This week I talked to two different organizations whose top managers have a serious difference of opinion. On one side, some of the managers cannot believe their colleagues would allow an outdated, un-optimized-for-search-engines website represent the organization to prospects and customers! The other side doesn’t believe they will ever get qualified leads online and just don’t see any need whatsoever to update the website, let alone optimize it for the search engines.

Here are the top five reasons management should consider keeping their site updated with a fresh look and feel, accurate content, and current technology. (Note: some of these stats are from the Earnest blog.)

1. 9 of 10 buyers say that when they’re ready to buy, they’ll find you. (Source: DemandGen Report) Let’s face it – in today’s marketing world, buyers are in control. They don’t want to be sold to until they have a genuine need. And, when they have the need, most are gonna start by searching online (see next reason).
ANY CHARACTER HERE
2. 62% of executives over 50 and 81% under 50  use online search daily for business intelligence. (Source: Forbes Insight -  The Rise of the Digital C-Suite) As younger generations move up in the workforce, the executives who make the decisions are the ones who grew up in the information world. They like to get information themselves and use Internet searches to do so.
ANY CHARACTER HERE
3. 96% of journalists use corporate websites when conducting online research. (Cision & The George Washington University) If your prospects aren’t searching online, the media certainly is. One of the big benefits of getting found online is getting called by journalists who need your expertise and can quote you in the press.
ANY CHARACTER HERE
4. Outdated content and “look and feel” of your website IS noticed by customers and prospects. Do you still use your brochure from 1985 with outdated colors, content, font, photos and style? (Please say, “No!”) When a prospect is deciding between different providers, your materials create a perception. Do you want your website to be old and outdated or new and fresh?
ANY CHARACTER HERE
5. The cost of developing websites has come down dramatically  in the last five years. If you spent thousands (or even tens of thousands) years ago for your website, you will spend only a fraction of the original cost to update it now. Also, if you leased your website through a proprietary service that developed it and hosted it, you can probably save thousands a year by paying an independent developer to create a new site that you own and host with a cost-effective third party service. Use of open source programming code, templated web pages, and cascading style sheets (CSS) instead of table-driven coding make website development much more efficient.

If your website was created five or more years ago, it’s time to update it. Out with the old and in with the new. Make sure your online presence is appealing to all generations and that it shines over your competitors! With the falling cost of web development, you almost can’t afford not to update your website.

Flickr photo – Some rights reserved by micah.d

The major search engines are placing more emphasis on content, not so much on tricks and behind-the-scene tactics, to rank web sites higher for keyword searches.

Let’s say you are a metal-stamping company, and your prospective customers are searching for “flat springs.” It’s all well and good to have text, meta tags and even photos with alt tags about flat springs on your web site, but it’s even better if you have written a blog entry, produced a video, sent out a press release, even recorded a podcast about these parts.

It takes time to create all this content. Part of the solution is to have a plan in place that maps out goals and a schedule for online content. How many videos will you produce? When will you produce them? How many podcasts, blog entries, press releases, articles, etc.?

Another part of the solution to make content generation easier is to re-purpose. Once you write the article, re-purpose it for the press release. Use the same content to write the script for your podcast and video. Re-purpose the article content again and again by creating several blog entries from it.

Make sure your SEO supplier has content creation built into the services they provide to get your website ranking high and qualified visitors coming to your site.

Photo from Flickr, Some rights reserved by James Cridland

I got an inkling that all was not right in the web development and SEO world in 2008. I went out to bid for a client of mine – a manufacturer of green industrial lubricants – and got bids for a new, optimized web site that ranged from $2,000 to $20,000. Hmmm – that’s too big a range! That’s a red flag of a fragmented industry – or innocent business owners being ripped off on their Internet marketing!

