» SEO

Is There Ever an End to SEO?

Nate — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 16:34:46 +0000

I’ve been talking with a good friend of mine a lot lately about SEO.

He’s working on a new business idea and knows that SEO, both on-site and off-site optimization, are crucial to his initial and on-going success.

However, he proposed a question that I felt I had the answer to, but wanted additional feedback from others.

The question was:

At some point can’t we just STOP the SEO consulting and rely on word of mouth and viral marketing to keep us in the top of the SERP’s?

My initial reaction was NO. Once you’re at the top of Google you can’t just say, “All is well.” You have to CONTINUE to follow the search engine rules, continue to build quality links, continue to provide valid content, etc.

I told him I would ask around from a variety of sources. Here are some of the answers. Take note of the variety of names – there are some “big players” who have been involved in SEO for a long time. Thanks in advance for your responses.

Why SEO for a Big Business?

The Official Question:

Do big online companies (Twitter & Facebook) ever use or need SEO?

Aaron Wall, one of my SEO favorites

Brian Clark, Copywriting Tips

Janet Meiners Thaeler, Online PR

[16:17] Janet M: I don’t think they do
[16:17] Janet M: I don’t even think Google does
[16:17] Janet M: they own authority sites
[16:19] Janet M: 1 – they have brand recognition because they created something useful & easy to spread 2 – huge #s of people depend on their service, 3 – people constantly produce new content that sustains them & keeps them relevant
[16:20] Janet M: but that doesn’t mean all big companies don’t use it
[16:20] Janet M: they are fundamental shifts/game changers
[16:21] Janet M: if your big business isn’t great or something remarkable like that you need SEO
[16:21] Janet M: their SEO is link building happens & grows organically without them having to do it

Dan Patterson, SEO.com

[17:20] Dan: i’d assume that they don’t really do much. They’re viral enough that they’re doing fine. Could they benefit from it? Sure! Not everyone knows about them and there are definitely phrases out there they if they ranked for they could get more users.
[17:21] Dan: personally, I can’t think of a single brand that couldn’t benefit in some way from SEO
[17:21] Dan: heck, just yesterday i was on the phone with a guy i know that has a website, and he has NEVER heard of Google Analytics
[17:22] Dan: the more phrases you rank for, the more exposure you potentially have
[17:22] nathanmoller@gmail.com: true
[17:22] nathanmoller@gmail.com: think about coca cola, who obviously doesn’t do much in terms of SMO
[17:29] Dan: but Pepsi is launching a huge campaign
[17:30] Dan: http://mashable.com/2009/12/23/pepsi-super-bowl/

Ben Nettesheim, Online Backup Marketer

[17:03] Ben Nettesheim: my two cents…
[17:03] Ben Nettesheim: I would say yes. It’s all about reach and frequency… even for the big dogs. If a consumer runs into your brand over and over and over, they will tend to remember it. This runs true in print, on the streets, and most certainly online. If a user consistently see Amazon as an answer to a search, then Amazon will likely be at the front of their mind for a future search or question. Likewise with Twitter of Facebook – If their services provide an answer to a search or question, then look for them to be a likely candidate for answers to future questions and searches. They have become the authority because their answer is consistently on top… even if you could have gotten a better or cheaper answer elsewhere.
[17:06] MollerMarketing: but all in all I have formed my own opinions which are EVERYONE needs SEO if they plan to stay at the top of their industry
[17:07] Ben Nettesheim: i agree. I could see the argument that if they are big enough they will get it w/out trying
[17:07] Ben Nettesheim: but even a small effort yields big return
[17:07] MollerMarketing: yeah, that’s been some of the feedback
[17:07] MollerMarketing: one point was that even the big dogs follow seo rules
[17:08] MollerMarketing: Youtube is all about “link bait” – allowing people to embed code and share
[17:08] Ben Nettesheim: yep and my opinion is if you are that big, you already have an advantage… so use that advantage instead of waiting for someone to take your advatage away
[17:08] MollerMarketing: exactly
[17:09] MollerMarketing: there’s always the little guy that might be doing all the right things that will pass you right up
[17:09] Ben Nettesheim: i wonder if you could find some examples of big guys not at the top of the SEO list who could benefit by putting a little more effort into it

Russ Page, Utah-based SEO Firm

[16:23] Russell Page: They absolutely follow the principles. Just one small example of this was when Facebook added the ability for you to be able to change the location of a page or a group from a number-based URL to a specific keyword based URL.
[16:25] Russell Page: YouTube includes easy to copy-and-paste URLs to everyone of their videos, which is a link building tool among other things.

