I really enjoyed the recent Whiteboard Friday about Top 5 SEO Questions from SEOmoz customers and I was surprised by mainly two things:
1. Most of the questions were basic
As Cyrus commented in the video some of the questions were basic and focused on the "technical" (non-content) fundamentals of SEO. I think that this doesn't mean by any means that the SEOmoz community is not technically savvy: during my SEO consulting experience I have found that even with large organizations that have a strong Web development and system administration team these same "basic" errors -that cause the questions- still happen. Sometimes it is because SEO recommendations are seen as a set of activities that should only be performed once (when you provide them and afterwards are forgotten), instead of guidelines that should be integrated into the overall development process to validate any new web work.
2. The same questions are asked in other very different countries, languages and markets
I used to work with clients focused on the travel, education and online gaming sectors, with SEO processes mainly in Spanish (for Spain and Latin American countries) and in English (for the UK and USA). Now I work for the local business market in Spain. And still, the SEO questions that are asked are pretty much the same. No matter which sector, language or country. I felt totally identified with the questions of that Whiteboard Friday because the day-to-day support I have given usually cover those same issues.
It was definitely interesting to find out how the members of one of the strongest online SEO communities usually ask the exact same basic questions that I have been asked by my SEO clients –something that I wouldn’t expect-.
Then a couple of days ago Dana Lookadoo tweeted a SEO “suggestion” that I related with these kind of issues:
More and more Web developers, Web designers and even "traditional" marketers are getting interested on SEO, which is great, but instead of doing what you recommend they start following any SEO advice they find online... that even if it is about a generally effective technique (don't even mention when it's a black hat or smoke selling stuff), its implementation can ruin your SEO efforts simply because it doesn't fit into your specific process.
So I commented to her how sad it was for me to find out that SEO consultants from the other side of the world find the same "basic" issues and Dana, wisely answered me:
I think her answer shows a fundamental truth in our work: The usual problems we find are not caused by the complexity of the own SEO process, but by a human behavior related issue. It has to do more with the way we think and make decisions and this is why these issues are found in any sector, language or country.
Moreover, the fact that our clients usually don’t see this principle can explain why it seems that even very experienced, business savvy marketers or business owners –those who make the decision to hire you as a SEO consultant and start a SEO process- have problems to consistently “relate” their “offline” business strategy with the SEO one.
This happens because they fail to clearly see that SEO is much more than a set of technical and content “tricks” that you can use to rank well on search engines. They don’t see that SEO should “reflect” and work along well with their “offline” marketing strategy and correspond to their customer trends and behavior, since at the end of the day, it is about the people (their target market) that the website should be looking to attract and convert.
Because of this, at the end of the day, the marketing manager of a large company and the local business owner usually end up asking the same basic SEO strategy related questions. Some of them are questions that have to do more with the business and less with SEO, that I would have never thought of being asked.
For example, some of them are:
1. I'm starting a new business: Could you please suggest some SEO friendly names?
Issue Background:
A client was going to start a new business –I’m not talking about buying a new site, but to create a whole company- and in order to select the name of its new business wanted me to perform a keyword research to suggest him SEO friendly names.
Solution:
I asked the client if he really wanted to name his new business prioritizing SEO instead of branding principles he could be recognized with.
I explained that if his brand (and domain) didn’t include highly relevant keywords, it didn’t mean the site wouldn’t be able to rank well: through an effective website architecture along with well organized, relevant content and many other on-page optimization techniques I could make sure the site is relevant and attractive not only to search engines but to the users.
Additionally, I commented how it seems that Google is going to stop putting so much weight to the keywords on the domain and that the best was to base the SEO strategy in long-term principles.
2. I don't want to be related with a type of business but I want to rank with its keywords.
Issue Background:
A very niche but highly profitable line of business of the company started to get bad reputation because of fraudulent activities of the competition with that service. This service was practically known by a very specific term. Other companies stopped using that term to refer to this service they also provided to prevent being related with the well-known fraudulent activities of the competition. My client did the same in the “offline” world –eliminated any reference to that line of business using the term that had bad reputation- but asked me if he could still ranking in the search engines with it… even if he wanted to eliminate any reference to it from the website.