Then again in January 2010, I requested bids for a client that needed a web site update and ongoing SEO. I got bids for $4,000, then $7,000 for the update alone. Hmmm. I called my web dev/SEO guru  and asked, “Mark, if I’m not mistaken, to update this site we need to do steps 1, 2, 3 and 4, test everything and then flip the switch, correct?” He said, “Yes!” I said, “How much would that cost?” He said, “$400.” Eeeesh! A 10 x markup from the other guy? Are you kidding me?

I started directed successful web site and SEO in 1998 (among other marketing), when I first worked on a client’s web site. At that time, there were very few SEO experts out there. I rolled up my sleeves, learned SEO,  instructed the web developers involved with my clients, and we got fantastic results. From this experience and in part because I spent 14 years in the software industry prior to founding New Incite, I understand SEO and web development technology!

In 2005 I placed more emphasis on positioning and marketing my B2B CMO for Hire services. I said, “Now there are more good SEO companies out there, I can partner with them and focus on  strategic marketing, marketing planning, execution/project management and results tracking!”

But now in 2010 I am seeing SEO and web development practices that aren’t right, and I’m going to continue to blog about them and consult with my clients to protect them and save them money. There are too many new web development and SEO companies who got into the business because they saw the need, but:

• They see web dev and SEO as a money-making business only – not a win-win for both their company and their clients.
• They learned SEO when they got in but they haven’t kept up with best practices and they’re still proposing old tactics – I kid you not!
• They’re specialists in something else (graphic design, IT services, publishing) and have added or moved to web development and SEO as a cash cow that they pay lip service to but are not experts in!

So, share your war stories – have you or your clients ever been ripped off on web development or SEO?

Photo on Flickr – Some rights reserved by superk8nyc

The Chinese New Year started on Sunday and is being celebrated around the world. It’s the Year of the Tiger in the Chinese Zodiac, which relates each year to one of twelve animals. The attributes of the tiger are tenacity and verocity, perfect qualities for marketing in today’s economic environment.

Merriam Webster defines tenacious as: 1 a : not easily pulled apart : cohesive; and 2 a : persistent in maintaining, adhering to, or seeking something valued or desire.

What does it take to be a tenacious marketer?

1. Identify business goals that you need to achieve. You’re at Point A now. Without goals (Point B) you not only can’t determine how to get where you’re going, but you don’t even know where you’re headed.
2. Have a marketing plan. You won’t be “easily pulled apart” if you have a written, strategic marketing plan. Stick to a plan instead of operating by a seat-of-the-pants approach.
3. Dare to innovate and take measured risk. Marketing has changed phenomenally in the last ten years. Are you still stuck in 1999? 1989? Learn new tactics and new technologies that will get you where you want to go faster and more cost-effectively, including social networking, search engine optimization, and inbound marketing.
4. Eliminate marketing tactics that don’t produce results. When tigers are hunting, if they don’t succeed, they starve. They don’t waste their energy chasing anything but dinner. Track your marketing results, and if certain marketing activities don’t produce what you need, eliminate or change them.

Photo by Keven Law on Flickr,   CC BY-SA 2.0

…And the Answers You Should Expect to Hear.
The search engine optimization field is extremely fragmented, with companies ranging from solo independent consultants working from their garages to large established organizations. The barriers to entry are low. There is a ton of information online, allowing anyone who is interested to pick up information and profess themselves an SEO expert.

I wrote about this in my blog entry SEO Industry Has Some Snake Oil, But Also Much Success. I do think there are good SEO vendors out there now. But, in the fragmented SEO industry, the wide range of capabilities and prices  make it more difficult to know which vendor provides the best value. Furthermore, SEO is a technical specialty that not many of us understand. The fact that we are dealing with a fragmented industry and uninformed buyers begs the question, “How does a lay person who doesn’t understand SEO choose a vendor?”

