Brainmuffin e-mails to suggest the genre be officially known as The SEO Virginia Monologues.

Yes, Virginia(,) SEO Philology
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August 20, 2007

New SEM Industry Term Coined: Disposable Clicks

We sure did have fun with this Quote of the Month while taking The Wagon for a spin this morning. From the magazine that takes itself so seriously it demands all caps, ADWEEK, we are treated to this breathless lede:

New research by Microsoft suggests a big chunk of search ad spending is wasted because advertisers pay top dollar for high ad placements clicked by consumers who are en route to their sites anyway. Listings tied to such "branded" keywords, typically a company's name or products, eat up about half of search budgets, Atlas estimates.

Wasted, indeed. Heard while The Wagon pulled up to fill itself up with coffee:

It's like saying Applebee's doesn't need specific signage or identifiable markings on its building to show out-of-towners where it is, because people are going to go there for dinner anyway. That is exactly how stupid this is.

Isn't this also an argument against any brand advertising of any kind?

New SEM Industry Term Coined: Disposable Clicks
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August 16, 2007

IAB, DMA, and SEO: WTF?

I just noticed this posted by Barry Schwartz over at SEL: The UK flavors of the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB UK) and the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) have joined forces "to establish industry-wide search standards", as they put it in their release on the IAB's UK web site.

Every few years I see this stuff and I try -- really, I do try -- not to by cynical. But trying to qualify and quantify best practices is like sprinting like hell to get to the end of a Mobius strip. Historically, any efforts to define acceptable and unacceptable practices in SEO have been either so rigidly prescriptive as to except significant portions of successful (and lauded) SEO companies, or they've been so toothlessly vague as to allow access to anyone who can forge a backstage pass.

To which of these camps does the IAB/DMA "charter" belong? Judge for yourself: Following (in bold) are the minimum corporate qualifications found in the IAB's charter document (MS Word, 238K), with a little commentary (mine) in italic.

• They must have at least two employees dedicated to search marketing
  Many -- many -- of the industry's best SEOs are one-(wo)man shops.
  
• They must have search engine accreditation (from Google or Microsoft with more to follow) and have received official search engine optimisation (SEO) training as relevant
  That's actually not a bad benchmark. For PPC. How about the other 80% of clicks?
  
• The company must have been trading for 6 months
  I'm not exactly sure what "trading" means, but I think it's a UKism for "having been in business." I certainly concede that most good SEOs have been in business for more than 6 months. But most of the lousy ones have been too.
  
• The company must be a member of either IAB UK, IAB Europe, DMA or Search Engine Marketing Professionals Organisation (SEMPO) or the Association of Business to Business Agencies (ABBA).
  Now we're getting somewhere. Explore the links to the membership pricing levels of the IAB UK, IAB Europe (PDF), DMA, and SEMPO.

I have nothing personally against any of these organizations, but answer this question honestly: With mass adoption of this charter by SEO companies, who benefits more -- these four membership organizations, or companies in search of a reputable SEO firm?

And in case you're still reading, thanks. Here's your reward, pulled from the original charter Word document, and delivered in the world's most accepted currency -- laughter:

Monitoring compliance
The charter will be self-policed by the SEM industry.

IAB, DMA, and SEO: WTF?
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August 08, 2007

Download all query stats for this site (including subfolders)

I get the feeling that most people, even in our industry, using Google Webmaster Tools for themselves or a client aren't scrolling far enough on the Query Stats page to reach this link:

What you get if you click is rather unwieldy, sure, especially if you are dealing with a very large site, but the payoff is simply as large by the same degree. We are beginning to view it more and more here as a kind of matrix for how Google views your site architecturally, especially in light of GSI now having been moved to an undisclosed location. Actually, now that I've said it I'm a bit afraid it, too, will be taken away...

Download all query stats for this site (including subfolders)
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April 17, 2007

Putting SEO into Perspective

In random fits of uncontrollable self-importance, SEOs (myself included) sometimes get quite a rush when they consider the power they believe they wield over SERPs. But in a recent conversation, I had a chance to put that power into perspective.

A few months ago, I was talking with a VP at a large agency who handles PPC (along with having a hand in offline media) for a large organic client of ours. We were lamenting that despite the strongest rankings ever, along with really current keyword research and a constantly fine-tuned PPC campaign, traffic was lower than expected.

And it wasn't just us. He had some nice, subscription-only Yahoo Buzz Index charts showing that industry-wide, there was less demand than usual for the important terms we targeted, even after adjusting for seasonality.

Finally, he shrugged it off. "Well," he said, "I guess what I need to do is to get more people searching for this stuff."