Solution:
I asked him to extrapolate the situation to the “offline” world. If he didn’t specifically add that term in the company advertising materials there wouldn’t be any possibility that his target market would know he provided it and get any benefit from it.
The same happened in the online world. If he eliminated the term completely from the website, search engines and users wouldn’t have any means to identify that it’s relevant for that term.
He asked me if there was any “technical trick” that could prevent that to happen and I answered that if he wanted to add to its reputation problem a search engine penalization one and possibly lose the site’s rankings there was always a way… but not a business consistent one, since even if he didn’t mind to be penalized, if visitors would reach its site with a term that was not shown in the content at all they possibly would feel deceived and leave the page.
I suggested that he could keep an internal but visible and well optimized, quality page on its site describing that he had previously given that type of service, using the term he wanted to rank with, providing proof and warranties of his services, explaining how his business was different from the competition and why visitors should trust his business.
3. My business has diversified. I have internal sections in my site featuring the different areas where I provide my services but I want to keep ranking for a specific set of them with my home page.
Issue Background:
The client business had started providing a specific service in one city, so the home page featured it –since it was all what the company had-. After sometime the home page started to rank for those specific terms. A couple of years later the company had diversified and provided the same service for a dozen of cities. They enabled specific sections of the site for each one of them. The problem was that for the initial city they still were ranking with the Home Page. They had also enabled an internal section for it with unique content, so they had a content cannibalization problem. Sometimes they were ranking for that city related terms with the Home Page, others with the internal page. When asked to optimize the Home Page for more general business terms –and avoid the cannibalization problem- the client refused since he didn’t want to lose the Home Page rankings for the specific city related terms.
Solution:
I showed the client how the city internal page that was ranking for a very similar keyword than the home page had much better conversion rate since it gave much more information and arguments and optimized conversion channels to visitors.
I also mentioned the client how the fact that the home page was optimized for that city specific terms instead of more general (but very relevant) ones, was preventing the possibility to rank with them which represented a very good (and feasible) SEO opportunity.
Finally I commented how we could gradually optimize the Home Page for those general keywords and give more “signals” to search engines (from inside and outside the site) indicating how the most relevant page for the city related keywords was the internal one that would start gaining more popularity and ranking instead of the home page.
If my assumptions are right some of you should have received similar questions from your clients! Have you? If so, have you suggested other ways to fix these same problems? Which other “fundamental” SEO strategy related questions that you would like to share have you been asked?
Image under Creative Commons license taken from Flickr.
"they fail to clearly see that SEO is much more than a set of technical and content “tricks” that you can use to rank well on search engines"
AMEN!
I second that!
So true
Part of the issue is that SEO is not an innately understood topic. And, although every online business should incorporate SEO techniques and basics, not every business has someone who "gets" those basics. You really can't just know how to read and write and be able to learn SEO that way. It has scientific/mathematical elements and therefore is best if taught/learned from the ground up. Sort of like knowing how to add and subtract before you can multiply and divide. So, I completely agree that it's about the people and that the same issues/questions will, and should, come up time and time again. SEO, for many of us, is only a small part in the entire Internet business process. Good for you on taking the "basic" questions asked by your clients and asking them to answer more relevant questions - at least getting them to think about what their business model needs to look at when doing business online and including SEO as part of it!
Great reply Lydia, super
I tend to do a lot of work for smaller companies and come across a lot of what I like to call Chaotic Optimisation Theory. Basically, it is where multiple approaches have been tried by a range of different people from a variety of sources and what we have is a complete and utter mess.
Likewise, many companies may have various people working on the site from copywriters, web designers, developers, marketing people and the boss and sales people may even chip in every so often with some more poorly thought through requests.
