SEO Training

When starting out on an SEO campaign where do you actually begin? How do you organise and prioritise? What is more important: social media, link building, content?

These questions are valid for everybody. They are particularly relevant if you have been charged with your company’s online marketing and are not 100% sure exactly what to do in order to get results that will get you a clap on the back.

Your SEO campaign needs planning to make you look good.

It all has to start with SEO analysis.  My granny used to knit a lot.  The house was littered with knitting patterns.  Try building a house without blueprints.  The same is true for online marketing and SEO.  Without a clear picture of what has to be done you will end up with a proverbial one armed jumper (an itchy one at that) or a house with architectural properties similar to that of my own (and the builders actually had plans!).

SEO analysis allows you to work out exactly where you stand right now and provides pointers for where you can achieve that all important traffic and Google rankings. Think of an SEO analysis report as an SEO blueprint.  A good SEO analysis report will tell you:

• What keywords am I using currently?
• Is my website standards compliant? (good code base)
• How can my site structure be improved? (for ease of use and for SEO)
• How does my site compare to that of competitors for SEO?
• What keywords are competitors using?
• What sites link back to my site?
• What sites link to my competitors sites?
• What are my sites Strengths, Opportunities, Weaknesses, Threats? (SWOT analysis)

A really good report will also bring in social media and assess what can be done there too.  It will also explain the effects of these different aspects on your websites online performance.

Webshed offer a SEO Health Check that incorporates these features.  That is because it is the essential building block of any online campaign.

If you are about to start an SEO campaign, do not go into it blind.  Have a clear plan based on facts and your life will be made that much easier and there is less possibility of spending lots of time on little return.

Online Dating is becoming ever more popular in Ireland.  There are absolute parallels between those seeking partners online and those who are potential customers for your business.

They are all looking for something that attracts them.  Think of an online dating site as a shop.  Some of the products have pictures (and according to Jill McGrath over at MaybeFriends.com, these are the ones that get most attention).  If you are looking for a potential dating partner online, then you are most likely to click on a picture of somebody who is attractive and has a nice picture.  Translate that back to your business.  What can you learn from that?  It’s simple.  Good product pictures are essential to boost sales of that item.  I have seen far too many sites that use pictures they have taken themselves under bad lighting conditions.  Even the most lovely packaging is going to look shoddy if the lighting is bad and the background is not clean.  Get pictures from the manufacturer, or invest in hiring a photographer for product shots.

Same product, but if you were buying speakers which picture would you click on? The professional photograph or the one I took using my mobile phone on my desk?

What about if you sell a service rather than products?  Pictures are still important.  In fact, the links between online dating and selling your business can be even closer here.  People are attracted to people.  Getting stock images of attractive people to associate with your product makes sense, and costs practically nothing.

Back to our online dating analogy.  Once a hopeful browser has clicked on somebody they like the look of, what comes next?  (slow down, slow down).  Next comes finding out more about that person.  This is where text comes in.  In the case of dating, this is the text that somebody writes about themselves as a profile.  It is where the person has an opportunity to sell themselves as a person to a potential partner.  There are two ways in which this can be approached.  You can just put in your information, or you can actively sell yourself.  Indulge me for a moment while I give an example:

Bare Information: My friends say I am attractive.  I am easygoing, have a good sense of humour and like nights out and nights in too.

Selling: Thanks for clicking on my picture!  I’m a passionate about music, and love my nights out clubbing or going to gigs.  When it comes to romantic nights in, I like to cook with soft music playing in the background , and if it all goes wrong I know some good take-aways!

I think the difference is fairly obvious there, and the same goes for products / services…..

Bare information: Desktop speakers with volume and tone controls

Selling: Discreet desktop speakers that provide surprisingly good sound quality worthy of much higher end speakers.

Of course, from an SEO perspective, both contain the keywords “desktop speakers”.  Selling does not mean forgetting your SEO… it is about increasing conversions from visitors to sales.

Here is the difference between online dating and selling products or services: If you are on a dating site, and you have not put up a picture, and your profile does not sell you, it is not necessarily the end of the road.  You can still contact people, and possibly overcome the bad first impression you gave.  If you are selling a product, that’s it… you’re out of luck.  It is sale or no-sale time, and if you have not done it already now, you are never going to sell to that customer.

Just as dating is about getting to know someone, learn to trust them and developing a bond, before the sale goes through of your product online, you will probably need to earn some trust too.

If you are getting to know somebody you like and they seem to be holding back things, then you are going to be wary of them.  Likewise, if a customer cannot find your contact information, privacy policy, returns policy, registered business number or delivery information, they are less likely to trust your site.