And he did.

SEO capitalizes on what people search for. This guy dictates it. Now THAT'S power.

Putting SEO into Perspective
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March 27, 2007

Did You Know WWW and Non-WWW are Two Different Sites?

If you're an SEO you certainly do lest you are malpracticing. And if you're a Cutlett, you've likely concurred here just a little while ago but more likely immediately.

Yet in spite of immediate pick-ups of everything Matt posts and that fact that this is a day later, Good God, I want to highlight his explanation of why, if only to be able to link to this portion of it when I am asked why and do a poor job explaining why:

Some people ask “Why don’t you just assume www.example.com and example.com are the same?�? The answer is that they don’t have to be, and for some websites they are different. For example, http://phpicalendar.net/ is a different page than http://www.phpicalendar.net/. This happens more often than you might think; FindWhat has different www vs. non-www pages, for example.

Best and simplest it's ever been put.

Am I now a Cutlett, too?

Did You Know WWW and Non-WWW are Two Different Sites?
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March 15, 2007

The Ineluctable Organic Moment Goes Primetime

It's one of the most mythical numbers in all of SEM, rarely published, seldom spoken; yet most industry insiders nod and agree, even if furtively, that the organic search share of total search clicks, meaning the percentage of overall searchers clicking on an organic, rather than paid, search result, is somewhere in the 70% - 85% region.

I was quite stunned, then, when by happenstance I came across this line in Macworld, of all places:

Site owners are eager to get their hands on the 75 percent of free Google traffic that is not affected by AdSense and AdWords, Google’s pay-per-click programs.

Still within that magical, mythical margin. Still unattributed. Damn nice to see as a given in a non-industry mag.

The Ineluctable Organic Moment Goes Primetime
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February 16, 2007

Selling SEO: How I Lost a Big Potential Client

To the potential client with whom I recently talked, who said that organic SEO will be critical to the success of his yet-to-launch web site, who needed specific tips about how to optimize for long-tail phrases in an ultra-Flash-heavy environment, I have something to say.

I am sorry.

I am sorry that I offended you when I asked what your site was going to be about. I am sorry that I asked what industry you were going to target. I am sorry that I asked about your intended audience. I am sorry for all those things, even for volunteering to sign an NDA; the login on the home page should have warned me that the contents are super-secret -- too secret to be exposed, even with a contractual obligation to keep my mouth shut.

Maybe you've been burned before. Who hasn't? But let me tell you what I won't do with any information a potential client gives me:

• I won't tell anyone outside my company.
• I won't steal your idea.
• I won't start a competing web site.
• I won't call your competitors and tell them what you're up to.
• I won't tell you you're stupid or that your idea sucks.

Now, let me tell you what I will do with the information you give me:

• I will do some preliminary keyword research on your topic, so that I can discuss -- intelligently -- what your target audience is searching for, and how they're phrasing it.
• I will see how other sites in your market are building their sites to see how -- or whether -- they are integrating best-practices SEO into their sites, and how the engines are reacting to it.
• I will see who links to sites like yours to get an idea of how your future site can compete out of the gate.
• I will take a look at what you've developed so far to let you know if you've done anything that will cause grave harm to your organic efforts.
• I will tell you, honestly, whether I think we can help you.

So again, please accept my apologies. I wish you the best of luck in finding that SEO company who will give you the exact advice you need without having even the slightest notion of what you do.

Selling SEO: How I Lost a Big Potential Client
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December 15, 2006

Quasi SEOs

I had a nice chat this morning with an industry friend of mine in the sports information field. Aside from our typical banter about blogs, SEO & other geeky stuff as it relates to online marketing, we discussed something that bothers both of us as well as other reputable SEOs out there – quasi SEOs.

It all starts with a cold call to a prospect in desperate need of SEO assistance. The prospect knows they need help in positioning their site for targeted traffic, but knows little to nothing about what it actually takes to garner the top real estate on SERPs. The sales guy does a good job boggling the mind of the prospect with verbiage consisting of SEO acronyms and such, to the point where the prospect gives his or her credit card number or overnights a check to get something going. What the client doesn’t know is that the sales person (and the company he represents) that just sold the account knows little to nothing about SEO.

Segue quasi SEO.

The SEO wannabe does some title tagging, meta tagging and perhaps even goes so far as to write SEO copy. Hell, they read a thread on a board on this stuff and now they’re an expert. Keep in mind the SEO really doesn’t know what they’re doing and probably don’t have the slightest clue how to write effective tags and content to begin with for their client.