[16:37] Russell Page: Big news sites are finally starting to see the value of linking to older stories or stories that are similar or to topic pages
[16:37] Russell Page: I’m talking about sites that get millions of hits a day already
[16:37] Russell Page: so they are already in the large traffic category
[16:39] Russell Page: this is in the middle of a CNN story.
[16:39] Russell Page: http://screencast.com/t/NzY3YzVj

Ryan Miller

[16:49] Ryan Scott Miller: I know Twitter took steps to make their profiles more SEO friendly, but with the recent deal between Twitter & Google, Twitter gets special treatment in Google results.
[16:50] Ryan Scott Miller: Facebook might not need SEO simply because their user base is the size of the US population
[16:51] Ryan Scott Miller: For many people Facebook IS the internet much like AOL was in the early 90s [16:51] MollerMarketing: although Facebook follows SEO rules of Friendly URLs and they are now indexing some content for search
[16:51] MollerMarketing: so they must see some value
[16:54] Ryan Scott Miller: Ultimately SEO is valuable because it optimizes your presence on search engines which are what people use to access & understand the internet
[16:54] Ryan Scott Miller: Facebook, like search engines, has become that portal through which people access the wider internet in general
[16:56] Ryan Scott Miller: Hence the necessity to optimize your presence there like you need to on search engines

Devin Eden, Programmer, Eli Kirk

[16:21] Devin Eden: every company has to start somewhere.
[16:22] Devin Eden: I would be a little surprised if google has a white list of sites that will automaticaly rank high
[16:22] Devin Eden: however everyone knows who face book and twitter is.
[16:23] Devin Eden: so I would think their isn’t much need for them to “advertise”
[16:24] Devin Eden: However i think the real answer is it is more a business decision. I would use seo just as an other advantage over my compatetion
[16:25] Devin Eden: but thier are some easy ways to find out
[16:25] Devin Eden: one could be by paid adwords in google. The other would be by doing some search for hard to get key words
[16:26] Devin Eden: if they pay for ads then they for sure spend time with getting the site out their
[16:28] Devin Eden: It looks like facebook doesn’t
[16:29] Devin Eden: so far the only search that turned up facebook was social networking and it was only the social portion that goth the resolts
[16:32] Devin Eden: I am pretty sure apple spends a lot on seo
[16:32] Devin Eden: if you search for their products they are almost always the first one
[16:32] Devin Eden: I haven’t seen that as much with say microsoft
[16:37] Devin Eden: for more reasearch I would try searches that you would use to find a site like twiter and facebook
[16:37] Devin Eden: if you can’t find them then they don’t bother with seo
[16:37] Devin Eden: you could test that with some other larger companies as a comparison

Thanks to all of your for your responses.

After reading these over, this was my initial conclusion:

Initial Conclusion

If I were to ask the question again, I may clarify it like this:

At what point is a company (big or small) ok with ending their SEO Campaign? (ie. not investing the time/money to maintain placement because the word of mouth is strong enough to keep them at the top)

I actually did re-ask the question on Twitter and via Chat to a few more people. Here’s the follow up question:

Answers were a bit more clear:

Aaron Wall, PPC Blog

Well it makes sense for them to want to rank their profile pages for the associated brands. And if you have a copy of Google’s internal ranking documents they state that they want to rank these pages for brands. Optimizing the page titles is an easy way to help the pages pull in more traffic. And some social sites like Wordpress.com create topical tag pages which accumulate pagerank and anchor text against a target keyword and then they rank well for those. The nice thing about ranking such pages is that it is free traffic that can be monetized aggressively without tarnishing up user profiles or harming the site’s organic growth.

I wouldn’t try convincing clients of anything. Either they are sold on SEO or they need to get a clue. It’s your job to sell them on hiring you, but it shouldn’t be your job to sell them on SEO because the ignorant often wishes to remain so. Most investors and start ups are doomed to fail because they think engineering is important but think of marketing as an after thought.

Thanks to Scott, Matt and Rick for their direct feedback!

Thanks Chris!

