April 15th, 2008
SEO secret sauce!
Working as a Product Manager at an online start-up was a fortunate opportunity (challenging but good). I wore many hats and became a “jack of all trades” when it came to gaining widespread distribution online (with the exception of organic search) . Basically, any online channel that my former company could spend money on, I got involved in. Developing successful products and business units required these various channels and Search was essential.
In 2005, the company I was working for had established very close relationships with Google, Yahoo!, MIVA, etc. These relationships were a function of their online spends; we spent a lot on PPC (Paid search). The internal search team was comprised of about fifteen employees. Despite all the money that was being spent on the media buys and resourcing the team, and despite the money that was being generated, there was no natural search effort in the company whatsoever. I guess I never questioned why back then, I just considered it was a “Dark Art” and something that only a few select individuals broke the code on.
Three companies later, I had still never met anyone who had strong natural search experience. SEO/SEM companies were on the other side of the fence from Lead Generation companies in most cases. Challenged by my executive team telling me that “…we just can’t do natural search,” and “…leave SEO to the search companies,” I began examining the few companies in the Lead Gen space that did SEO. I contacted former co-workers and associates who went to work at these and other large SEO firms (iCrossing and iProspect to name a few). I interviewed search consultants who tried to sell me on the secret marketing tactics involved with SEO without being able to elaborate on anything past what I read on Google. I burned the midnight oil sifting through articles on SEO and finally started to optimize my own sites as case studies.
After a few successes, I quickly realized that there is no secret sauce, no magic spell, no Jedi mind trick that you can perform to rank your site over another. Granted, there are Black Hat techniques for short term gains, but those end up hurting a business in the long run and are not sustainable (watch out for anyone who says they can get you instant traffic). In online marketing, when Google changes their algorithm, you know it; companies who aren’t playing by the rules stop delivering traffic. All the techniques that anyone needs to know about how to organically rank have been blogged about on thousands of websites. Not to mention, Google has done everything but provide their actual algorithm on their site between their forum and webmaster tools.
I could easily sell the idea to my clients that SEO is a secret art and takes years to learn, but why would I want to start out a business relationship by lying? Optimizing a site could be as simple as adding a few internal links and keywords or it can be as involved as re-coding an entire site. After the site is bot friendly, the rest is up to how you link to and from the site.
What I am getting at is that I’m not afraid to reveal to my clients the steps they need to take to make their site search engine friendly because there’s so much more to ranking than how you code your site. If my client managed to code their site correctly, then they saved us both a lot of time and energy. We can now focus our time and resources into driving traffic via other distribution channels which will only further promote the site’s natural ranking. SEO is only one tool in an online marketers tool box and should be viewed as such.
To those new to online marketing, do your research. If you don’t have time to research, be cautious how you spend your marketing dollar (This is a given considering the current economic state). Don’t put all your eggs into the basket of a self proclaimed SEO expert. Don’t buy into anyone who can guarantee the #1 slot on google or instant traffic to your site – these are all signs of unscrupulous search practices.
No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google. Beware of SEOs that claim to guarantee rankings, allege a “special relationship” with Google, or advertise a “priority submit” to Google. There is no priority submit for Google. In fact, the only way to submit a site to Google directly is through our Add URL page or by submitting a Sitemap and you can do this yourself at no cost whatsoever.
Be careful if a company is secretive or won’t clearly explain what they intend to do. Ask for explanations if something is unclear. If an SEO creates deceptive or misleading content on your behalf, such as doorway pages or “throwaway” domains, your site could be removed entirely from Google’s index. Ultimately, you are responsible for the actions of any companies you hire, so it’s best to be sure you know exactly how they intend to “help” you.