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A blog of Factual Opinions

Here is something that your SEO consultant or marketing firm will never want you to know: there are 2 parts to SEO. And here’s the second part of what your marketing or SEO consultant will really not want you to know at all: most SEO consultants and marketing firms do, respectively, one half each. This is a topic I’ve been meaning to write about for a while, but since I don’t spend a whole lot of time doing SEO for any of my own websites or businesses, well, I haven’t really had the motivation to pen (or in this case, screen) the issue. Now that I’m done sorting out some of the basics that I consider more important than issues like SEO and PPC marketing for a business, I’m coming back into this rather messy affair.

I can name many of my clients who consistently spend hundreds, if not thousands of pounds and dollars every month in trying to get their SEO to work. Let’s get one thing out of the way before we have the marketing folks butt-in: SEO is not the same as PPC, so let us not confuse the two. PPC optimization, although similar in some regards to SEO, is a different line of work. There are no, per se, two parts to it on a macro level, although I think you can break up PPC into two different parts if you want to get a view from the inside out.

So, what really are the two parts of any SEO campaign? Well, let’s see…

The Technological Part

If you have a marketing firm that claims they’ve got SEO down, this is the part they are most likely not doing. I personally know firms who are spending 5 figures of Great British Pounds Sterling every month in an attempt to get their SEO up and running in addition to a GBP 20k+ Pay per Click bill, but SEO is just not working. The content may very well be right because that’s probably what their SEO provider is OKAY at (not brilliant, just OKAY), but the reason that Google or Yahoo don’t give them any importance is simply because their pristine, apparently clear and clean-cut looking design isn’t so clean when you look at the source code. It’s rampant with violations of W3C XHTML and CSS standards, javascript errors, lack or misuse of meta tags, and many more to name a few. What’s worst is that these chaps still haven’t figured out what they’re getting wrong, and it’s not all their fault.

To develop their mammoth online project, they hired a technology consulting giant like Sapient, but got a possibly unqualified employee to manage the relationship. So, in essence, the code produced is not particularly garbage, but it is something most decent developers wouldn’t feel heartache about trashing. Second, the XHTML and CSS interface was developed by an idependent party which, it seems, specializes in developing interfaces that work toward the stern purpose of being non-standard compliant. The SEO company has no clue why their magic doesn’t work and the reason why that’s happening is because they don’t fully understand the business or recognize or realize the techological or technical faults that are holding the company back.

It’s the same old issue: marketing firms become web development and web 2.0 software consulting firms, create garbage product, but sell it hard by throwing money on PPC and Out of Home Advertising (OOH) and all their client seem to think they’re doing  a great job, without actually realizing that they could save a huge amount of money spent on PPC every month by simply streamlining some of the technology issues involved in SEO.

I’m not going to go into what it is that you need to do to get the technology right; at least not in this article. What I do want to do is illustrate the benefit of having the technology issue resolved. Let’s be clear on one thing: with the right age and domain length and correct coding, etc. (i.e., fullfilling the techincal requirements of SEO), you’ll certainly land yourself a higher Google PageRank than a website that foscuses solely on cosmetic appearance and writing fancy content but misses the boat on writing Google friendly code. If your competitor has done this part right and you’re relying on your good old marketing man to provide you with SEO services, when somebody does search for your keywords you will end up getting the small corner to the right that google has reserved for AdWords, where as your competitor, even if he doesn’t have the right kind of content on his website (which is valid to  a search term), is getting a good 80% of the screen. Who do you reckon your potential customer will click on, someone Google thinks is providing valid content or someone Google says is paying money to ‘appear’ to provide valid content. Maybe not all clients work like that: I sure do.

The Marketing Part

Okay, this is the part where you need to not listen to your SEO consultant, who knows the technical aspects of what Google, Yahoo and MSN like to see, but has no clue about how to sell. Remember, most technical people suck at selling. They like to brief and give information, not make the effort to pretend like they care about your business and sell you their skills. Hence, that’s what you need to use them for.

I can’t stess the importance of getting this part right. As much I bash marketing firms for getting the technology part of SEO wrong, ultimately, selling lies at the heart of every business. No sale means no business, so get this right!

Here is an example of how companies get this wrong: Fix all your tags and content on each page, so that when google does list you organically, people at least land on the correct page. Not landing on the correct page means you’ll never make a conversion from visitor to customer. The first part giving yourself the ability to appear in the 80% portion of the screen of a Search Engine by getting the technical portion right. The second, is to strengthen the credbility of the visitor who trusts the judgment of the search engine to list you in their organic listings by giving the visitor what he or she is really searching for.

Once there, the content needs to be right. Don’t hire a car salesman for this unless you are selling cars. You need a short, sofisticated form of copywriting, not those long sales letters that eBook copiers and MLM scammers have used and misused and abused over the last decade.

Here is the most important thing you need to take away from this article. Don’t believe everyone you see on Google or Yahoo’s first page. Most often than not people will show up and stay there until the next crawl when the search engine realizes that a certain website has cheated. So, look for decent history when picking a provider. Also keep in mind that not all businesses that do SEO spend resources on SEO: they don’t need to. They get their business from other resources like management consulting. In fact, that’s how some of the largest contracts are signed, by consultants know nothing except for how to close a deal.

Lastly, there are very few companies out there who can do SEO and PPC right at the same time and score both on the marketing and technological front. It’s the same reason why marketing guys are horrible at using technology AND the same reason why your IT guys can’t sell for shit. Get your technical SEO person to liaise with your marketing team. That’s how you can results out of your Search Engine Optimization efforts.

Lastly, always remember this simple piece of advice: you get what you pay for and here is why: opinions are free, consultations are NOT. Which one are you looking for?