I'd say all the top ranking sites for competitive keywords kind of prove it - chances are they're there because they've been optimised by someone (or a team of people) who describe their job as 'SEO'.
Surely you see the merit / value in a #1 ranking for something like 'car insurance'? Well so do moneysupermarket, swiftcover, go compare, more than, kwik fit, swinton et al, all of whom I would bet my salary (the one that you suggest I don't deserve) on having ongoing search engine optimisation, and rank quite comfortably on the first page of Google. However, if they were to follow your advice of 'build your own links and let Google come find you!', chances are they'd be earning appoximately £0 from natural search referals to their websites.
(,
Tue 22 Jun 2010, 17:12,
archived)
Surely you see the merit / value in a #1 ranking for something like 'car insurance'? Well so do moneysupermarket, swiftcover, go compare, more than, kwik fit, swinton et al, all of whom I would bet my salary (the one that you suggest I don't deserve) on having ongoing search engine optimisation, and rank quite comfortably on the first page of Google. However, if they were to follow your advice of 'build your own links and let Google come find you!', chances are they'd be earning appoximately £0 from natural search referals to their websites.
I can see the merit in it, yes.However, I can't help feel that it's ultimately pointless when Google are constantly catching up and blocking SEO tricks.
Would other marketing techniques that improve the client's website not be more effective in getting permanent links?
I think many people are told that a monthly SEO fee is the only way to do well on their site, when their own marketing ideas would often be just as effective if they could provide interesting content for their site.
I guess, ultimately I think that link-building is a poor-man's viral marketing.
(Would other marketing techniques that improve the client's website not be more effective in getting permanent links?
I think many people are told that a monthly SEO fee is the only way to do well on their site, when their own marketing ideas would often be just as effective if they could provide interesting content for their site.
I guess, ultimately I think that link-building is a poor-man's viral marketing.
monkeon schmonkeon,
Tue 22 Jun 2010, 17:19,
archived)
"I guess, ultimately I think that link-building is a poor-man's viral marketing"I completely agree. Well, maybe I don't agree with the term "viral marketing" - things that "go viral" are successful in their own own right - "marketing" suggests it is deliberate, which a true viral shouldn't be really. But this is a semantic argument at best.
But SEOs will do link building as a service while there are poor men out there with the lack of imagination to make that viral content. It doesn't have to be viral either, just interesting and useful; people link to useful resources, it doesn't have to be a wildfire explosion of a successful viral.
(,
Tue 22 Jun 2010, 17:29,
archived)
But SEOs will do link building as a service while there are poor men out there with the lack of imagination to make that viral content. It doesn't have to be viral either, just interesting and useful; people link to useful resources, it doesn't have to be a wildfire explosion of a successful viral.
"However, if they were to follow your advice of "build your own links and let Google come find you!", chances are they'd be earning appoximately £0 from natural search referals to their websites."
If their marketing department were explained the theory behind and the benefit of link building, surely they could do it themselves? Larger companies could just buy advertising.
What is the specialist skill that an SEO brings to the link building side of the job? Someone said a list of sites you can post on, but is that all?
(If their marketing department were explained the theory behind and the benefit of link building, surely they could do it themselves? Larger companies could just buy advertising.
What is the specialist skill that an SEO brings to the link building side of the job? Someone said a list of sites you can post on, but is that all?
monkeon schmonkeon,
Tue 22 Jun 2010, 18:02,
archived)
From a link building perspectiveyou can do it yourself or pay someone else to, much as you can buy your own PPC or buy your own media, but why not use a hard cost agency to do it beter and cheaper?
Also I need to learn to spell 'better' it would seem.
(Also I need to learn to spell 'better' it would seem.
LordManley twitter.com/LordManley,
Tue 22 Jun 2010, 19:10,
archived)
."but why not use a hard cost agency to do it better and cheaper?"
Is it that much cheaper?
How would you define better?
(Is it that much cheaper?
How would you define better?
monkeon schmonkeon,
Tue 22 Jun 2010, 19:13,
archived)
It is a shorter term benefitand I cannot really improve on milt's response below, much as I do like a good bicker.