Final Conclusion

The bottom line is, SEO will never be an end all cure all process. You need to use all the online avenues to build your name and business reputation.

However, I feel a company should definitely invest the time and money to build a strong SEO presence. As they gain some recognition and placement from SERPs, they may re-allocate funds at some point to additional types of online marketing (social media optimization, video marketing, viral marketing, link bait, brand and reputation management, localized marketing, image optimization, etc.)

But a small to medium sized or start-up business should never fully eliminate on-site and off-site SEO!

As my great Arizona SEO friend said recently:

Will SEO Die in 2010?

Are you always going to need a properly coded site? (technical SEO)
Are you always going to need good content?
Do you want people to find your content?
Do you want people to find your images and videos?
Are you always going to need people linking to you?
Do you want people talking about your business?
Do you think you might use Google, Yahoo or Bing in 2010?

If you answered YES to any or all of these questions (which I dare any of you to tell me you didn’t) then YES, you will be using SEO in 2010.

What are your thoughts on this SEO discussion?

How Is Google Real Time Search Going to Influence Natural SEO?

Nate — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 19:39:20 +0000

If you haven’t heard yet, Google has launched “real-time” search.

What does this mean for natural search engine optimization?

Will the SEO consultants who know how to do on-site and off-site SEO be “penalized” by this new functionality?

Or will SEO’s adapt, use social media more effectively (they should be doing this anyway), and give their sites even BETTER placement for multiple phrases in their industry.

According to one article I recently read at a wholesale dropshippers website,

Real time results are heavily weighted toward fresh content. This means that your ranking on the SERPs could be much more volatile – you could be number 1 one minute, and number 6 a few minutes later. How can you boost your SEO (Search Engine Optimization) by taking advantage of real time searching?”

Here’s what Google has to say about the change:

Now, immediately after conducting a search, you can see live updates from people on popular sites like Twitter and FriendFeed, as well as headlines from news and blog posts published just seconds before. When they are relevant, we’ll rank these latest results to show the freshest information right on the search results page.

What do SEO Consultants think?

Mashable had this to say about the Google Launch:

For some time, it’s been clear to us that search has been moving to real-time, but until now, Google was seemingly falling behind Twitter, and even perhaps Bing (who inked its own search deals with Twitter and Facebook earlier this year).

Now, with one sweeping stroke, Google has grabbed the lead in the real-time search space, and it appears that Facebook and Twitter have both conceded that they aren’t going to outbuild Google when it comes to search. These are significant strategic decisions for all of those involved that will dictate much of where these companies head in the years to come.

Webpronews said this:

If you have ever had a hard time finding a direct relationship between social media and search engine marketing, it doesn’t get any more direct than this.

Dave Snyder is optimistic:

From an SEO perspective, however, the move excited me. It opens up a whole new world for savvy SEOs looking to compete in the always profitable business of trending search terms.

The first thing that came to mind when I saw the real time search data pouring through was that Google is getting a massive amount of real time link data without the issue of a crawl. I am convinced they will be utilizing this data to help shape SERPs for terms that are trending or based on timeliness.

What I Think

SEO and SMO Become Duel Threats: if you haven’t been using Twitter, Facebook, and other social networks, you better “jump on the bandwagon” or you’re going to get passed up by the little guys. I laugh at the “big companies” that aren’t willing to invest the time or money (or both) to protect their name, brand and potential new business because they think “…there’s no real ROI with social media marketing…” Well big boys, small to medium sized businesses now have the potential to take your business little by little.
Google Always Does Things Better: Dave Synder mentioned the fact that the new real-time search will definitely encourage some to Spam, Spam, Spam. He states, “Seriously, any new feature that Google rolls out is a playground for SPAM…” I agree. He adds, “Some people might ask the importance of coming up for a mere moment in that position, but the sheer amount of traffic generated for a trending term can make even a 30 second window profitable.”PC World noted “…unlike Bing, not every search term you enter into Google will trigger the real-time feature. Google’s approach makes sense, to a certain extent, since there may not be much real-time relevance to a search for a particular celebrity or historical figures on most days. But then again, sometimes people post interesting information such as quotes from the likes of Mark Twain or Winston Churchill, quirky facts about history, and other information that may be interesting to discover. Unlike Google, you are guaranteed to find more real-time results on wider range of topics on Bing; whether those search results have any value is left for you to decide.”