Below are the 12 questions you should ask any SEO vendor before hiring them. Before you talk to vendors, try to  educate yourself about search engine optimization best practices so that you can make an informed decision. One source of SEO information is Search Engine News by Planet Ocean Communications. For the past ten years, I have found this to be a great source of SEO best practices. Planet Ocean rewrites the book on SEO and publishes the results to subscribers each month. Planet Ocean provides timely information on search engine algorithm changes and how to deal with them. With their service, you can get accurate, high-level information and the ability to drill down into the how-to when you want. Even if you don’t do the SEO work, it might be a good idea to subscribe to stay current so that you can better select and then manage your SEO vendor.

12 Questions to Ask When Choosing an SEO Vendor

1. Can you provide me with references I can contact about your performance, results, responsiveness, etc.?

The SEO vendor should easily give you at least 3 references. Ask the references if their expecations were met and how (timeliness, results, professionalism, ability to explain technology, etc.).

2. What methodologies or best practices do you use in search engine optimization?

You should hear that the vendor uses white hat SEO techniques, focuses on keyword analysis and content updates, manually generates quality inbound links, and uses cascading style sheets or other techniques to separate a web page’s content from its design. The vendor should NOT do black hat SEO practices such as link farming, keyword stuffing, or doorway or gateway pages.

3. What steps does the SEO vendor take to understand your business before search engine optimization?

The SEO vendor should take some time to learn about your business so they know which audiences you need to target and the best way to reach those audiences through SEO. You should get a sense of how strategic the vendor is and how much they can think outside of the box to make your SEO project a success.

4. How do you conduct an analysis to determine what needs to be done for our SEO project?

The SEO vendor should have a proven methodology including a checklist of steps they go through to anayze your SEO needs. Find out if they reverse engineer competitor sites to uncover techniques and opportunities. Ask them what tools they use for keyword analysis, and find out if they use any other automated tools to assess your web site.

5. What methodology do you use to you submit our web site URL to online directories?

Submission to key online directories should be done manually, not through automatic submission programs. The automatic programs have been recognized by certain search engines who dismiss the submissions as spam.

6. What features do you recommend we add to our web site to enhance SEO?

Current practices call for inclusion of a variety of media to improve search engine performance. This is mainly because Google places more emphasis on video, audio and blogs on web sites in search engine results.

7. How do you recommend we go about building links to our site from other sites?

There are programs that automate creating links to your web site. But the major search engines recognize when you get large numbers of links into your web site in a short period of time and will rank your site lower as a result. You are better off getting a few links from related, quality web sites each week to build your incoming links.

8. Is SEO your only service or do you have others?

Find out if search engine optimization is the focus of the vendors you talk to or if it is a sideline to other services they offer like web development and marketing. The most important factors in your decision are the quality of the service the SEO vendor provides and the results their work gets for you. But it’s important to know if SEO is the core service a vendor offers or a sideline that they provide using someone else’s automated tools.
9. How many years of SEO experience do you have?

The longer an SEO vendor has been practicing the art, the better. More years experience means that the vendor has dealt with more optimization issues and challenges and (presumably) has found solutions. SEO vendors with more experience will have a better perspective on the history of search engine optimization and understand how work-arounds to search engine algorithms are negatives once the search engines figure them out and rank web sites that use them lower or delist them altogether.

10. How do you stay up-to-date with the ever-changing search engine algorithms and techniques for optimization?

SEO vendors should have some process for staying up to date on algorithm changes and proven techniques for SEO success. The Search Engine News service that I mentioned above is one of several reputable service that you can follow. In addition, SEO vendors should be part of industry associations and professional groups (see next question).

11. From Lee Odden’s blog entry: Have you been vetted and listed in industry directories? Selection guides?

If SEO vendors are serious about SEO, they probably will have a presence in the industry and may speak at industry conferences and programs. Some directories and listings of SEO vendors include SEMPO, SEOConsultants,  TopSEO.com, Marketing Sherpa’s SEO Guide, and Marketing Profs Vendor Selector.