( LordManley twitter.com/LordManley,
Tue 22 Jun 2010, 20:39,
archived)
You might not believe it,but I hate an argument.
I'm amused that no one has defended working in social media, though. I was even ruder about them.
(I'm amused that no one has defended working in social media, though. I was even ruder about them.
monkeon schmonkeon,
Tue 22 Jun 2010, 21:05,
archived)
Some of my best friends work in social mediaand that's all I am willing to say.
Except, of course, that it is not. I think that there are areas where social media can be leveraged just as bill hoardings have their place, or advertising in the local rag. I think tat it is an important and valuable resource which can be used as a superb and targeted channel.
I also think that every man and his dog want to jump on the band wagon and that the sort of marketing director who wants 'social media' because it sounds good is a lot more likely to be charletonized (yes I do make words up, what of it?) than the same man in traditional media channels (including organic search).
I also really like battered chips.
(Except, of course, that it is not. I think that there are areas where social media can be leveraged just as bill hoardings have their place, or advertising in the local rag. I think tat it is an important and valuable resource which can be used as a superb and targeted channel.
I also think that every man and his dog want to jump on the band wagon and that the sort of marketing director who wants 'social media' because it sounds good is a lot more likely to be charletonized (yes I do make words up, what of it?) than the same man in traditional media channels (including organic search).
I also really like battered chips.
LordManley twitter.com/LordManley,
Tue 22 Jun 2010, 22:28,
archived)
I think our main difference in perspective seems to be that youwork with large businesses, and I work with small. As such, I get pissed off when I see people who, say, run a dog walking company who have been sold a blog and twitter by a social media 'expert'.
Social Media is fine for large companies (even though it backfires all the time), but lots of blog posts with "comments(0)" is a waste of everyone's time if they don't have or need a big client base.
(Social Media is fine for large companies (even though it backfires all the time), but lots of blog posts with "comments(0)" is a waste of everyone's time if they don't have or need a big client base.
monkeon schmonkeon,
Tue 22 Jun 2010, 22:34,
archived)
Actually, I think a dog walking service is a prime example ofa business which could benefit from social media engagement within a local vertical, but yes, in general your point is a valid one.
( LordManley twitter.com/LordManley,
Wed 23 Jun 2010, 9:15,
archived)
Things like Twitter feeds......need a reason to exist. It needs to be part of the service and it needs to add value to the customer in some way, shape or form.
For a kennel, I can see there being an argument for a feed to allow the dog owners to keep tabs on their animal, when it was walked, fed, etc. As well as a way for owners to keep in touch with the kennel in a fairly simple way.
A dog walking service? Maybe there is an argument for it, but it would have to serve a purpose.
(,
Wed 23 Jun 2010, 10:19,
archived)
For a kennel, I can see there being an argument for a feed to allow the dog owners to keep tabs on their animal, when it was walked, fed, etc. As well as a way for owners to keep in touch with the kennel in a fairly simple way.
A dog walking service? Maybe there is an argument for it, but it would have to serve a purpose.
I wouldn't say better and cheaper.I would say that an agency can do it well from contract start (as long as you have picked a good agency) without having to go through the pain of recruiting staff that you are not geared up to assess the skill-set of.
This is ultimately why agencies exist. They have specialists on tap and (presumably) can pick a decent candidate at interview. They can also hit the ground running.
It takes time to build a competent in-house team. They can be just as good as an agency. They are likely to be cheaper in the long-run though.
(,
Tue 22 Jun 2010, 20:04,
archived)
This is ultimately why agencies exist. They have specialists on tap and (presumably) can pick a decent candidate at interview. They can also hit the ground running.
It takes time to build a competent in-house team. They can be just as good as an agency. They are likely to be cheaper in the long-run though.
."It takes time to build a competent in-house team."
Is there really that much knowledge to the link building side that an SEO consultant couldn't teach a marketing department in a day? I appreciate that there is skill to code optimisation (which I suspect should be a one-off job to someone who knows what they are doing.)