Months go by and the client is seeing good results in terms of increased rankings. AWESOME!! But why hasn’t the client’s site seen increased traffic? Sigh…I guess the SEO firm forgot to do something incredibly fundamental. Something called keyword research. I’ve seen and have heard this scenario time and time again.

Was the keyword research an accidental oversight? Maybe. Was it intentional? Most likely.

Beyond basic SEO tactics like tagging and SEO copywriting, there is a slew of other variables that should tied into a campaign for any given client which should also include consultation. Quality inbound link popularity building, keyword rich navigation structure, custom error pages, optimized site map, proper use of 301s, and content creation & management are just a few of the items that should be addressed in every campaign.

For those companies out there seeking assistance, be careful not to get sucked in by the “Quasi SEO�?. They’re typically companies set up overnight to get rich quick and know plenty about fear-based selling, but little to nothing about best practices search engine optimization. Make sure you don’t fall victim to these sleazy wannabe SEOs and always, always, always check references.

Quasi SEOs
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October 10, 2006

High Rankings Seminar in Dallas/Ft. Worth - Oct. 19-20

Colleague and fellow chocolate lover Jill Whalen asked us to post the details of her upcoming SEO seminar.

For the uninformed - if there are any left - Jill has been doing SEO since long before it was called "SEO." She's a regular speaker at SES and has been since Larry and Sergei were studying for their SATs. (That's probably an exaggeration, but it makes a good line.)

Here are the specs:

What: High Rankings® Search Engine Marketing Seminar

When: October 19 & 20, 2006

Where: American Airlines Training and Conference Center in Dallas/Ft. Worth

Why? To deliver the proven strategies and techniques of search engine optimization that will make your site work harder than it ever has before.

Get full details at Jill's site.

Discount: If you use INTRAPROMOTE as your discount code when registering, you'll save 25% off the seminar's sticker price.

Note that we do not receive any sort of referral fee, nor would we ask for one. Our recommendation is not for sale. We mention this only because Jill's that good, and sites of any size will benefit from her program.

High Rankings Seminar in Dallas/Ft. Worth - Oct. 19-20
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September 26, 2006

Hear Ye, Hear Ye: Announcing The “Search Query Oddity of the Week�?

Here at Intrapromote, the latest search behavior is very important to us and our clients. When I say “search behavior�?, I’m referring to how people use search engines to search for client sites and their offerings. To do this, we have to be on top of all the different search queries, or keywords and phrases, people use when seeking out our clients’ sites.

We have clients with a list of 100 relevant keywords and phrases. We have clients with a list of 10,000 relevant keywords and phrases.

Many of our clients are surprised at some of the ways people search for their products, services, and site offerings. Some are quite different than they expect and often, some keywords and phrases are either much more popular or much less popular than expected. We even find some new clients have had their sites previously optimized for paticular keywords or phrases that we determine no one actually uses. Woops!

Since we are constantly researching the latest search behavior, we run across some real doozies – keywords or phrases that are shocking, gross, puzzling, and often LOLFOF (laugh out loud, fall on floor) funny. Makes for some interesting water cooler talk around here!

So, we’ve decided, it’s about time we started sharing some of these interesting search queries with our readers.

Starting next week, each of our staff will nominate one search query. We also welcome all our readers to submit oddities coming from their keyword research or search behavior tools. We will then decide which is crowned the Search Query Oddity of the Week. If one of our readers comes out on top, they will be rewarded with a link here on SEO Speedwagon. Finally, a new category will be added in our left column where each week’s winner will be archived for eternity.

This should be fun. Ready? Go.

---

Entry rules:
1. Keep ‘em clean please, this is a PG-rated blog.
2. Send entries to doug@intrapromote.com.
3. Mention the keyword research tool used.

Hear Ye, Hear Ye: Announcing The “Search Query Oddity of the Week�?
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September 01, 2006

Speedwagon Knocks out Its 300th, Joins Elite Club

In a day game on the first of September, SEO Speedwagon put one to straight away center, punctuating its entrance into the 300 Home Run Club! This places the Wagon right on track for the Hall, were it not for those pesky Balco rumors. Although SEO Speedwagon passively denied use of the rub or any other illegal blog enhancer before the Senate Committee, its good name has been besmirched ever since its URL was discovered among Patrick Arnold’s bookmarks.

In a press conference following the game, the agitated player criticized the Intrapromote organization for not publicly acknowledging the 300th post, noting that its publicist had talked to the "head PR guy" prior to the milestone and that he "used an excuse" that they did not realize it was coming up. Intrapromote has since stated that they do not recognize individual achievements in such a manner.

More to come in this story, I’m sure.