12. How do you charge for your services? Hourly or project? Are there ongoing costs to maintain the SEO?

Any vagueness in the SEO vendor responses about pricing or ongoing, monthly maintenance fees and length of the process should raise a red flag. It is not unusual for a good SEO project to begin with initial programming and changes and then continue for at least six months with monthly analysis, tweaks to keywords and programming changes. The analysis and tweaks on an ongoing basis should not be expensive, especially if the SEO vendor uses automated tools to do the analysis. Small keyword and program tweaks take do not take much time to do.

I hope these 12 questions help those of you who are choosing an SEO vendor. SEO vendors – did I leave anything out? Please comment using the link at the end of the page.

This week I read Nick Baron’s blog entry, SEO is today’s snake oil. Nick is a trend spotting and new media consultant who authors the Societrends blog. Nick’s opinion is that SEO experts are selling snake oil – that anyone who can read can access search engine optimization intelligence and implement techniques that make a web site move up the list of search engine results. At the end of his blog entry, Nick posted a link to an opposing blog entry by Tom Demers, titled Snake Oil SEO – Who’s Really Selling Something, Here? Tom is a Senior Marketing Manager at WordStream, a search marketing firm that has been doing SEO for ten years. He defended SEO experts and wrote that those that are effective do SEO work full time and have documented success stories.

I’ve always been good at seeing both sides of a story. I agree with both Nick and Tom. SEO can be snake oil, but at the same time, I know SEO works!

I rolled up my sleeves and learned SEO in 1998 when I landed a client in the healthcare industry. The company had tried exhibits at medical symposia and advertising, but were not getting good results. At the time, one third of the use of the Internet was for health-related inquiries. I decided the most cost-effective thing I could do for the client (in addition to new collateral and PR) was to have their web developer optimize their web site.

This was back before the search engine industry consolidated, when you had to optimize for several major engines, including Inktomi, Alta Vista and others. The web developer (with whom I work to this day) did not understand nor did he believe in SEO. So, I researched SEO online, took notes, and fed the web developer lists and lists of features, content and code to add to the site. We transformed our client’s business. They went from a brick and mortar medical lab that had 80 technical hits per month and a trickle of referral business, to a lab whose web site attracted thousands of discrete visitors each month and converted them to new patients and lab work orders. So, Nick is right. You can study SEO, apply what you learn, and get results.

But now, unlike in 1998 when there were few SEO experts, in 2009 a fairly standard and proven body of knowledge for search engine optimization has emerged and is used by some very reputable SEO firms. There are good and bad practices, aka “white hat” and “black hat” techniques. White hat techniques include keyword analysis and positioning, links from reputable sites and multi-media content. Black hat techniques include keyword-stuffing and link-farming that can get your web site delisted. So, I agree with Tom – many SEO firms produce results and have documented success stories.

The problem is that the SEO industry (the web development industry is similar) is fragmented, and that means huge variations in price and quality. Last year for one of my client projects we received proposals ranging from $1,500 to $40,000 for SEO of a fairly large web site. For another client I got one proposal for $2,200 and a second for $20,000 to build a new web site.

In addition to large price variations, the quality varies. Just as with web development companies, SEO companies appear to have low barriers to entry. Unfortunately, there are lots of SEO vendors working from their dining room table or garage who have hung out the SEO sign but may not have much experience. If you do a little research on SEO best practices, ask what techniques the SEO company uses and talk to references, I believe you can select a capable SEO vendor.

I’ve met with prospective clients that have been sold snake oil. In one case, a startup company was promised big results quickly by… (can you guess?) …you’re right, an SEO expert! They have not seen the results they were promised. Their situation could be a matter of the SEO expert not knowing how to get results, or it could be a matter of poor expectation-setting by the expert. SEO can take many months to get right, depending on how popular your keywords are. But regardless, any company that has bought the snake oil is wary, gun-shy, suspicious and unhappy. This makes it tough for the next consultant or service provider who will have to work extra hard, set better expectations, and perhaps get paid based on performance once they show results.

Do you have an SEO or marketing snake oil story? Please share it in the comments.