Here is a simple way to look at SEO. Relevancy.

Basically Google cares about 2 things in the SEO game:

1. Writing great content

2. And quality inbound links to your site

Having been on the Internet since the mid 1990’s I’ve seen a lot of stuff come and go. As soon as something gets hot i.e. Facebook or Twitter a lot of people seem to try and capitalize on the traffic and the opportunity which only makes sense in a free market economy.

SEO is hot and has been hot for a few years now. It should continue to stay hot.

Lately I’ve been helping clients with their overall web strategy which can include product positioning, SEO, PPC, video SEO, offline lead generation and several other tactics. At the end of the day none of these tactics are hidden secrets but you do want to know what you are doing before you are about to dump a lot of money into them. Test then track.

Having spent some time in the DRTV media buying space I learned something that they were using that crosses over to the Internet space. It is called MER or media efficiency ratio. What MER is, is media spend to revenue ratio. For example, if I spend $100 on Google PPC Adwords and I generate $1,000 in product sales from my PPC efforts we would call that a 10:1 MER or just simply a 10:1 ratio. This is simple economics. Make more than you spend. (10:1 would be amazingly great in the DRTV world).

So why is there a problem with SEO? The barrier to entry is basically nonexistent. The problem is that anyone can get into the SEO business or industry and call themselves an expert. (So this means anything goes if you are not careful). What this means is that your web developer might tell you that they will get you ranked on Google. OK, we are excited right? Not so fast. If I’m in the drug treatment business and am selling residential drug treatment to drug addicts you would think that the keyword phrase “drug rehab” would be great to rank for? Not necessarily.

Why the traffic from “drug rehab” might be desirable, it is not the “right traffic.” If I’m a drug treatment center in Chicago then “drug rehab + Chicago” will be a much better fit. Location based has a much higher chance for conversion, in this particular example let’s say a web lead or a phone call. I can go into all the different permutations on why this is so but what really needs to be looked at is the keyword research. First, you need to think about the clients you want to attract and then use the keywords (language) that they use to search on.

Too many times I have seen clients get ranked for keyword phrases that no one is searching on. (This means that there was no understanding of keyword research). That is sort of like opening up a hamburger stand in the desert with no road coming into or out of the hamburger joint. Kind of like opening the hamburger joint on a busy corner or a back alley. A little bit of keyword research can solve this problem and I teach clients how to do it for themselves. It typically takes 2-4 hours. Or I can “do it for them.”

The problem with SEO is that too many times I have clients come to me and tell me that their SEO guy is not delivering, the phone is not ringing or the leads and orders are not coming in. SEO is not the only game in town, it is one of many tools. The first question I ask is please give me “read only access” to your analytics reports. When I get an answer like “what is that?” I know they have been taken for a ride. The reason analytics is so important is we want to see where the clients are converting on both the paid and the SEO side of their web traffic and how they are using the site and how they are coming into the site.

I can also tell right away how they are doing by looking at how Google sees their top ranked natural SEO keywords. If their company name is 8 out of their top 10 in their natural SEO results then they have major problems. The deal is you want to rank for generic category keyword phrases like blue suede shoes.

In a recent case last week we discovered that the “SEO Company” was sending links out to the clients’ competition among other things. This was a blatant form of either stupidity or carelessness. I don’t think that they were offering any real link value in those out bound links but why send someone off your page? Get them to call you first then you can determine if you can refer them, not unless you get so many calls where they are a nuisance. These guys were so deceptive that they then offered to open another web site and control the DNS and the Web hosting. When the relationship ended with the client they held the site hostage, but it didn’t matter since it only had 1,600 inlinks and a 0 page rank….and it was generating no leads for the client.

The other point about SEO is inbound links. The more you have and the more relevant to your business the higher your page rank will go as well as your search results pages on Google. To see how many links your web site has coming in go to your Google tool bar and hit the back links button or use this better tool from Yahoo called Site Explorer and “explore your URL.”

If you have a question if your SEO Company or technical team is doing their SEO right visit Speechrep Consulting or call me at 781-631-9691 or send me e-mail and I can basically tell you in a matter of minutes, no charge, if what you are doing is on the right path. Sometimes some fixes are simple. Other times the fix requires breaking of contracts.