However, as I mentioned before, I'm sure that it's going to be the in-house team who are more able to write interesting content about their area of expertise to post on relevant blogs and article collection sites, which seems to be a far less spammy approach to link building.
(Is there really that much knowledge to the link building side that an SEO consultant couldn't teach a marketing department in a day? I appreciate that there is skill to code optimisation (which I suspect should be a one-off job to someone who knows what they are doing.)
However, as I mentioned before, I'm sure that it's going to be the in-house team who are more able to write interesting content about their area of expertise to post on relevant blogs and article collection sites, which seems to be a far less spammy approach to link building.
monkeon schmonkeon,
Tue 22 Jun 2010, 20:45,
archived)
But where do you distribute your content?You could achieve something in a day, but I doubt you will create anything lasting. We have a three-month probation period for our link builders (although we usually have a pretty good idea if they are worth keeping after two months).
Yes, in-house people are often much better placed than a third party to write authoritatively on a subject, but they often crank out very formulaic material and marketing or PR departments are often geared up for offline writing; the jump to engaging an online audience is quite often beyond them (sweeping generalisations but still).
I deliver training courses to people like this on a semi-regular basis and am astonished at how unimaginative these in-house writers can be. We often come up with a small raft of suggestions about how to create new and interesting content and see a look of dawning realisation cross their faces, accompanied by "oh yeah, I hadn't though of that" - and these are ideas we come up with after spending less then an hour with them and their brand.
There needs to be someone who is responsible for some sort of creative input into the writing process, but they need to be divorced from the writing process - someone responsible for the content strategy - and some sites have this. Those that don't will see the benefit of hiring and SEO, even if it is difficult to justify a new hire.
As for link building, they need monitoring. It is too easy for a team to get stuck in unimaginative ruts. They need an oversight system to poke them out of their comfort zones. A culture of idea sharing needs to be cultivated and innovation needs to rule the team.
Ultimately, there is nothing wrong with in-house teams. They will be just as susceptible as agencies to charlatans; the defense against this is someone knowing their onions doing the hiring (difficult if you are building a function from scratch). But if you want work to start with professionals doing the work, and you want them started by the start of next month, you will be lucky to get job ads live by then; you call a good agency and say I need this resource starting on the 1st July, as long as the money is good, you will have those people working right on time.
(,
Tue 22 Jun 2010, 21:35,
archived)
Yes, in-house people are often much better placed than a third party to write authoritatively on a subject, but they often crank out very formulaic material and marketing or PR departments are often geared up for offline writing; the jump to engaging an online audience is quite often beyond them (sweeping generalisations but still).
I deliver training courses to people like this on a semi-regular basis and am astonished at how unimaginative these in-house writers can be. We often come up with a small raft of suggestions about how to create new and interesting content and see a look of dawning realisation cross their faces, accompanied by "oh yeah, I hadn't though of that" - and these are ideas we come up with after spending less then an hour with them and their brand.
There needs to be someone who is responsible for some sort of creative input into the writing process, but they need to be divorced from the writing process - someone responsible for the content strategy - and some sites have this. Those that don't will see the benefit of hiring and SEO, even if it is difficult to justify a new hire.
As for link building, they need monitoring. It is too easy for a team to get stuck in unimaginative ruts. They need an oversight system to poke them out of their comfort zones. A culture of idea sharing needs to be cultivated and innovation needs to rule the team.
Ultimately, there is nothing wrong with in-house teams. They will be just as susceptible as agencies to charlatans; the defense against this is someone knowing their onions doing the hiring (difficult if you are building a function from scratch). But if you want work to start with professionals doing the work, and you want them started by the start of next month, you will be lucky to get job ads live by then; you call a good agency and say I need this resource starting on the 1st July, as long as the money is good, you will have those people working right on time.
Do you have some examplesof a good articles written for link building by an SEO?
Everytime I ask this, people seem to only link to their own blogs writing about things they care for personally, rather than a link to an article for a client.
(Everytime I ask this, people seem to only link to their own blogs writing about things they care for personally, rather than a link to an article for a client.
monkeon schmonkeon,
Tue 22 Jun 2010, 21:41,
archived)
Should SEO not thereforebe performance related pay?