I am just starting a new project now for a client that works in this way and much of the work we are undertaking is to create guidelines for all of the other parties involved. This includes guides for the copywriters, the devs and a set of rules and guidelines that we adhere to ensure the original vision is adhered to and that we stay on track.
It is part of our job to educate people and our clients in this way and I find a few examples showing how pages are competing for various terms is always a good example that makes people sit back and listen.
SEO needs the attention across the business to make sure our good work is not unravelled as quickly as it is put in place.
All good fun hey!Marcus
"Chaotic Optimisation Theory"
^^ Excellent!
I can now put a name to what I constantly have to battle... ;p
I think it is about developing trust with your clients, and being firm.
Whenever clients start talking about their friend that knows seo or something they have read, I try to answer their questions in the simplest possible way, and remind them that they are paying us because we are professionals. If they would prefer to take advice of their "friend who knows SEO" over advice from professionals who do this day in, day out, I say that there is no need to pay us anymore and we should part ways.
Doing this early in the relationship quickly stamps out this sort of disruption, and garners more respect from the client. I am happy to educate the client, but they must understand that a great deal of thought has been put into a strategy developed specifically for their business, and not every seo "tip" aligns with that strategy.
This is one of the basic issues we deal with every day. Like you said, even the biggest companies with a solid web development team always tend to repeat the same mistakes and ask the same question, but you are right, the thing that annoys me the most sometimes is that the clients will go over our ideas and suggestions and do something based on a blog post they read. In the end it's back to us and time is lost, in some cases even rankings. So I would also like to appeal to all the SEO clients to be intersted and stay updated, but not do something without first consulting with the SEO comapny they are paying...
You're absolutely right. SEO clients are apt to make changes so quicly based on something they've read, then can't understand why they aren't seeing results, and thus, end up upset with their SEO consultants. Unfortunately, in this fast paced world people want instant results. While organic SEO takes time and is proven for success, people, unfortunately, don't like waiting.
I'm glad my Twitter "blurt of frustration" was useful. :-) Thanks, Aleyda!
Those who have commented so far are spot on as well. SEO is too often seen as a line item or something you "do" to a site rather than a foundational process for customer and visitor engagement.
I finally got to speak with the SVP of a corporation for whom I'm "doing SEO" and asked him what he understood his SEO efforts have been in the past - buying some links and getting listed in directories. At that point, one realizes a lot of education is required.
Taking a training approach to SEO, as you've done with sharing with your clients, empowers them to be part of the process. I like to involve them in the decision-making, train them how to write copy, understand anchor text and calls to action.
BEWARE: They can feel too empowered by something they've "read" and turn around and overwrite your title tags, putting their company name at the beginning of each one!!
The worst would be if they justify themselves saying "Oh... I decide to do brand marketing..." :)
YES! Decision was made that the brand was the most important message!
My client asked me similar question: Do you know what? How can I calculate my brand value? I just started work on brand new website & finished 2 months work. I can understand that, client is very eager to gain brand value. But, who can give answer after 2 months?
Thank you Dana!
Indeed... more and more the SEO consultant becomes an advisor that recommends not only technically or operatively but how strategically the SEO process fits into the company marketing activity... we end up evangelizing and educating our clients too :) ... sometimes in areas that are not necessarily only SEO related but have an impact on our activities.
I think this will also tend to change as the market matures and business owners, CEOs, traditional marketing managers et al. become more aware about SEO as a part of their online marketing strategy and not only as a tactic to bring traffic to their sites.
Cheers :D
Let´s be honest: there are many IT departments, marketing managers, Web Designers in all types of industries that don’t know about SEO or think SEO is just about Metadata.
People need to be educated. That’s maybe the reason why some people don’t identify with the SEO field (terminology, procedures, etc.)
We all need education, but people with non SEO related career even more! Sometimes can be stressful the educational process but at the end, it’s the best we can do in order to improve our service itself.
Thanks for sharing your experiences Aleyda!
As a word person, I love your business name, SEO Charlie. Great branding.
