January, 2009

Choosing an SEO Company – What to Look For When Outsourcing Your SEO?

Posted by Craig Somerville on Jan 12, 2009 in Business Investment | 15 comments

Most businesses are now realising the need to be top of the search engines, and many now realise that search engine optimisation (SEO) is how to do it. But when it comes to choosing the right SEO company or service to optimise your site, many business struggle with what to look for.

For this reason, we’ve put together a bit of a guide to assist business owners and web managers deciding which SEO program is right for them.

Reporting

The first major pitfall for businesses to avoid is signing up to an SEO program that doesn’t provide adaquate reporting. This may sound obvious but there are plenty of dodgy SEO guys out there who’s reporting is an email saying “It’s going great!”

Make sure you find an SEO company that actually sends a report detailing where you rank in Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc for the keywords they have agreed to optimise. This is so you can see that in this month we went from page 3 to page 1, etc for each keyword.

Number of Keywords

The next thing to look for is the number of keywords or keyword phrases that will be optimised. SEO programs can range anywhere from 2 keywords to 150. Obviously the more keywords the better, but there’s no point an SEO firm claiming they optimise 150 keywords if you don’t get a report showing where you rank for these terms. It’s easy to say but harder to do.

I have personally seen SEO programs that cost business owners $2000 a month for 10 keyword phrases. This sort of thing is grossly overpriced.

Guarantees

If there’s one phrase that gets thrown about a lot in the SEO game it’s “no one can guarantee you top spot in Google.” While this is true to a certain extent, you still should make sure that your SEO program comes with some kind of guarantee.

If an SEO company only optimises 1 keyword phrase then they couldn’t possibly guarantee you top spot for just that one phrase. There’s too many other factors beyond their control.

However, for a company that optimises 25 keywords, they should be able to guarantee a certain amount of these on the first page. Any company that is not offering some kind of guarantee is not even sure enough of their own ability to perform quality SEO.

No guarantee means the SEO firm is not confident of their own ability.

Setup Costs

The other big thing to look out for is setup costs. Many SEO programs start with a $2000 or so setup cost plus an on-going monthly cost. When working out the overall cost, always budget for a 12 month commitment.

Even if the company says you can leave at any time, don’t pay the up front cost, 1 or 2 months then leave. Always plan for 12 months. SEO is one of those things that doesn’t happen overnight. Be patient, and realise that starting now will yield results in 9-12 months time.

If possible, it’s best to find programs that don’t have any setup fees at all.

The Final Word

So the basic piece of advice here is to make sure your SEO firm is accountable.

Reload Media offers three SEO programs and a brief summary of these programs are shown below. For more on these programs, click here: SEO services.

Use this table as a starting point to do your comparison shopping of SEO programs:

Popularity: 17%

Small Business SEO – The Great Equaliser

Posted by Llew Jury on Jan 7, 2009 in Search Engine Optimisation | 4 comments

One of the reasons small business can’t live without SEO is that fact that it is one of the only marketing channels available where the smaller players can compete with, and even trump big business.

Consider the marketing alternatives to SEO and the costs associated with achieving global exposure on TV, Radio or Newspaper?

So how exactly can small business utilise search marketing to compete and even thrive on the web while big business can’t?

1. Focus on the Longtail

The basic premise of the Longtail is that our culture and economy is shifting away from mainstream products and markets to a number of small, specific niches. Many of the typical constraints such as production, distribution and marketing (SEO) are changing and being alleviated by technology and the internet.

Take a big site like Amazon, they must cover all their bases and sell a large number of unique items in smaller quantity. However, when consumers are faced with unlimited choice, shopping around to get exactly what you’re after becomes much easier. Niches are so successful because they allow people to satisfy and fulfill their specific interests.

With SEO and SEM it is easy to measure exactly how profitable your different niches are so that you can focus on the highest performing ones.

2. Unlimited Ad Budget

Traditional marketing tells us that we need to ‘set a budget’ for our marketing costs. When you can measure the exact cost of a conversion, why not simply keep purchasing ads while it’s profitable? As long as every ad click is costing you less than you’re making from that click (accounting for overheads), then there’s no reason to threshold your budget.

In big business, how often have you heard a marketer tell you ‘we don’t have the budget for that at the moment‘?

As a small business, armed with the tangible information of digital ads, you can now say ‘we have an unlimited budget for ads that work‘.

3. Create Valuable Alliances

Unburdened by bureaucracy, small business can easily align with other business’ when it mutually beneficial. Big business can often be slow to change because of procedures and legal issues making it take much longer to create strategic partnerships.

Ask your strategic partners to link to you and they will do your marketing for you. Make it easy and beneficial for them to talk about you and they won’t be able to help themselves.

4. The Personal Touch

How often have you phoned a call centre, only to be greeted by a faceless voice that tells you they can’t help because ‘it’s not standard procedure‘?

Small business has the luxury of taking the time to add that personal touch. If it makes sense to both the business and the customer, why not break the rules? When you can give people something they don’t expect you’re giving them a reason to remember and talk about you.

Rather than trying to disguise it, emphasise the fact that you’re small. Shout out the advantages to the customer; lower overheads, faster responses and savings passed onto the customer.

5. Change Often, and Quickly

With so many freely available research tools, it’s easy to stay on top of trends and discover new niches. When there is a shift in direction in a market, how long does it take a big business to react?

Small business has the advantage of flexibility. If it makes sense to change, you can do something totally different tomorrow. If it doesn’t work out, change again. That’s where the beauty of SEO comes out.

photo by fisserman

Popularity: 9%