If the value of SEO is in the increased sales (and thus is okay to charge more than the skills involved in the actual work), then surely you can't reasonably charge for a site for which it didn't increase their sales?
(If the value of SEO is in the increased sales (and thus is okay to charge more than the skills involved in the actual work), then surely you can't reasonably charge for a site for which it didn't increase their sales?
monkeon schmonkeon,
Wed 23 Jun 2010, 14:34,
archived)
Performance related pay is not unusual, but there are complications...Over what time from do you base the judgment? SEO consultancy will improve a site's ranking for potentially a lot longer than the time you are working on it. Clients tend to disagree with payment terms lasting for 12 months after cessation of work. It isn't PPC that it neatly wrapped up; traffic doesn't stop when work stops.
Another complication is separation of traffic. You can never discretely measure uplift from one activity in a multi-variable system. Traffic rises and falls of its own accord, with seasonality, with natural growth, in response to TV advertising, special offers and more. It is impossible to completely isolate the traffic or sales generated by SEO activity.
This is one of the reasons SEO gets a bit of a bad reputation, because it is not possible to directly measure its value (not with any degree of transparency and honesty anyway). This is a strong part of your argument and one that we have with clients a lot.
PPC and Banners are tracked and each click can be accurately accounted for. SEO just doesn't work like that.
It is more like information architecture or design. You cannot attribute a traffic or sales value to the colour-scheme design of a site, or the icons used, or the content hierarchy. People just accept this though without question, claims of quack science or snakeoil selling.
You can give approximate upflit and indicative figures, but not attribute every click. People find PPC easy to buy into because a clear return on investment is easily demonstrable (if the campaign is run competently). SEO is much more complex because it is not easy to ring-fence traffic.
So yes, performance related pay is quite common, and is being requested more frequently by clients who are trying to protect their investments (or more commonly, need to build a business case to justify the spend). But the client needs to be very aware that there are some generalisations involved and predictions are very hard to make. Some clients have a massive mental block and cannot see why there is any difference between SEO and PPC traffic; we never work with them because the performance related pay is going to be either unfair to us or the client.
I put a performance model together once based on 80% of projected PPC cost per click (the client wanted to see a 20% cost reduction against PPC costs); they would have been much better off paying our ratecarded costs. Silly really, but they insisted in spite of us trying to persuade them otherwise.
(,
Wed 23 Jun 2010, 20:12,
archived)
Another complication is separation of traffic. You can never discretely measure uplift from one activity in a multi-variable system. Traffic rises and falls of its own accord, with seasonality, with natural growth, in response to TV advertising, special offers and more. It is impossible to completely isolate the traffic or sales generated by SEO activity.
This is one of the reasons SEO gets a bit of a bad reputation, because it is not possible to directly measure its value (not with any degree of transparency and honesty anyway). This is a strong part of your argument and one that we have with clients a lot.
PPC and Banners are tracked and each click can be accurately accounted for. SEO just doesn't work like that.
It is more like information architecture or design. You cannot attribute a traffic or sales value to the colour-scheme design of a site, or the icons used, or the content hierarchy. People just accept this though without question, claims of quack science or snakeoil selling.
You can give approximate upflit and indicative figures, but not attribute every click. People find PPC easy to buy into because a clear return on investment is easily demonstrable (if the campaign is run competently). SEO is much more complex because it is not easy to ring-fence traffic.
So yes, performance related pay is quite common, and is being requested more frequently by clients who are trying to protect their investments (or more commonly, need to build a business case to justify the spend). But the client needs to be very aware that there are some generalisations involved and predictions are very hard to make. Some clients have a massive mental block and cannot see why there is any difference between SEO and PPC traffic; we never work with them because the performance related pay is going to be either unfair to us or the client.
I put a performance model together once based on 80% of projected PPC cost per click (the client wanted to see a 20% cost reduction against PPC costs); they would have been much better off paying our ratecarded costs. Silly really, but they insisted in spite of us trying to persuade them otherwise.