I have dealed with #3 once and it was really hard to convice the client without showing exactly what I was planning to do. He eventually accepted. I applied the same tactic and he was amazed with the results. We build trust and is really easy to work now. Thanks for sharing.
I like this post
Several times I got laugh by hearing client's questions.
But it is too different on their location. for example UK and US clients questions are entirely different from Indian clients.
Thanks so much for this encouraging post. It's so good to hear that issues we have with clients are reproduced worldwide. I will have to follow you on Twitter, now of course.
SEO in my client's is always something that people seem to think as a 'tag on' - okay we've got a magazine, some leaflets and a website, let's do the SEO now, and fail to recognise that SEO should stem from the business' core identity, branding and other marketing aspects.
If you get your 'offline' marketing right and then people go to a badly organised website that ranks poorly then it's not a great impression. Likewise, if you rank well and get a prospect meeting or a new potential customer through your doors, but the impression you give them at that point is not consistent then you could be perceived as a sham.
It's all about consistency. Yes there's work we do as SEO Consultants, but doing anything that could damage the business' reputation or water down its brand image is only going to harm it in the long run. SEO is part of the whole and should not be over-emphasised nor de-emphasised, but kept in proportion to the rest of the business' vision, activities and markets.
Thanks again.
Thank you for your comment Martin :) I'm happy you have found the post encouraging! It's in our hands to educate and evangelize the companies we work for and those that still don't understand SEO as part of an integral strategy.
I like educated clients. The problem I have is that there is so much bad information out there that someone can think they are informed, but they have just enough knowledge to be dangerous. These are the clients that need everything not only explained to them, but proven beyond a shadow of a doubt. Oddly, this is always justified by them as being due to "getting burned" by SEO scammers in the past. It makes little sense. They got ripped off or even hurt by bad SEO, yet they still hang on to the promises of overnight success made by the very people who lied to them.
I strive for transparency and try to let the client know as much as possible about what I am doing, but it gets a little frustrating when every action is countered with "but I read somewhere that..." or even undone by the client (titles changed, excessive meta keywords re-added, etc.)
But I do see a bright side - once I do convince them to do things right and be patient enough to see how it works, they usually "get it" and let me do my thing.
There is definitely a tremendous amount of misperception when it comes to SEO. As an SEO this makes it very easy to slip over to the dark side. Sell someone something they don't need, promise them something you can't deliver on to get the sale. I don't see this going away any time soon.
Hi,In my openion the important thing is that why people think that if we do seo on our website from a recognised company then pretty sure our site will be on top in Google search engine.
Why they beleave on a ferm or company that they do there site on top 10 in Google with in a short time although they know its not easy to get a site on top with in a month, I think it's the main problem of my cliens .
Whenever I try to convence my clients some of them said only one thing can you give me any guaranty,means how can I trust you although I had given them my past examples .
So plz let me know how can I solve this kind of problem,by the way I have read your blog it give me a lote of knowledge but I think that its not enough for me.
Thanks
Frustrating though it is, this will continue ad infinitum.
Education is really important - in all aspects of web development. For my longer-term clients, arming them with knowledge has helped us create better and better sites all the time.
I had a discussion with a new client recently who was asking how companies rank well on Google. He asked, "What sort of partnership do companies have with Google to get listed on page 1?" There is a lot of bad info out there... it's up to us to spread The Word!
The common issues is that they see SEO an instant thing. It takes time, effort, patience and consistency.
I like educated clients. The problem I have is that there is so much bad information out there that someone can think they are informed, but they have just enough knowledge to be dangerous. These are the clients that need everything not only explained to them, but proven beyond a shadow of a doubt. Oddly, this is always justified by them as being due to "getting burned" by SEO scammers in the past. It makes little sense. They got ripped off or even hurt by bad SEO, yet they still hang on to the promises of overnight success made by the very people who lied to them.