First impressions last.  If you meet somebody you have met online, then how they present themselves on that first date will form a lasting impression. the same goes for your website.  If it looks even slightly less than professional then that is the lasting impression you are giving of your business.

This may all seem a bit far away from SEO training, but SEO and Online Marketing are linked.  There is no point having a site that ranks well if it does not appeal to your target audience.  Your customers come first. Those who forget this in the pursuit of SEO alone run the risk of becoming the internet equivalent of the old cat lady! (I’m not sure exactly what that is – suggestions in comments please).

Online Marketing Forum

I have just created a brand new Online Marketing forum on my home site.  It will cover SEO at all levels, online and offline marketing and PR.  That’s just as a starting point.

I observed that while there is a huge interest in the business community regarding SEO and Online Marketing in general, there is a natural reluctance to ask questions to real life people.  I understand this completely.  Nobody likes to appear ill informed.  Social Media and SEO are relatively new fields though.  They are also fields where there is a lot of bad information available online.  Online Branding is a new concept to many businesses, particularly for SME’s.

SEO training and Social Media training are my own preferred areas, but while I can personally add a lot to the forum in these areas, I want people to freely express their own views in all areas.  The forum is to be a free information resource.

My purpose in creating the Online Marketing Forum, was to create an environment where people could ask the “silly questions” with a degree of anonymity.  It should also become a place where professionals can argue the pros and cons of their latest thinking.

The forum is brand new, so therefor it is fairly empty at the moment.  Don’t hold back.  If you are involved in Online Marketing or want to find out more about it then join it.  Post a question, comment or hypothesis.  This is a resource for you.  This is a free resource and while it is hosted on the Webshed site, I hope that it will be populated by professionals in competing companies as well as my own.

In the last post I was discussing PPC budgets.  It is easy to think of PPC as the only thing to be included in online marketing budgets, but that is not giving the full picture.  This site is all about SEO training.  Some think of SEO and PPC as being interchangeable.  They are in reality two quite separate topics.

SEO can be seen as a gamble by companies when compared to PPC

I found some stats the other day about budget spends on SEO/SEM(PPC).  The results were quite startling.  In general, over 85% of an online spend is on PPC ads, most notably Google Adwords.  This leaves less than 15% of the budget allocated to SEO.  In this instance, when I refer to SEO I am talking about organic Search Engine Optimisation.

This doesn’t seem like a big deal until you realise that only 14-16% of clicks on Search Engine Results Pages (SERPS) are actually on the Pay Per Click ads.

Why are so many companies spending such a high proportion of their online marketing budget on something that only yields 14-16% of return?  Why are they not concentrating on trying to get a larger slice of the 85% or so clicks that are coming from “natural” listings?

The truth is that most companies have tried.  However, only some can be successful, because of the limited number of top positions.  For the sake of the argument, let us assume that success is your site appearing on the first page of results.  Let us factor in normal company politics and in particular the accountants. What is going to happen?

Well firstly, somebody, either from Marketing or from IT is going to mention that some work needs to be done on the companies web presence.  Discussion will take place about what needs to be done.  The answer will be “SEO, and we can try some adwords too”.  The accountants will hear, we need to do some “ghrjldjfsdkhf” and we can try some “alkjwonjaef” too.

It needs to be explained.  SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation.  It’s about getting the website up the ranks of google.  Adwords are online ads, where you only pay for each click – as little as 8 cents.

“OK, how much is SEO? Can’t the IT dept do that?”

Ah, but the truth is they have probably already tried.  They may even have had some success and claimed that it is not possible to do much better because of company size, the level of competition, the sun being in aquarius etc.  Put on the spot the only recourse is to offer that SEO is an expert area that requires dedicated consultants to push the site even further. (quite true really).

“Ok, so how much does a consultant cost?…”

“How much?????? And what results will they give us.”

Here they are going to be told that nobody can actually 100% guarantee results.

Let’s sum up.  You can have a fully budgeted spend on adwords, where you can measure results and ROI with ease, or you can spend what seems like a lot of money on an SEO consultant (compared with 8c per click) and have no guaranteed result.

What has been forgotten is that approximately 85% of your potential clicks are coming from the SEO work… not the adwords campaign.  Further more, once the bulk of your initial SEO work is done, so is the bulk of the expense.  Adwords keep charging as long as you need them.  SEO can be dropped for short periods of time without the same total loss of revenue.

Invest in SEO training and your IT staff can maintain and even improve your rankings on their own without the need for massive ongoing spends.

I am not against PPC.  Budgeting 85% of your online spend on adwords is not actually sound financial sense though.  It is aiming for catching a minnow instead of a tuna fish, and the spend is not exactly different over time either.

If you are spending 85% of your online budget on adwords, then your online marketing budget is wrong!