Speedwagon Knocks out Its 300th, Joins Elite Club
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June 27, 2006

When Do We Turn Down a Prospective SEO Client?

Cab fare to nowhere is what you are
A white line to an exit sign is what you are

Or so begins a now-nearly-two-decades-old song by Paul Carrack, called "Don't Shed a Tear."

We received a Request for Proposal this week that caught our eye. The product and/or service offered by the site was extremely vague. The copy hinted around at an industry where we don't spend too much time. Here's why:

• A quick reverse-IP check (paid account req'd) showed 1160 other sites on this site's IP address. Not a big deal in today's world of shared virtual hosting, of course. Except that each of the sites is exactly the same. Same graphics. Same copy. Same Everything. The only difference was the domain names.
• All 1161 sites are hosted by a company that not only hosts sites, but offers a full "internet marketing solution" for all its hostees.
• A quick check of a random text string from the site shows the text duplicated across 14,600 sites at Google, and nearly 3000 at Yahoo. So it wasn't exactly written from scratch.

Sorry, but taking on this client would be a huge waste of her money and our time. This site network has more strikes against it than the Brooklyn Dodgers facing Don Larsen on that fateful day in 1956.

There's a very strong likelihood that the person who sent us the RFP has no idea how many sites are out there identical to hers. Or else she knows all too well, and she wants a leg up on (all 1160) of them. Either way, no thanks.

When Do We Turn Down a Prospective SEO Client?
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June 20, 2006

Hey, Look At Me! I’m Ethical! (There, I Said It)

I’m becoming a fan of David Spade’s new show on the Comedy Channel called The Show Biz Show. My favorite segment is right after the news and is called “There, I Said It�?.

So, here’s to you, little guy Mr. Spade as I tip my cap and say:

I’m getting a little irritated with SEOs calling themselves an "Ethical SEO Company". In fact, it may even be un-ethical calling yourself ethical.

First of all, who runs around saying, “Hey, look at me. I’m ethical.�?? Really, have you ever in your lifetime ever heard someone arrogantly say, “I’m ethical�?. And isn’t it most often when someone is un-ethical that it gets pointed out?

As for what SEOs do and how it relates to the definition of “ethics�?, there are no accepted principles of right and wrong that govern the conduct of SEOs. In other words: It’s not a matter of ethics.

Perhaps some SEOs allow their sales staff to tout their company as an “Ethical SEO�? simply because it sounds so honest, pure and safe. It really does, doesn't it? ..... [pause for momentary reflection] ..... After all, who would want to hire an un-ethical SEO company? This is just silly. I’ve seen hundreds of SEO RFPs and never once have I seen one with the must-have requirement: Ethical.

Are white hat SEOs ethical companies? Maybe. Are black hat SEOs unethical? Maybe. If an SEO claims to have a black box proprietary technology or techniques that mimic Google’s algorithm, are they ethical or unethical?

The bottom line is that all SEOs have methodologies and techniques that they recommend to their clients. Some of these techniques may be controversial and others may not be controversial. They are one or the other and the industry has done a pretty good job of making it clear which are which.

Ethically speaking, SEO techniques are neither right nor wrong so please, let's keep ethics out of it.

There, I said it.

Hey, Look At Me! I’m Ethical! (There, I Said It)
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April 27, 2006

Doctors, Prostates, Web Development, & SEO Companies

I had lunch last week with a friend who shared an interesting story. He went to see his family physician for a routine physical. His family doc did the physical and took some blood for a standard workup based on my friend’s age. The physical went extremely well and his doctor said he was in great shape. A week later, the physician called my friend with the bloodwork results. One of the tests was related to the health of his prostate and this number was 3x higher than it should have been. My friend asked his family doctor what he should do and the doctor said to come into his office immediately and he’ll remove his prostate. When my friend asked if he had done any prostatectomies, the doctor said he did it all the time and even some of his literature heralded his proficiency at removing prostates.

Same story. Different friend…

The next day, I had lunch with another friend who shared a similar story. He went to work for a new company who gave him the task of finding vendors to build and market the company’s web site. He did some searching and found a very good web development company who built his new employer a very professional, well designed web site, perfect for the company’s target audience. After several months, the site was still looking great, but a look at the site’s analytics showed that the search engines hadn’t indexed any of the site’s pages and was receiving no traffic. My friend went back to the web development company and asked them what he should do and they said they would optimize his pages and submit them to hundreds of search engines. My friend remembered seeing that the company did have information on their site about optimizing web pages and doing search engine submissions.

I’ve met a few physicians that practice family medicine as well as surgery and they are damn good at both. But, they are rare jems and few and far betweeen.

