A post recently flew out and received some attention about getting a link from the New York Times. This link was the end result of a linkbait exercise by the wordstream team, the proud owners of a shiny new link from a noteworthy national publication.
Links were the goal of the exercise, primarily one from a national publication. SEER would be fired by clients if we brought them zero sales, but let them know they were linked by The New York Times, WSJ, or another national publication.
This type of exercise creates a lot questions from clients about how many links their site gained this week/month. Companies that constantly ask how many links we’ve landed for them are companies that have a short history with SEER, because the focus on links is a performance indicator where 3 link that drive traffic & sales are better than 1000 links that don’t.
A linkbait plan with poor goals is also a poor use of time. In 2008, SEER had Friday linkbait/alcoholic refreshment linkbait brainstorm meetings that lasted all of about 2 weeks because we found they were a giant waste of time. They produced a few ideas, but there were several other more productive routes to get links that provided solid traffic that also converted.
Linkbait that creates links but no traffic or conversions is like fishing and constantly having your bait stripped from the line.
True story, SEER recently had a client that received a link from The New York Times. Within a few days, this link was buried in the site beneath hundreds of new articles. We saw no uptick in traffic and no increase in sales. For SEO purposes, I would have taken a link from a subpar mommy blog in exchange for the NYT link.
Creating a plan for linkbait is not the first step to take in linkbuilding efforts. Unless there is a great case for jumping into a linkbait, talking with your client will provide far better results. Some of the GREATEST links you can achieve for clients are through using what your clients already have, but looking at it from a different perspective.
Time and time again, we ask clients in depth questions about items that would go unnoticed if they were to try & get links on their own (and hopefully they don’t read that they need backlinks and go out & buy 5000 directory links:).
- I don’t need to know names, but what universities did your VPs attend?
- What goes on at your offices that is unique?
- What are some companies you have worked for/with in the past where you still have a good relationship?
- You sell a lot of items. What would you be willing to give away?
How did our client get a link from About.com? Find out where their employees have previously worked.
How did our client get a link from 3 of the top 20 magazines in the US (that drove traffic & sales)? Find products your client can give away & write them.
How do I get a link from an ivy league school? Ask where your clients went to school, where their bosses went to school, where the CEO went to school, where their interns go to school.
These are some basic questions that create TRAFFIC, LEADS and SALES which are some pretty typical performance indicators. Without asking detailed questions and taking an interest in activities inside & outside the business, these achievable linking opportunities would not be uncovered.
Linkbait has a place in SEO, but our clients don’t pay the bills with links from the New York Times that don’t bring traffic & sales.
A post recently flew out and received some attention about getting a link from the New York Times. This link was the end result of a linkbait exercise by the wordstream team, the proud owners of a shiny new link from a noteworthy national publication.
Links were the goal of the exercise, primarily one from a national publication. SEER would be fired by clients if we brought them zero sales, but let them know they were linked by The New York Times, WSJ, or another national publication.
This type of exercise creates a lot questions from clients about how many links their site gained this week/month. Companies that constantly ask how many links weve landed for them are companies that have a short history with SEER, because the focus on links is a performance indicator where 3 link that drive traffic & sales are better than 1000 links that don’t.
A linkbait plan with poor goals is also a poor use of time. In 2008, SEER had Friday linkbait/alcoholic refreshment linkbait brainstorm meetings that lasted all of about 2 weeks because we found they were a giant waste of time. They produced a few ideas, but there were several other more productive routes to get links that provided solid traffic that also converted.
Linkbait that creates links but no traffic or conversions is like fishing and constantly having your bait stripped from the line.
True story, SEER recently had a client that received a link from The New York Times. Within a few days, this link was buried in the site beneath hundreds of new articles. We saw no uptick in traffic and no increase in sales. For SEO purposes, I would have taken a link from a subpar mommy blog in exchange for the NYT link.
Creating a plan for linkbait is not the first step to take in linkbuilding efforts. Unless there is a great case for jumping into a linkbait, talking with your client will provide far better results. Some of the GREATEST links you can achieve for clients are through using what your clients already have, but looking at it from a different perspective.
Time and time again, we ask clients in depth questions about items that would go unnoticed if they were to try & get links on their own (and hopefully they dont read that they need backlinks and go out & buy 5000 directory links:).
- I dont need to know names, but what universities did your VPs attend?
- What goes on at your offices that is unique?
- What are some companies you have worked for/with in the past where you still have a good relationship?
- You sell a lot of items. What would you be willing to give away?