I strive for transparency and try to let the client know as much as possible about what I am doing, but it gets a little frustrating when every action is countered with "but I read somewhere that..." or even undone by the client (titles changed, excessive meta keywords re-added, etc.)
But I do see a bright side - once I do convince them to do things right and be patient enough to see how it works, they usually "get it" and let me do my thing.
I'm preparing a SOW for a new client so this post couldn't have come at a better time.
It made me relaize (finally) that SEO has become part of branding. Without it, the brand won't become stronger. I wonder how Coke or Microsoft, two of the most recognized brands, would do as start-ups today.
Thanks for the assist on this SOW that was going no where 'til I read your post.
Best,
Paul
Thank you for reading! I'm glad it has been useful :)
Half knowledge of SEO is more dangerous than having no clue about what SEO is… and this is the problem with most of the clients today… They read whatever is recommended by their non SEO technical fellow and then forced us to apply on their website… in any case you try and explain the drawbacks of that particular strategy, you will end up as non technical and non informative SEO.
In my Opinion, Client really need to educate themselves and to be honest we should be the one who should explain then what SEO is before anyone of the non technical SEO fellow came in and say, ‘hey! Buying Links Rocks!’
One valid concern of the client is ‘how can I trust you that you are educating me in the right direction… may be you are doing it because you want to renew the contract for another year…’
And here comes the SEO communities like SEOmoz… Client should see what is progress of the person/company he hired for the SEO (SEOmoz Profile can work!) look in to his comments and see how many people are rewarding him/her with thumbs up or dis agreeing with thumbs down….
SEOmoz community is one of the example there can be other ways as well…
I agree with it. I have same problem with my clients. They Google SEO articles by own and discuss with me to implement on website. This is human behavior and we have to handle this situation. They are paying us so they have rights to discuss on any matter.
I found great way to resolve this issue. I request them to compose one mail with all questions regarding SEO & discuss with them regarding positive factors + negative factors which will create after implementation.
If I have any past experience with same issue so, I give them for reference & try to convince with specific statistics.
This is help me to re-solve too many questions.
I couldn't be in more agreement with this article. The problem I see SEOs running into time and time again is the "just get us ranking" demand from clients. No amount of explanation and examples about the need for a good website with excellent architecture or SEO being part of a wider brand strategy can defy this. It's why black and dark grey hat SEO still thrives - there's no shortage of customers who simply want to see themselves at the top of the SERPs, and when they're penalised or knocked off by someone else doing the same thing, the black hat SEO who got them there just fades into the night - taking their money with them. Time and time again I run OSE analyses on sites that have scraped (often literally) their way to the top with comment spam, paid links, scraped content, content and link farms. Seeing that never fails to hurt.
"they fail to clearly see that SEO is much more than a set of technical and content “tricks” that you can use to rank well on search engines"
This.
It happens because most people want to show up in the search engines but they don't understand SEO. So they google for a few minutes and end up reading a few pages explaining 10 tips for SEO and 5 tricks to reach #1. Then that's what they want because they don't understand there is so much more to SEO and that it is a much bigger process. They think just a few tweaks based on some article online will give them the results they want when usually that is just not the case.
I think a common problem with my clients is that they see SEO some kind of magical thing they can't understand, not something that's ruled by metrics, logic, patience and common sense.
A tough thing you run into is that when someone reads something on the internet they automatically believe it as fact and if they do not know mucha bout SEO they seem to focus on it so at times trying to have discussions with those people can be tough.
When you deal with the bigger companys they usually have internal SEO people who they then outsource the work to SEO Agencys so you do not really get silly questions as these guys are normally quite switched on.
In the past I have worked with SME's and I can 100% relate to the questions you have posted =)
I'm grateful for this information. You have presented your viewpoints in an interesting, unique and insightful way. I've read other writings on this subject matter that were dull and boring. Your article is very interesting.
Есть человек — есть проблема, нет человека — нет проблемы.
- Stalin
Use Google Translate if you don't understand this. ]:D
Nice.
PS. No need for Google Translate.
AMEN.