My career includes several years working in the medical field. I worked closely with some highly skilled family physicians as well as urologists specializing in men’s health issues. The family docs took care of an enormous number of ailments, but always knew exactly when to refer patients to other physicians who focused their work specifially on particular health ailments. The referrals were unidirectional as the Urologists didn’t practice family medicine – they left that to their highly trained colleagues.

Of course, this not unique to the health system I worked in. This referral network is based on rock-solid collegial respect and has a history with firm roots. It has worked for many, many years and will continue to do so.

Although we see a lot of stories as described above, we frequently get web development inquiries and have successfully networked with a few companies that take care of these inquiries as well as our clientele when they have unmet web development needs.. These same companies call on us when their client sites need traffic from search engines.

I propose that more web development companies and SEO companies plant more seeds together and start growing a similar network.

Doctors, Prostates, Web Development, & SEO Companies
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February 02, 2006

Shedding the SEO's Technicolor Leisure Suit

I was kicking off a campaign a few weeks ago with a conference call. Along with the client was the client's new web dev/hosting vendor, and the three of us had a great call. We prioritized the issues we wanted to cover and discussed potential obstacles and set up a list of tasks to tackle first in the campaign.

At the end of the call, the web dev consultant said, "Well, I have to admit I'm impressed. When I heard there was an 'SEO' on board, I assumed you'd recommend joining a few link farms and leave it at that."

Et tu, Coder? I think it's a shame when all it takes to impress someone is not being an idiot. Where had he gotten that impression of SEO?

So then I was reading through Todd Malicoat's great post about the relative lack of unity within SEO/SEM, and I can tell he's had similar experiences:

Most SEM’s dread when people ask them what they do. It is difficult to explain. Web design, technology, marketing. We rank people high in search engines. ... I don’t, however, want to be associated with e-mail spammers, search engine submitters, or people who sell overpriced meta-tag optimization. I like small business owners much more than I like these folks, and our reputation with them is important. 90% of this industry is great, and I’d like to see it represented that way. We’re really not shady, worthless criminals.

Pretty much anyone can hang up a shingle and claim to be an SEO. And maybe that's part of the problem. Have you ever received hundreds of emails from offline marketers claiming that they can submit your company details to Time, Newsweek, NYT, and hundreds of other major publications for $199?

Chances are that you haven't, because no one would believe it. Unfortunately, however, the Web is still cryptic enough to many people that comparable claims about web sites are pervasive.

In his article, Todd suggests that a stronger industry association (such as SEMPO) would help legitimize our profession, and he may be right. Traditionally, we've avoided the industry groups because of the SEO's Paradox:

• If you let just anyone in, then affiliation really doesn't mean anything. But on the other hand,
  
• We don't want to be subject to the rather arbitrary group-consensus approach to rigid definitions of professional SEO.
  

In nearly seven years, we've never had a prospective client who questioned our lack of "industry affiliation." So clearly, to them, it's not the same as a doctor practicing without a license. But maybe it should be, and maybe it will be in the future. We'll watch and see.

Shedding the SEO's Technicolor Leisure Suit
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January 12, 2006

Google Still Crazy After All These Years

I met my old lover on the street last night. She seemed so glad to see me; I just smiled. And there seemed to be confusion, but I thought it was the beers . . . Still crazy after all these years

So there I was waiting on a friend's arrival as I sat in this bar with Google and her friend, who began discussing power ballads and hi infidelity. When the two asked me who cleverly named the tuna fish album, I lost it.

"Google, how can you still not know who I am?" My impatience was intensifed by the fact that we already had this conversation once before. "I am SEO Speedwagon damn it"

Google responded, as if I were confused, "Did you mean REO Speedwagon?"

"I am absolutely positive that I meant SEO Speedwagon." I thought the emphasis would show that I know who I am.

Google didn't budge. "Are you absolutely positive that you didn't mean REO Speedwagon?"

I tried to calm down a bit. "Please listen to the exact words about to come from my mouth: SEO Speedwagon."

"Are you sure you did not exactly mean to say these words: REO Speedwagon?"

That didn't work. I tried again. "OK. I want you to remove REO from your head, and think Speedwagon."

"OK?"

"Exactly! So keep REO out of your head and just think about SEO Speedwagon!"

Google backstepped (yes, I mean back stepped). "Did you mean keep REO out of my head and just think about REO Speedwagon?"

I thought about asking Google to remove REO from her obsessive head and think about the exact words "SEO Speedwagon." I feared her response would lead to a new level of absurdity and heartbreak, so I walked away.

But then I just had to ask, "What is it about SEO Speedwagon?"

"Well, I just know so much about them."