How did our client get a link from About.com? Find out where their employees have previously worked.
How did our client get a link from 3 of the top 20 magazines in the US (that drove traffic & sales)? Find products your client can give away & write them.
How do I get a link from an ivy league school? Ask where your clients went to school, where their bosses went to school, where the CEO went to school, where their interns go to school.
These are some basic questions that create TRAFFIC, LEADS and SALES which are some pretty typical performance indicators. Without asking detailed questions and taking an interest in activities inside & outside the business, these achievable linking opportunities would not be uncovered.
Linkbait has a place in SEO, but our clients dont pay the bills with links from the New York Times that dont bring traffic & sales.
Being a company that focuses solely on SEO and PPC (along with Google Analytics to measure and analyze performance), we are often faced early on in potential client conversations with the million-dollar question: Should I focus my online efforts on SEO or PPC? Depending on the potential clients goals, business model, etc., the conversation may get even trickier – changing direction from SEO to PPC or from PPC to SEO, or sometimes even from SEO and PPC to a completely different avenue of marketing.
The great thing when you are dealing with a company that does solely focus on SEO or PPC (at least in the case of SEER), is that we are committed to pointing potential clients in the right direction (the one that gives them RESULTS), whether that is focusing on SEO or PPC (with SEER or without), or another means of advertising outside of SEER. Its certainly a tough call, but when youre in the trenches of search day in and day out you know what type of clients will and will not succeed and lets be honest, who wants to take a project on that you have that gut feeling from the start may fail? (Check out one of Wil’s latest posts for more on Avoiding Client SEO Failures)
So, how do you convince a client who is dead set on an SEO Campaign that, at this moment, PPC is their best approach?
Communicate you are PROTECTING their downside!
Often times when a client is approaching you for an SEO campaign, the thought of engaging in PPC instead scares them.
From a financial standpoint, investing in an SEO may seem like a better solution for a potential new client; they look at SEO as a 12-month investment that they no longer pay for after the contract expires but continue to reap the benefits from.
And at initial glance, PPC appears to have a higher ONGOING price tag there is the ad-spend, the agency management fee, potentially a setup fee, landing page development fees, etc.
However, what happens if you are dealing with a company who has ZERO online presence or better yet, one that is introducing a new product/service?
If you are anything like the SEER team, taking a (educated) guess that you are choosing the correct terms to optimize a site around based solely on volume, relevancy, etc.for a brand new business/product/service does NOT sound like a good idea .
Why? Because what happens when you get your client all page one rankings and the conversions DONT COME IN?
Well, heres the other million dollar question that now your client will be asking YOU: Where are the customers?
So, to avoid the Where are the customers question, turn the tables on the client in the discovery stage and push them down the PPC path (But again, do so by communicating you are PROTECTING their downside!).
Use PPC to TEST what terms ACTUALLY do drive the conversions!
And dont just test the terms haphazardly Structure your PPC account in the same way you would be driving organic traffic to the clients site.
1. Set up a unique Campaign for every page you will likely target in your SEO campaign.
2. Your ad groups will then house the terms you will target to each unique page.
3. Your landing pages should be the actual page on the site that you would optimize the targeted terms for.
4. Finally, ensure your campaign settings best match an SEO campaign. For instance, target the US (assuming that is your market); target Google Search only (vs. Google Search & Search Partners), etc.
Granted, there will be uncontrollable variances to how organic and paid traffic perform; however, wouldnt it be great to gather statistically significant data for a client on terms that are PROVEN to (or not to) work! Not to mention, imagine how much more at ease the client will be throughout the SEO campaign knowing that there they already generated some new customers through the PPC tests and are confident they will achieve the ROI from SEO they desire!
Once you have your statistically significant data to base your decision off of, you can then push forward with an SEO campaign that you have CONFIDENCE in will drive the results your client desires. And as long as your PPC account is returning a positive ROI, you may have just helped a potential client grow their business exponentially just by doing some smart marketing research (and hey, picked up a PPC client for yourself!).
And if your statistically significant PPC data leads you to have the tough conversation with you potential client that this is not going to drive the results you need, dont you think your potential client will thank you (and who knows, maybe even refer you to other potential clients) for not wasting their money OR time?
As my colleague Bonnie mentioned in a previous blog, Want to Avoid a Million Dollar mistake, use PPC for the benefits it brings Do the research (fairly quickly) for your potential client before you waste their time (and yours) and money!