."Clients tend to disagree with payment terms lasting for 12 months after cessation of work."
Would it ever actually take that long for link-building to have an effect? I thought that links were supposed to lose value over time, and so are likely to peak pretty soon.
With regards to the actual optimisation - why are there no standards towards the actual optimisation of the site a la accessibility standards? Surely there must be an agreed approach towards things like creating a decent link structure.
If there is not, then surely the whole thing is guesswork, and thus all you can offer is to make sure that the site validates and the relevent keywords are present and correct. Which should be a very cheap job.
I personally think that it's the optimisation of the code which is where actual skills lie, but the book I read on SEO was full of utter guesswork and nonsense (including such gems as saying that since Google own YouTube, then you might do better if you have a YouTube video on your site).
If this side of it has no standards or consistancy, what hope is there for someone to learn the appropriate skills.
How should someone learn the skills?
At what point would you say that you became professional? What type of knowledge do you have that a bog-standard SEO doesn't?
(Would it ever actually take that long for link-building to have an effect? I thought that links were supposed to lose value over time, and so are likely to peak pretty soon.
With regards to the actual optimisation - why are there no standards towards the actual optimisation of the site a la accessibility standards? Surely there must be an agreed approach towards things like creating a decent link structure.
If there is not, then surely the whole thing is guesswork, and thus all you can offer is to make sure that the site validates and the relevent keywords are present and correct. Which should be a very cheap job.
I personally think that it's the optimisation of the code which is where actual skills lie, but the book I read on SEO was full of utter guesswork and nonsense (including such gems as saying that since Google own YouTube, then you might do better if you have a YouTube video on your site).
If this side of it has no standards or consistancy, what hope is there for someone to learn the appropriate skills.
How should someone learn the skills?
At what point would you say that you became professional? What type of knowledge do you have that a bog-standard SEO doesn't?
monkeon schmonkeon,
Thu 24 Jun 2010, 1:33,
archived)
"Would it ever actually take that long for link-building to have an effect? I thought that links were supposed to lose value over time, and so are likely to peak pretty soon."
You can base performance related pay on achieving specific search engine positions and link building tends to target a small cluster of specific search phrases. However, this is a very shallow look at what SEO does for a site.
With personalised and universal search results, measuring positions is becoming not only difficult, but pointless. We can measure a search result at a specific position, but 30% of your users might see it in a lower place and 40% in a higher place. Search engine positioning is becoming a pointless metric.
Also, where consultancy is concerned, with technical improvements to the site, you will see improvements across all positions the site holds in the search results. I for one, am not going to put a performance model together based on the overall average improvement of 100,000 search phrases; it is a reporting nightmare and would take more time than the actual work being done.
We tend to focus on traffic. Specifically, non-branded organic search derived traffic. Non-branded search has an impact on branded search, so there should be indirect uplift there too, but we largely ignore that.
Our typical aim for an SEO campaign (tech & content consultancy and link building) would be to increase non-branded search traffic by X%; these are our usual KPIs and we sometimes tie performance models to these.
However, we can conduct six or twelve month programme of work on a site and then walk away. The traffic benefits of this work will exist long after contract end (until they tear the site down and replace it), so performance-related pay based on traffic can be a little unfair, especially if the client wants a cost-per-click model so that they can compare SEO ROI against that of PPC. This is a common request from clients, but there are fundamental differences between SEO and PPC activity; traffic gains from SEO work does not go away when the spend stops (like PPC does).
A lot of what is written is "SEO books" is out of date, or just shite. I have never read one that is worth the paper it was printed on, apart from as a basic beginner's guide (but I wouldn't even give one to a trainee as they can learn faster from our internal training programme).
A lot of our knowledge came from trial and error (not on client sites, but testbed sites we control). A lot of it was driven from hypothesis and testing, and we do use control pages; it is a little hard to do proper blind testing on this kind of thing though. We use testbed sites to confirm or refute other SEOs' assertions - we don't much like taking things as read, we need to see some impact before we take methods to clients.
We tend not to publish our results very often - this is the stuff that gives us a competitive edge over our competitors.