As I wiped away tears, I thought of starting conversation with her friend as a way to get through to Google. As we made eye contact, Wiki asked me, "What about your friend? Shouldn't he be here by now?"

"I don't think Godot is coming," I said.

Google started to tell me that she knows Godot, but I interrupted. "I know you do, Google. Good-bye."

Now I sit by my window and I watch the cars. I fear I’ll do some damage one fine day, but I would not be convicted by a jury of my peers . . . Still crazy after all these years

Google Still Crazy After All These Years
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December 12, 2005

Speedwagon Nominated for Best of Search Blogs Awards

Search Engine Journal just announced the nominees for the 2005 Search Blogs Awards, and we are quite excited to be on the list under the category of "Best SEO Blog." Other categories include "Best Search Engine News Blog," "Best Search Engine-Owned Blog," "Best Search Engine Marketing and Contextual Advertising Blog, and the "Best Blog Search Engine Blog."

Following is the list of nominees under our category, "Best SEO Blogs:"

• StuntDubl
• FishSEO
• SEOMoz
• SEO Speedwagon
• TextLinkBlog
• SEO Black Hat
• SEO by the SEA
• Jim Boykin's Blog
• Link Building Blog
• Stepforth SEO Blog
• Matt Cutts' Blog
• WebGuerrilla
• SEO Book

You can rate the blogs here. (We would encourage nothing less than voting your conscience.) Most important, if you look through the list of blogs in this and other categories, you'll walk away with a list of sites covering (and covering well) nearly every narrow niche of the SEO/SEM field.

And with that (sniff), we're all winners.

Speedwagon Nominated for Best of Search Blogs Awards
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December 06, 2005

To Tag or Not To Tag Your Vegetables

Coming on the heels of the much ballyhooed Tivo announcement that ads will now be searchable, it was titillating to follow David Berkowitz's prognostication of where this would all spill.

In the second-to-penultimate paragraph of this erotic thriller we reach what has to be a climax for all in our industry:

Searching within a map, a PDF, and even a PC desktop was much more cumbersome only a few years back. A former iCrossing colleague, Sara Holoubek, often illustrated the imminent pervasiveness of the Internet by noting how computers will one day be commonly built into refrigerators. By that example, searching the contents of your kitchen from a refrigerator-based console is hardly far-fetched (and given the difficulty I had finding ingredients when baking a kugel last weekend, it's a development I'd welcome).

The cold water splashed on this rock and roll search fantasy? I suspect spam will be a problem.

To Tag or Not To Tag Your Vegetables
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December 02, 2005

Staying The Course in SEO

I ran across something in a file this week. It was a copy of our first Yahoo! Directory listing from August 1999.

An interesting indicator of the growth of our industry was revealed when I saw that only 165 listings existed in our selected category destination. A more honest number of actual SEO companies would be well under 100. For example, a site called "A Few Good Women" is listed right below us in 1999. That would be a creative name for an SEO firm, but trust me, that one didn't do SEO.

Of the 100 SEO firms, only 36 still have active sites.

Today, Yahoo! recognizes 1,074 companies in this same category. That's amost a 1000% increase. Our industry has definitely come a long way since 1999.

And so has Intrapromote.

Something else stood out to me about our now six-year-old description. We are still doing exactly what we set out to do and what our Yahoo! description says - driving qualified site traffic to our clients' sites.

Don't make top search engine placements your only SEO goal. It's all about qualified traffic spending time on your site. I'll have more to say about this soon so stay tuned.

Staying The Course in SEO
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November 21, 2005

Classic Rock Web Design

We here at the 'wagon, among other things, are devoted to quality web content and quality music. We keep our standards high in both aspects and I was reminded of these two ideals one recent morning when a strange "alignment of stars" if you will took place. As I was starting my day two unique and unrelated events took place, and my brain, badly needing coffee (obviously) took it from there.

What happened? Well, I came across a printout that my wife had accumulated in her pursuit of her Masters degree. Isn't it funny that as I wax eloquently and proudly about her Master's degree in Health Education that I'm eating Nilla wafers and was disappointed that we're out of store bought mini-muffins - but I seriously digress. And as I was selecting some music to listen to first thing in the morning from Yahoo Music I had an inkling to listen to some classic rock, namely Led Zeppelin. But what I found on Yahoo Music was that the only thing available was a karaoke version of their greatest hits. I was disappointed at first but found that I could appreciate the songs for just their music, words weren't really necessary to qualify it as good music. Their just the icing on the cake.

