Search Engine Marketing

I don’t often defer to my colleagues to read my mind and post their articles instead of mine, but in this case I’ll make an exception. My friend and colleague Kimberly Nichols wrote one of the best, most concise articles on “SEO Guarantee Scams and How to Avoid Them” that I’ve read in a while.

Unfortunately not all Digital Marketers have your best interest in mind. They typically come in several flavors: Those with current knowledge, those with outdated knowledge, and those who abuse their knowledge. I can’t tell you how many clients came to us perplexed as to why their reports looked so good, yet their phone wasn’t ringing.

Case in point is an article I recently wrote: “Don’t let the “S” in SEO stand for Sucker” detailing an actual client that was intentionally misled by a classic “bait-and-switch” with his keywords. The company in question served themselves a “softball” simply by making long tail keyword phrases even longer in his monthly reports so they can meet their guarantee.

Legitimate Digital Marketing Experts will educate you as to what their strategy is, and not pull any punches as to what you can and can’t reasonably expect. Naturally you should expect a keyword placement report on a regular basis, but understand that is only part of the equation. It shows progress that the SEO Company should be using for themselves to show trends and progress, not absolutes. More to the point would be the actual analytics reports showing actual traffic and what keywords drove the traffic.

Keyword selection should address 4 components:

1. Relevance: Are the phrases that are targeted actually relevant to your business…or just easy to obtain?
2. Popularity: Are the keyword phrases that are being targeted actually searched on in sufficient volume to drive sales.
3. Acceptable levels of competition: Is there a reasonable expectation that first page rankings are obtainable? This is where a legitimate “long tail keyword” strategy comes into play.
4. Monetization: Can you actually make money and grow your business by driving consumers to your website by targeting those phrases?

A personal friend of mine...an attorney, told me that he contracted with a search engine optimization company, (let’s call them the “Mellow” Pages) because they claimed to specialize in search engine optimization for personal injury attorneys.

6 thousand dollars later he was asking me why he was getting top rankings on the search results pages, but no additional business.

It didn’t take a forensic pathologist to unravel this mystery. After reviewing the keyword phrases that he contracted for verses the actual results, it was evident that he was simply the victim of a classic bait and switch.

Let me emphasize that my attorney friend…a VERY intelligent guy and a top attorney had absolutely no reason to suspect what would be painfully obvious to an Internet Marketing specialist.  He is a very competent attorney…not a digital marketing professional.

Here is how it went down:

He contracted for the following phrases:

• Accident Attorney Irvine
• Car Accident Lawyer Irvine
• Car Accident Lawyers Irvine
• Car Accident Attorney Irvine
• Personal Injury Lawyer Irvine

 Here are the keyword phrases that were actually optimized:

• Accident Attorney Irvine California
• Car Accident Lawyer Irvine California
• Car Accident Lawyers Irvine California
• Car Accident Attorney Irvine California
• Personal Injury Lawyer Irvine California

 Did you notice the difference? Simply by adding one more word (California) to an otherwise legitimate long tail keyword phrase, it turned a very competitive, highly searched on phrase into something easily achievable, but with no discernable ROI.

 Let’s take a look at his actual results:

Notice that virtually each phrase with the word “California” at the end of it ranks higher than the same phrase without the State name. Why is that?

 Well, by simply searching on both phrases in Google and comparing the amount of search results, I could quickly see that the phrase “car accident attorney irvine California” was approximately 370% less competitive than the version without the word “California” tagged onto the end.

 Is that a good thing? Actually your SEO consultant should be looking for less competitive words; that is an essential ingredient to good keyword selection. However those less competitive phrases must also represent a fair amount of searches. At the end of the day I would rather show up for 20% of a thousand searches than zero percent of a Million searches.

 If the research showed that by adding the State name at the end of all those phrases resulted in reduced, but significant traffic, then it would have been a sound strategy. In this case people who live in Irvine rarely search on a phrase like “car accident lawyer Irvine California”, however they do search on a phrase like “car accident lawyer Irvine”. The “Mellow” pages simply made it easy on themselves at the expense of their client.

 Let’s put this into perspective; every successful business person is good at what they do. There is no reason for anyone to be good in an entirely different industry like digital marketing. I would never review my own contracts, or do my own accounting. Why would I expect a lawyer to be able to interpret the results of a search engine optimization campaign?

So how do you safeguard against unscrupulous Internet marketing practitioners?  The same way you would when referencing any company or individual; “Reputation Management”. My best advice is to simply search on: “reviews” + “the individual you are working with” to see what other folks have to say about their experience with that SEO specialist you are considering.

Remember, ethics and skill are mutually exclusive. My instincts tell me that the “Mellow” Pages should have been more trustworthy and accountable, but that was clearly not the case.

Social networking is a great social media marketing method that should be part of any digital marketing  strategy for business. Social networking has been part of the social web for a couple of years and the business connections you can make from LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook are just too big to ignore anymore.

There are thousands of social networks, each with their own specialty and niche. For example, LinkedIn is a professional network where Facebook is more laid back and casual.

The most effective and best way to utilize social networking in your marketing mix is to choose the ones that matches your targeted market the closest. This will be the network that fits your targeted demographic. Once you have chosen the network channel to use, spend some time to network on the channel and become part of the conversation happening.

Here's a couple of ways you can make the most out of social networking.

Social networking tips

• Only choose the social network that includes your targeted demographic and the audience that you would like to reach. There's many small personalized networks available and these ones tends to be easier and faster to connect with.
• What goals do you want to accomplish with social networking and who do you want to reach?
• Never start a social networking campaign if you are only going to engage with your network occasionally. Always interact and spend some time networking with the people in your network and become part of the group.
• Never think you can start a social networking campaign for a quick sale. You should always focus on building relationships.
• Meet up with the people in your network to increase the personal interaction and better build business relationships.
• Try new things and constantly adjust your approach to get new and better results.
• The benefits from social networking comes over a long period. Never expect instant results.

This post was personally sent to us by our good friend and colleague Francois Muscat, a certified Digital Marketing consultant living in South Africa. He is a professional speaker, trainer and consultant and enjoys training people in social media, anywhere in the world.