Good SEO is priceless - in the right context.

I have been having a discussion with a fellow SEO’er over the last few days about how he should price work for a prospective client.

I personally prefer to work within a clearly defined set of goals, that are measurable and can provide palpable results.  He was suggesting that his work for this client should be done based against earnings that the client would generate from his work.

I totally disagreed with him, for a number of reasons.  Firstly, it is clear that many industries have high potential profits, for example, real estate (as was the actual case in point) - I know people whom have earned literally tens or hundreds of millions of dollars through good SEM (not strictly SEO), but the problem that you will encounter if you are pricing your job based on results is that there are far too many outside factors that are beyond our control as simple search engine optimizers.

Lets take an example:  lets imagine SEO guy one provides a real estate office with the worlds best SEO, now their website is getting huge traffic, highly targeted towards buying properties on the Costa Del Sol,  but the website is poorly designed - and thats the webdesigners fault, not the SEO professionals responsibility.  Lets imagine then that the company has the worlds best converting website, and each hit results in 0.5 calls to the Realtor, well if their sales staff aren’t up to scratch then the traffic is again wasted.  Even if the sales staff could close like no others, they might have no inventory to actually sell - as I am illustrating, pricing SEO work in the conventional world against sales results just isn’t an option as there are far too many obstacles between the surfer clicking and making a sale that are outside the remit of a Search Engine Marketer.

That is why my advice to him, and to any other SEO professional is not to get lured in by the promise of big bucks and bright lights (ahhh, those bright lights are sooo pretty though )  - in the long run you are always better off clearly defining goals, and then delivering the results that you negotiate pre-contract.  Examples that I use would be:

1) an increase in measurable inbound links from context sensitive sites (measured using yahoo LD)
2) an increase in total traffic  yielded by certain PRE DEFINED keyword combo’s with a specified Google address (ie. google.com or google.co.uk)
3) an improvement in SERPs for certain keywords on specific google sites
4) an overall increase in traffic from all search engines, based on actual statistics for the months leading up to the campaign, above any organic growth.

Essentially, the problem is that Search Engine Optimisation as a product is quite hard to define, and unless you have it clearly mapped out in advance what your tasks are you might end up getting blamed for not providing increased sales, when you have nothing to do with the front of shop sales structure - or in other words - it always makes sense to have your customer understand what it is that you can provide, and charge accordingly.

Anyway, enough of my musings, off to have a beer!

MM

SEO in 2008 - What we should concentrate on now.

Following on from a few other blog posts of mine this year already,  it seems that the focus for SEO is moving away from that old mainstay of the SEO’er, buying links.

What does this mean in practice?  Well, in my opinion its a great thing as lets face it, in the last two years being an SEO has almost become as ubiquitous as being a webdesigner, and nearly the same as saying you are an IT professional.. Heck every other person I meet these days is an SEO!!  The changes that seem to have been brought about by this latest TBPR update signify the beginning of the end of the wild west period of search engine optimisation, and now it is starting to seem that your onsite content, inc0ming links and link weight as a combination are now much more important that just the incoming links that have been ruling the market for the last few years.

What does this to mean to me?  Well, not much really, as I have never taken on an SEO job before for a site that doesnt have genuine relevant content - but it will mean that many of the link building based SEO’s will either go out of business totally in the next 6 months or have to learn a whole new skillset.  Those of us that have been in the market for 10 years however will remember what SEO was before google placed so much importance on off site optimisation and we simply have to revert in part back to the old days of optimising.

So, to get back to this posts title: What should we concentrate on now….

1) On site Content
2) Organic link growth onto RELEVANT sites, ie. through targeted linkbait
3) Site Updates, increasing RELEVANT page yield per site.
4) W3 compliance (always important)
5) Incoming links from RELEVANT sites.

You have probably noticed a pattern with that list… Relevancy!

Basically I think that MFA sites have been dealt a huge blow in the latest update and if you want to keep SERPs over the next few months I think the only way to fully consolidate your position is to add content, content and more content.  When thats done, add some more content for good luck (or should that be “goo-gle luck”!)

Anyway,  off for my calimocho people,

MM

Costa Del Sol SEO

As is normally the case around this time of year, most people should be taking stock of that this year will have to offer.  This is perhaps more important this year on the Costa Del Sol and specifically Marbella than it has been any year since 1989/1990 and most people dont remember that far back, or werent living on the coast back then.

Either way its fairly immaterial as SEO didnt exist back in 1989, but lets study why search engine optimisation on the Costa Del Sol will be important this year.

Well, the coast in my opinion is headed for tough times.  The last 10 years particularly the local micro-economy has been boosted by the strong pound, great economy in the UK, Germany and Scandinavia, and relatively weaker local pricing on everything from Jamon to Hotels.  Marbella and to a slightly lesser extent the rest of the coast has enjoyed a huge boom, with property prices going from incredibly cheap to fabulously expensive, on a world scale.

Why will SEO be important on the Costa Del Sol in 2008?  Well, lets look at the last recession in the UK/Northern Europe.  Well when this hit the places that got it worst overall in Europe were conversely the CostaDelSol and Mallorca - as all our money and investment comes from outside the area.  We have no industry other than real estate and tourism, there are probably 100,000 empty two bed apartments on the coast right now, and as soon as a recession hits in the UK whats the first thing that goes?  Not the family home, but the family HOLIDAY home.

Estate agents throughout the coast will go from making €20,000 per sale to €200 per sale, and the market will become so much more competitive that ANY advantage one agency can make over the other will be greatly magnified.

Why is this important for Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) in Malaga? Well, its time to start battening down the hatches and developing those property SEO websites now people!

Anyway,  off for my calimocho,

MM