The printout that I came across dealt with web credibility guidelines [http://credibility.stanford.edu/guidelines/index.html]. The guidelines are a very common sense, albeit outdated in "internet years" (internet years are a lot like dog years), approach to website design and content. One of our main jobs is getting traffic to our clients websites, but keeping them there is equally important. Just as traffic can be driven to a site using various methods, commonly referred to in search engine land as Black Hat and White Hat (a reference to the old cowboy movies where the good guy wore the white hat etc.), your sites content can be derived from many different methods. And as important as proper, ethical, white hat techniques are to good long-term sustainable SEO results, so is good quality content that is easy to use important to your website visitors.

So as I was listening to the Led Zeppelin karaoke music, I was in awe of the musical genius that put together the original arrangements. I realized that even though I love Robert Plant's vocals, I equally love just the plain old music by itself. The seamless integration of musical chord's, tempo's, beat's, etc. make Led Zeppelin the classic rock band that it is. That's why I'm still drawn to it, and why I inherently like or dislike certain websites. If they follow the guidelines they are bound to be classic's.

One more comparison and then I promise I'll finish. Led Zeppelin wasn't the most complex or overproduced band in the world, they just rocked. A classic website doesn't have to have the fanciest flash in the world or be filled with all kinds of cool interactive mouse-over's. It needs to be correct, usable, & useful. Pleasing to the eye is nice, but let's remember the phrase "eye candy" and not let it rule the web world and rot out the core of what is good for quality web sites.

So with all that being said, and I apologize in advance for what you're about to read, let your content and SEO be excellent, thus combining for your online.........wait for it.........stairway to heavenly results.

Classic Rock Web Design
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November 10, 2005

Taking the Wagon's Domain from Potential to Kinetic

Sadly, our typical level of interaction with other SEO firms involves having our proposals snagged (non-disclosure agreement, how you mock me!), reminding them that using our website copy verbatim is frowned upon, and pretending we don't know it's them when they call, disguised as prospective clients wanting to find out more about our pricing and services. So it's a breath of fresh air when an industry colleague sends some strings-unattached courtesy our way.

Months ago, as we had just begun road-testing the Speedwagon, an alert Giovanni Gallucci (then of Zunch) found me, to progress the tortured metaphor, asleep at the wheel. With only a few posts on the odometer, I had not yet even gotten around to registering seospeedwagon.com. Giovanni noticed this and snapped it up quickly to keep it from falling into the wrong hands (that is, anyone but us). We recently completed the domain transfer, and we extend a sincere thanks to him.

You might know that Zunch and several members of its management team (including Giovanni) recently parted ways, with the latter group starting an SEM and online presence management firm called Kinetic Results; we wish both parties the best of luck going forward.

Taking the Wagon's Domain from Potential to Kinetic
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October 28, 2005

The Search Engine Hot Dog Derby

I've always wondered why Major League Baseball teams can't come up with better between-inning entertainment for fans. Each Spring and Summer I spend a lot of time at Jacob's Field in Cleveland and even the folks that organize the breaks in action for my beloved Tribe bat about .125 in the entertainment category.

But rather than focus on the negative, I must tip my cap for the Kiss Cam where random, generally unsuspecting couples are selected and urged to smooch. At least watching the awkwardness between complete strangers who are being coerced by thousands, nearly obligated to kiss is interesting and somewhat entertaining.

Beyond the tip of the cap, I tip my cap and dramatically salute the Hot Dog Derby! I'm not sure exactly why the hot dog derby is so fun. Perhaps it's just me, but there's something exhilarating about three hot dogs up on a huge LCD screen racing around the bases - one with ketchup, one with mustard, and one with onion.

As derby announcer Frank Furter calls the race, the fans go wild picking a dog and urging it on, hopefully, to a victory. Some people I know, not me of course, have been known to call out, "Run Mustard Run!", "Onion Sucks!", and various other wiener chants. No one seems to care that it's just a computer program with a predetermined winner.

So I'm sitting on a plane heading to L.A. and my mind wanders to my place of tranquility, Jacob's Field, where I'm enjoying the hot dog derby. I guess it was the transition from there to listening to Danny Sullivan's Daily SearchCast that made me realize that the search engine race between Google, Yahoo, and MSN is a lot like the hot dog derby.

In the Search Engine Marketing business, especially those of us that were bit by the SEO bug back in the 90's (a.k.a., the old folks), we're constantly watching, intensely monitoring ... weekly, daily, even by the minute ... this race between the search engines. We can be a bit like search engine paparazzi or search engine groupies.

Let's take this one step further. C'mon. Oblige me...