The lovely folks that run the software directory at Capterra asked me to come speak at their conference recently. They were kind enough to share the video with me, and here is a snippet. This is probably the most link building tips I’ve ever squeezed into such a short time. There are a LOT of opportunities here to build, high quality long lasting links in a white hat way. The core points in this video revolves around how you should be asking your client / teams questions that will show opportunities. This has a bit of a B2B / software marketing slant, but I guarantee there’s things in here that EVERYONE can use. We discuss everything from securing links from .edus by offering discounts to getting links with testimonials. There’s even tips on how to play the “race card” to build links, all in quality ways. Have you ever thought about offering your skills “in kind” to a non profit who lists out their in kind sponsors? I’m sharing a ton, so I hope it helps you out.
As I set down over lunch with the guys and girl above, I started thinking about what I could share, given that my last post on hiring difficulties was well received I figured I’d write something that combines both. It begins with story of one of our biggest clients, who I at one time turned away…
I turned this client away the first time they came to us, I had met with the owner over breakfast. He found us through a search and had done a ton of research on what to ask a potential SEO firm. During our breakfast it became obvious that his expectations for how search worked and what it could contribute to his bottom line were off from how I understood them. So at the end of our conversation, I told him that we wouldn’t be able to work on these projects because I didn’t honestly feel like I could set realistic expectations. BOY WAS THAT ALMOST a MISTAKE – 2-3 people would not have jobs at SEER if he walked, but instead he didn’t…
He called me the next day and said ”you were the only guy who wouldn’t promise me they could give what I wanted, and instead took time to educate me on what to expect, you tell me what I can expect.” As a result, he asked me to come in and set his teams expectation on what search can do, which I did, and sure enough over the course of our 3 year relationship, its been fruitful for both sides, and this company is one of my favorites to look back at how we were able to help – the relationship has grown over the years, and we have had a very honest and smooth working relationship, they challenge us, we challenge them but all for the sake of growing their bottom line. So with that story behind us, lets get started on how to not take on jobs DOOMED for failure from the beginning – and if you do fail how to handle it.
Avoid jobs with unrealistic revenue expectations
Search marketing, social media marketing, conversion optimization, whatever it is that you do, you MUST avoid clients with unrealistic expectations, none of your businesses create miracles. You must also admit to yourself that you don’t walk on water, and there’s always a chance for failure.
It is part of your job to do the math with your prospective clients to at least give you and them an idea on what a goal you should both be shooting for.
In every initial new business conversation, ask the person on the other end of the line for their average sale value and a rough idea on margins. Starting the conversation there allows you to easily do some mental math while determining if the expectations are realistic.
Focus on how your client makes money look at the searching universe if things dont match up dont take on the project, because even if you kill it in SEO theyre probably going to have a negative ROI and a negative sentiment about your company.
Want to avoid a major screw up later down the road?? Don’t fear letting a prospective client know that the numbers don’t add up, and as such they should seek another company.
Sometimes clients will say “dont worry about our profitability, well handle that, you bring the traffic we will worry about how to convert it.” Weve had clients say that, and that is 100% fine with us if they end up upside down on ROI later in the project we know we tried to help them avoid that reality in the first place.
Agree on success metrics before contracts are signed
We had a client for whom we increased their traffic 3x (yes they were already getting thousands of visitors) yet in spite of that they werent entirely sure we werent doing all we could to grow their business. I KNEW we were.
This was my fault, I should have done a better job up front of making sure we both were in agreement on what exactly success was. For me success was returning a positive ROI, for them, it was a positive ROI but more important was how many links did we build last week/month.
We ultimately had to let them go because the way they looked at success was obviously different than how we did. I am not saying they were wrong, but just not the right fit for us.
Assuming your upfront due diligence is done and you agree on what success is, and for some reason you just cant get a great ROI at 6 or 9 months in, the first step is to admit to the client that you see that they have an upside down on ROI. Get the elephant in the room on the table immediately. At the very least you’ll earn their trust that even in the face of bad news you have the cojones to admit it. See below for some ideas on how to address failure with clients. By getting this issue on the table you give even the nicest clients the ability to now talk openly about the obvious failure. This doesnt make them feel bad for bringing the obvious points up. When your results aren’t good you should never have to wait for the client to say something first, NEVER.
Don’t show your best hand
Why do you think might not be the best idea to lead in with your best case studies?
Prospective clients who ask for a case study may see an example for a site out there you were able to increase traffic by 10x and conversions by 8x and added $500k in gross sales.