Link building is fairly bread-and-butter work, and to some degree, content optimisation and keyword research is as well; I tend not to get involved in that very often (the people that do this earn a lot less and have a lower rate-card cost). I tend to stick to the in-depth tech stuff and the overarching strategies and supporting new site builds.
Everyone in my business is self-taught or trained internally. You start out by reading everything you can find. With experience and testing, you learn what to discard as conjecture or nonsense. This is where a lot of the best people come from. Sometimes we cannot satisfy someone's ambitions and they leave to become a "head of" at an agency that is keen to build a search offering and start training their own team. It isn't an easy industry to break into on your own.
Of the people I would field to handle any question or problem a client could generate (this includes myself), I would say it took at least three years of on-the-job learning to get to that point. But like development, it is a constant requirement to stay on top of changes in the industry, and this isn't just they way search engines rank pages, it is changes in HTML, CSS, CMSs, server platforms and other elements of the technology stack (you don't want to know the problems an Endecca information access platform with guided navigation introduces).
(,
Fri 25 Jun 2010, 10:51,
archived)
You can base performance related pay on achieving specific search engine positions and link building tends to target a small cluster of specific search phrases. However, this is a very shallow look at what SEO does for a site.
With personalised and universal search results, measuring positions is becoming not only difficult, but pointless. We can measure a search result at a specific position, but 30% of your users might see it in a lower place and 40% in a higher place. Search engine positioning is becoming a pointless metric.
Also, where consultancy is concerned, with technical improvements to the site, you will see improvements across all positions the site holds in the search results. I for one, am not going to put a performance model together based on the overall average improvement of 100,000 search phrases; it is a reporting nightmare and would take more time than the actual work being done.
We tend to focus on traffic. Specifically, non-branded organic search derived traffic. Non-branded search has an impact on branded search, so there should be indirect uplift there too, but we largely ignore that.
Our typical aim for an SEO campaign (tech & content consultancy and link building) would be to increase non-branded search traffic by X%; these are our usual KPIs and we sometimes tie performance models to these.
However, we can conduct six or twelve month programme of work on a site and then walk away. The traffic benefits of this work will exist long after contract end (until they tear the site down and replace it), so performance-related pay based on traffic can be a little unfair, especially if the client wants a cost-per-click model so that they can compare SEO ROI against that of PPC. This is a common request from clients, but there are fundamental differences between SEO and PPC activity; traffic gains from SEO work does not go away when the spend stops (like PPC does).
A lot of what is written is "SEO books" is out of date, or just shite. I have never read one that is worth the paper it was printed on, apart from as a basic beginner's guide (but I wouldn't even give one to a trainee as they can learn faster from our internal training programme).
A lot of our knowledge came from trial and error (not on client sites, but testbed sites we control). A lot of it was driven from hypothesis and testing, and we do use control pages; it is a little hard to do proper blind testing on this kind of thing though. We use testbed sites to confirm or refute other SEOs' assertions - we don't much like taking things as read, we need to see some impact before we take methods to clients.
We tend not to publish our results very often - this is the stuff that gives us a competitive edge over our competitors.
Link building is fairly bread-and-butter work, and to some degree, content optimisation and keyword research is as well; I tend not to get involved in that very often (the people that do this earn a lot less and have a lower rate-card cost). I tend to stick to the in-depth tech stuff and the overarching strategies and supporting new site builds.
Everyone in my business is self-taught or trained internally. You start out by reading everything you can find. With experience and testing, you learn what to discard as conjecture or nonsense. This is where a lot of the best people come from. Sometimes we cannot satisfy someone's ambitions and they leave to become a "head of" at an agency that is keen to build a search offering and start training their own team. It isn't an easy industry to break into on your own.
Of the people I would field to handle any question or problem a client could generate (this includes myself), I would say it took at least three years of on-the-job learning to get to that point. But like development, it is a constant requirement to stay on top of changes in the industry, and this isn't just they way search engines rank pages, it is changes in HTML, CSS, CMSs, server platforms and other elements of the technology stack (you don't want to know the problems an Endecca information access platform with guided navigation introduces).