Google is definitely the dog with Ketchup. Ketchup has an impressive track record, is the fan favorite, is almost always out in front and wins consistently. It’s name alone is in the Brand Eponym Hall of Fame with the likes of Kleenex, Xerox, Coke, and Band-Aid.

Yahoo is definitely covered in Mustard. A tenured dog with a loyal fan base, if Yahoo buys AOL, it becomes Spicy Brown.

MSN is the dog smothered in Onion. Leaky eyed fans of this dog rarely select it without Ketchup or Mustard. Certainly the "underdog", I must admit I have a hard time not rooting for Onion -- which comes natural to an Indians fan.

So who's your dog?

I find myself still using 'ole reliable Ketchup, but recently I've found myself sampling more Mustard and some occasional Onion.

And who ultimately wins this derby?

None of our three main Condiments are going away anytime soon. And who knows, 2006 may be the year Relish joins the race. Likely, no one wins all the customers in the end. We'll just stay right here on the edges of our seats enjoying the race.

"Go Onion!"

The Search Engine Hot Dog Derby
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October 25, 2005

The Search for Lingua Franca: Engines, SEO, and Real People

Imagine walking into your local car dealership and hearing a conversation similar to this one. The salesman approaches a couple and begins to extol the virtues of the gleaming, midnight-blue sedan in front of them.

He covers all bases, making sure that no feature is left unexplained, no spec left unquoted:

• Horsepower
  
• Mileage
  
• Turning radius
  
• Cargo volume
  
• Passenger count
  
• and on and on...

When he finally takes a breath, the couple look at each other, then at the salesman.

"But what can I do with it?" the woman asks.

"Yeah," her husband adds, "do we sit in it? What does a car do?"

In this context, such a conversation is silly and impossible to fathom. But in SEO/SEM, growing evidence shows it happens all the time. Some recent examples:

• A forum at DigitalPoint describes the fallout of the current Google update, nicknamed Jagger. One specific post gives curious insight into the surfing habits - and search understanding - of a certain type of user:

  My customers are more elderly people and I found out they do not know how to bookmark a site for example so they are using Google like bookmarks in their browser. What is happening now is, these customers just keep browsing the search results until they find my site. I had 3 customers complaining as to why I have moved my site in Google, which they find very inconvenient.

  No search marketer, whether on the agency side or client side, who has explained his or her job to a befuddled friend or relative, should be surprised by that consumer behavior, yet I still was. To suggest that the 80/20 rule applies to search engines (i.e., that 80% of search engine users focus on [or even know about] only 20% of the engine's feature set) is likely a large understatement. It's probably closer to 98/2.
  

• ClickZ reports that few publishers or online agencies know about Google's ability to serve AdSense ads on RSS feeds, which comes as no surprise, the article points out, when you combine a topic the public knows little about (contextual advertising) with a topic they know nothing about (RSS).
  
• Yahoo's Jeremy Zawodney recently attended the Direct Marketing Association Convention and found out that many DM experts know little about search:
  

  In talking to some of the Search Engine Marketing folks that were in sessions on Saturday, I discovered that the vast majority of DMA folks are very, very, very new to Search Marketing. I'd go so far as to say many of them are incredibly clueless about the process, benefits, costs, etc.

So are engines getting ahead of themselves offering ads on RSS feeds when the vast majority of their users won't venture beyond the main search box?

Yes. Industry-wide, both engines and SEO companies need to engage in a massive program of search education. In our interaction with the public - whether we consider them potential searchers or potential clients - search engines and the tagalong search marketing agencies often commit the same big mistake: We're droning on about torque when we haven't adequately explained what a car is.

Once a critical mass of users understand and embrace the myriad ways that search results can appear, memories of a seven-fold increase in profits will seem like the "lean times."

add'l thanks to Threadwatch and SERoundtable

The Search for Lingua Franca: Engines, SEO, and Real People
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October 21, 2005

So You Want To Be A Search Engine Marketer?

Clients, investors, analysts, acrobats, and dinner companions, I sense, don't quite fully believe I am not being somewhat hyperbolic and self-serving when I explain how rare a find the great Search Engine Marketer is. Robert Murray best explains the nature of the rara avis:

Qualified candidates require a variety of seemingly contradictory skills to be able to work effectively. One needs to be a marketer at heart, yet have client service (people) skills... possess copywriting abilities, yet have knowledge of HTML... understand Web site architecture, usability, and site navigation, and have the technical aptitude to employ sophisticated tools, while also possessing a keen linguistic sense. Overall, effective SEM requires the integration of many disciplines, and finding individuals that possess the right combination of all these qualities is as easy as scaling Mt. Everest in your pajamas.

As if scaling Mt. Everest weren't difficult enough sans pajamas.