Some people when they see those kinds of results think its typical and not an exception, so when you finish the project with a traffic increase of 80% and conversion increase by 55% with $180k in additional gross sales, that might feel like a disappointment to them.
If this happens, it is your fault.
You got the biz by showing your client your best case scenario of all time, setting their expectation that these results are not always typical is one way you can address this. Personally I’d prefer to show a prospective client the best, middle, worst case scenarios giving them a more balanced view of how SEO can work for them and outline why (if possible) those results happened.
Remove “magic server pixie dust” thinking in SEO
Remember this commercial from IBM? It’s time for clients to wise up to the fact that crappy links typically ain’t gonna get you that leg up on your competitors, we should be the people pushing that message. This means in the sales process you should be educating your client that you are going to need them, A LOT to be successful in building high quality links.
You are going to need budgets, access to project managers, give-a-ways, etc.
No project sucks more than the one where the client just thought they’d pay you, you’d sprinkle some dust and then they’d wake up with money coming out the whazoo.
Ok, so now that you’ve done all the work to set the clients expectations, congratulations. The real sad question is what happens when you do all the hard work spending night and day optimizing, link building, and the results never come?
Typically there are a few reasons why ROI can be in the pits – here’s the three most typical scenarios and how we deal with them at SEER.
If the ROI sucks because the client is slow
Solution cut their monthly payments up to half (unless you bill hourly) most clients know when they are the cause for the slowdown in results. But if their slow down is preventing you from doing a large part of what you need to do to help them be successful, its a good idea to cut their monthly payments, especially since you have less work to do and parts of your project are in a holding pattern. It may not be half, but you should show some kind of sign that says I am not comfortable billing you for work I am probably not doing.
If you dont take this approach, youll likely keep billing them and they may keep paying, UNTIL someone asks what we are getting for this, which is not a good conversation to have once you’ve been put in defensive mode. Taking an “F you pay me” approach to a slow client is a guaranteed way to get the boot.
If the ROI sucks because you are unable to get rankings
This happens, SEOs hate to admit it, but good ones aren’t and we’re no exception, yes at times SEER has not gotten the results I hoped for in the timeframe I hoped and sometimes it was not the clients fault. We may have just needed more time than expected at the onset of the project.
I strongly believe in the Vince Lombardi quote that goes something like this:
“We didnt lose, we just ran out of time”
That’s my mantra. Personally I feel like I rarely lose because I’ll never give up, that does require patience on the part of your client. Again if you’ve done a great job of setting expectations up front and being honest, you’ll have explained to them that results come at different stages, so they should be expecting that late results is always a risk you take with SEO.
Any SEO that says they bat 1.000 and have never had a job that at times looked like a failure is probably not challenging themselves with difficult projects or they are just not being honest.
This has happened to me maybe 10 times in my SEO career. In every instance I proactively called the client, and said just this:
“When we sat down at the table and shook hands, you knew that I couldn’t guarantee rankings or results, yet you trusted us in the goal of helping you grow your traffic and leads through search. While we have some small victories to point to we are not at the level that both you and I expected. As a result we are going to halt your payments for 2-4 months (depending on how far away we are) while we are still working 100% full steam ahead on your project. Assuming we get the rankings (and I believe we will) we can make up the payments on the end when you can see a tangible impact.
Clients are shocked when I make these calls, but it is just the right thing to do. That is how Id want to be treated, and you would too.
If the ROI sucks due to less search volume / tighter margins
This is one of those things you as an SEO cant do a whole lot about, but to maybe stretch out your payments for a month or two as a sign of client solidarity, letting your client know that you know they are getting the squeeze and that you are in this with them as a long term partner.
Good clients dont abuse this, so make it your job to find the GOOD clients. GOOD clients also know that there is nothing you, as an SEO can do if less people search for their target keywords or if they have to cut prices, thus throwing off your ROI projections.
If the project sucks because theres communication problems
So this is again your fault, unless you can point back to documented instances of you setting a clients expectation over and over again. Every time I’ve seen a major communications “F Up” at SEER I took responsibility for it, and our team does too. As such we are constantly working on process improvement, with the idea being that every time a client has an expectation we didn’t fulfill that its either our fault for not communicating or its MY FAULT for bringing in a client who I didn’t work on setting expectations with properly. Once we own the problem we own the solution – and that’s what we do, look back at the communication failure and figure out how can our processes be improved. If the process can not be improved then we know that we need to chat with the client about why they were wrong, if the process can be improved we let the client know that they have exposed an area of weakness in how we manage projects / communicate and let them know when they can expect to see an improvement.