I feel strongly that Google won’t be TOUCHED when it comes to search, both natural SEO and real-time. Bing is working hard but I don’t think they will prevail. Time will tell how search users adapt (or if they adapt at all) to real time search.

What are your thoughts on real-time search?

3 Reasons Why Press Releases Won’t Get Published

Nate — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 16:28:41 +0000

Have you attempted to submit a press release for your website and had it get rejected?

What happened?

What was the reason for the rejection?

I recently posted a press release for a client, written by them, and had to edit it a couple times for these reasons.

3 Reasons Why Press Releases Get Denied

1. Advertisement: Currently, the way your release is written, it sounds pitchy like an advertisement. Press releases should present newsworthy information about your company in an informative, journalistic manner. Please adjust your release so that it reads like a press release and does not sound pitchy like an ad. For example this comment refers to the following types of phrases, “hot deals,” etc.

2. Exclamation Marks: Please be sure not to use exclamation marks in a press release unless they are required as part of a trademark.

3. Journalistic Style: Press releases are required to be written in journalistic style. This means, in part, that it:

A) should not be written in 1st person (e.g., “We did xyz”), but rather should be 3rd person (e.g., “Company ABC did xyz”), and

B) it should not contain direct address (e.g., “You can do xyz”), but rather should be with no direct address (e.g., “Clients can do xyz”).

So, you should not use the words “you,” “we,” “I,” “our,” and “us” outside of a quoted statement, as this is a flag that the content is an advertisement rather than a press release. Also, these words are not search terms, but your company, product or service names are. Please adjust accordingly. (thanks for the feedback PR.com)

One great source I found for Press Release tips and tricks is an book written by a good friend of mine, Janet Meiners Thaeler (follow her on Twitter), “I Need a Killer Press Release–Now What?”

Janet is a PR specialist who recently shared a lot of great content about Press Releases on a webinar with PRWeb.com.

A few highlights from her webinar:

Top 5 mistakes when creating an online news release

Mistake #1: No keyword links
Mistake #2: No Call to Action
Mistake #3: No pictures or video
Mistake #4: No captions under your pictures
Mistake #5: No quotes in your news release

And…

Top 5 tips for writing a killer press release

Tip #1: Tell readers how to connect with you: List Blog, Twitter ID, FacebookFan Page, etc
Tip #2: Don’t be a 1-hit wonder
Tip #3: Write for the Web
Tip #4: Promote your news
Tip #5: Come up with a good cause

Find out more about how to write effective press releases in Janet’s book:

I Need a Killer Press Release–Now What?: A Guide to Online PR

What are reasons you’ve seen for not getting a Press Release published?

Keyword Research – A Step by Step Guide (Video)

Nate — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 17:17:06 +0000

Is keyword research really THAT important for an online business?

Can’t I just skip that step and start making money right away?

Keyword research just seems like a waste of time…

I’ve worked with hundreds of clients over the last 4 years as a mentor at Prosper, Inc. and have heard variations of these EXACT statements over and over again.

The best response I have is this:

The clients who understand keyword research are 9 times out of 10 the SAME clients who make lots of money with their new online businesses.

No matter what type of online business you decide to start, keyword research will be an essential part of your marketing strategy.

To help you understand the step by steps, I’ve put together a short 5 minute video to share with you some of the basics of effective keyword research.

10 Steps to Effective Keyword Research

Step 1: Go to http://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

Step 2: Type in products that you would like to get access to and sell online (start generic)

Step 3: Look for Buyer Phrases – keywords that most likely mean the person is looking to BUY what you’re offering

Step 4: As you look at different keyword ideas, record the phrase and number of searches done per month (Global Monthly Search Volume) in the Google Docs Spreadsheet we’ve created

Step 5: The target number is above 1,000 – know that if the demand is REALLY HIGH, most likely the competition will be high too

Step 6: Once you’ve found phrases that meet the demand criteria, open up another window, go to Google, and type in allintitle:”the keyword phrase” and hit enter

Step 7: Note in the Google Docs spreadsheet what the number of sites is that shows up (ie. 1 in 10 of 48,000)

Step 8: The target number for competition is 30,000 or less (actually the lower the better)

Step 9: Record the numbers in the spreadsheet

Step 10: You’re well on your way to being an internet entrepreneur!

Keyword Research is the CORE of effective online marketing.

These articles may help too: