~~~Question of the Week~~~
From: Joe Ghali
Hi Guys-
Our company is going to start to offer SEO optimization to our clients
and want to know what are the essentials to successfully get our plan
off the ground?
There are two of us who have experience with SEO research, my buddy
Erin, used to work with an Agency and has picked up a few tricks of
the trade, while I have spent the last 4 months researching SEO. We
plan on outsourcing for a little while, and plan to watch how others
offer their own SEO service, keeping in mind that we plan to do
everything in house within a year or so.
Any advice? What to watch out for? What kind of software do you
recommend for rankings? Or even what kind of servers we should be
using?
Your advice would be greatly appreciated.
Joe
~~~Heather's Response~~~
(from the writing perspective)
Hi, Joe,
What a great question!
My first words of advice (which I'm sure Jill will echo) are to know
the SEO trade inside and out. Read resources like Rank Write and Search Engine Watch and get
comfortable with all the methodologies and lingo. If you haven't hit
a Search Engine Strategies conference, consider it *strongly*. You'll
get to meet all the SEO experts and learn the latest and greatest
search engine optimization techniques. Besides, they're fun to
attend!
From a writing perspective, you *will* need to hire a copywriter
experienced in both online writing and search engine optimization
writing. You can hire a strong online writer without an SEO
background, BUT you will need an experienced SEO writer to train them
well (and stick with them if they have any questions). While we were
in Boston, we heard many companies complaining that their writers
didn't "get it" when it came to SEO writing. And without strong,
keyphrase-rich copy that satisfies the search engines and entices your
users, you'll be missing the SEO boat.
If you're serious about starting a company, don't fall into the trap
of doing all the writing yourself, or hiring a friend who thinks they
can write. This is bad, bad, bad. SEO writing is a very specialized
skill. You need someone who can hash out the writing details with
your client's marketing departments, do demographic and target market
research, organize the copy, and create savvy, keyphrase and
benefit-rich text. If *any* of these aspects are missing, you'll have
a much slower start-up phase (and may not be as successful).
Thanks for your question! Keep 'em coming!
Heather
~~~Jill's Response~~~
(from the high rankings perspective)
I would imagine that trying to break into the SEO field these days
could be pretty tough, due to all of the competition out there.
Hopefully, you have some of your own sites currently ranking high so
you can show the results to potential clients. If not, you may want
to start out with a performance-based pricing structure. Normally, I
wouldn't recommend this type of payment schedule, but for a start-up,
it may be the only way to get your foot in the door. If your clients
are only paying for results and don't have to pony up a set-up fee,
you should be able to win some accounts. You'll get to learn by
doing, and your clients will have nothing to lose other than the time
it takes to see results. After six months to a year or so, you
should hopefully have some good results that you can show to new
potential clients. (If not, you may want to think about going into a
different biz!) At this time, you could start charging per job and
not necessarily for actual results. I would suggest that your costs
be commensurate with your experience, and not based on hourly fees.
Once you win some clients, what tools do you need to do the actual
work?
As discussed above, first and foremost, you'll need a good copywriter.
You will also need someone who is constantly keeping up with the
latest SEO trends. Along with the resources Heather mentioned, you
most definitely will want to subscribe to Audette Media's
I-Search
Discussion List. You'll also
want to subscribe to
WordTracker (or a similar
tool) to help determine the best keyword phrases for each client.
(For more info read our "All Keyphrases, All the Time," special issue.)
You will also need some type of software to track your results.
Something like Web Position Gold works well for this. Just be careful
when using some of the functions of WPG. Some engines, such as
Google, are banning people who use it to track results on their
server, due to the load it places on them. When that happens, you
can't even search at Google by hand because you get a "forbidden
access" page (trust me...I know!). Since Google is just about the
only search engine right now that provides extremely relevant results,
not being able to use it for searches can be a real pain in the neck!
I recommend that you turn off Google Searches in WPG and tell your
clients that the "Yahoo! Web Page Results" should be similar to the
results they will have in Google. I would not be at all surprised if
other engines start following suit by banning automatic tracking
software. My guess is that the engines and the software makers will
have to come up with some payment options for tracking results.
Which, of course, means we'll all end up paying for it in the end!
Along with tracking rankings, you'll also want to track where users
are actually finding the site from, and under what keyphrases. WPG
has a traffic analyzer tool that does this, or you can use something
like WebTrends to review your server logs. WPG has a whole lot of
other features, but personally, I don't use them. I prefer to do
hand submitting, and I definitely prefer to figure out how to optimize
pages myself without the use of WPG's statistics. Many people do find
these tools helpful, however, so I'm not saying that nobody should use
them. There are other submission tools out there that are supposed to
be helpful, but I have not tested them. I find that submitting by
hand takes so little time, that I prefer to just do it myself right
now. The submission tool companies all say that the engines have no
way of detecting that the submission is automatic, as opposed to by
hand, and I'm sure this is true for now. However, I feel better and
safer when I go to the actual submission page myself and fill out the
add URL form by hand. Okay, so now you know...I'm a control freak!
(Just ask Heather!)
As to what type of server you would need to get started, I would
recommend that all your optimized pages be kept on your client's
server. They should all be a part of the client's domain for best
results. Which means your own server requirements are irrelevant.
I think that covers the basics of what most companies would need to
get started. Good luck!
Jill
~~~Send Us Your Questions~~~
If you have questions about online copywriting or search engine optimization (or both!), just zip us an email to questions@rankwrite.com. We've had some folks ask if their question
was "too basic" to be printed - and you don't have to worry about
that! There are no "stupid" search engine optimization or copywriting
questions, so ask away!