SEO is an unpredictable business, we all know that, and I think that even clients (the good ones at least) are starting to realize that too. Good clients are not breaking backs in 2 months asking where’s my top ranking anymore.
Maybe I took the long way to just saying, just follow the rule you learned in the sandbox at age 5, treat others the way you want to be treated, and when tough business decisions arise youll always make the right decision.
Admittedly most of this post revolves around ROI & Communication but there are several things I didn’t have time to go into like retention, having a great team, firing bad clients, etc that also help lead to SEO success.
I hope these tips help you avoid SEO failure from the get go, and for more on how to avoid colossal F Up’s – come see our session at SXSW.
We have been trying to figure out the tool discrepancies between Google Insights, Google Trends, and the Adwords Keyword Tool . We noticed that the Google Adwords tool says the phrase snowboarding equipment has much higher search volume than the phrase snowboarding gear, but Insights and Trends reveal something different. The lines for snowboarding gear are higher than snowboarding equipment.
I was curious as to why, and when doing some keyword research, I decided to try something really broad and test different keywords to see how this changed the graph in Insights. We knew Insights broad matched, but hadnt quite realized just how much this affected the graph and trend lines.
Taking a look at a broad term like insurance, you can really see how the broad match can cause a discrepancy. I compared insurance to car insurance and health insurance. Now, since most people are specific when searching for insurance, I expected to see specific keywords having a higher search volume. Car insurance has a much higher exact match search volume.
However, looking at the three terms in Google Insights, you see that “insurance” has a significantly higher line on the graph. That is because Insights broad matches, and a broad term like insurance is matched to so many other keywords, including both car insurance and health insurance. You cant assume that insurance is more popular than car insurance. Car insurance is search for more, but insurance appears more popular because its broad matched.
You can choose to enter the keywords in quotes to phrase match, but since you cant get an exact trend, you cant really compare the exact search volume from the Adwords Keyword tool to the trend lines in Google Insights.
Going back to the snowboarding keywords. While snowboarding equipment has a higher search volume, snowboarding gear is more popular because gear is probably broad matched to more terms than equipment is.
Of course, its always best to use multiple tools and use them as a guide. One thing to take away from a trend like this is the importance of researching for variations of keywords. Insights shows you 10 top searches and 10 rising searches, but if you download a csv of the data you can see a longer list of the top searches for both terms. It can help you research other keywords that are contributing to the popularity of a certain term. And maybe even help you see how relevant the terms are that are being matched to your keyword and why one term is more popular than another.
Google has a good reason to not trust optimized sites.
If I were to sell contact lenses I might decide to go after the term “Cheap Contact Lenses Online”. I’ll optimize the begeezes out of my site for that one keyword. At the end of the day, Google ranks me #1 for a four word phrase. Not too hard, but Google finally decided I’m the most relevant for that term. The only problem is that my site sells each pair of contact lenses for $3000. Cheap, right?
While it has impacted a number of words, I’m seeing a growing number of adjectives being filtered out by Google.
To survive, Google has to continue to bring back the best results. If not, Bing, Yahoo, or the next best thing might come up and take away search share. By limiting adjectives, like “cheap” or “discount”, Google is able to provide searchers with more respectable results. Numerous ecommerce sites will use these adjectives regardless if they’re actually the cheapest and now Google is starting to cut this variable out of their algorithm.
Adding a plus sign before your search disables this specific tip feature.
This raises the question, Why is this tip at the bottom and not at the top of results like most other tips? Two quick answers are:
1. Google just doesn’t want to tell you that you’re not getting what you requested.
2. It’s not a misspelling or error, so there’s no reason to make you refine your search (they did it for you).
Terms have also been shown trimmed down from their original query.
While it is still an adjective, it is not as much of an extreme. The results for this query could be some very hot online deals, but chances of them being THE hottest online deal are not very likely. The shoes showing up in SERPs may be cheap, but it is highly unlikely they are THE cheapest.
This raises another question, Why doesn’t this show up for every search? If shopping results appear in the SERPs, this tip is not as necessary as searchers can make a more accurate assessment from the 3-5 shopping results. Beyond that, it could be based on the number of search results containing that adjective in the title tag, it could be based on the popularity of that search, it could be any number of things.
This is just another interesting algorithmic twist impacting ecommerce sites as well as other industries. Google doesn’t trust what you have to say and in this latest step started taking that out of the equation.
