Covering Search Marketing, Local Search, and Social Media

photo credit: emuriel

Value Isn’t Counted in Dollars

There are lots of stark differences between pitching the value of SEO to big companies versus small businesses. In the former, price is often the last factor discussed, whereas service offerings, support, consultancy and integration into existing infrastructure matters. In short, they understand that you can’t order steak on the a McDonald’s budget.

That’s not to say that small businesses are cheap (although some can be). At the end of the day, proving value is always harder than to a bigger firm because there is a natural fixation on getting the right price. The average small business owner I’ve encountered thinks along the lines ‘Am I getting my bang for the buck in paying what I am’? Truth be told, can someone who is hearing about SEO for the first time accurately judge if they are getting value for their money, without giving the service the time to prove itself?

Tangible and Intangible Value

Demonstrating tangible value is fairly easy. Talking about ROI, ROAS, Cost per Customer Acquisition, and Cost per Lead are all great ways of solidifying some numbers around a campaign.

But a lot of the times, SMB’s don’t realize the value of expert opinion that is priceless to their business. I’m all for profitability and efficiency in business, but I like adding extra value of to clients who are in a tough spot, or need advice on broader internet marketing. Just this week I’ve talked to clients about things that aren’t included in their contract, and have got a fair share of ‘thank you’ emails back. I won’t bill them, but you can bet the guy charging $500 for the year will, if they bother to give the client one on one service at all.

Good SEO’s are hard to come by, and most clients will attest to the fact that they make back their investment in a short period of time. I hope this post helps those that fixate on price too much, because it’s important to remember:

Price is What You Pay, Value is What You Get - Warren Buffet

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Shameless Plug: I am looking for an SEO specialist to join my team in Montreal. We work with some very exciting clients, and offer great pay and benefits. If you think you’re our guy/girl, then get in touch with me through the contact form or email dev [at] devbasu.com

photo credit: teamstickergiant

Oh Gee, I’m Featured on Seo.Alltop.Com

It’s nice to know I kick ass, or atleast that the folks at Alltop think I do. I wonder if there’s some sort of Alltop optimization in the works, and if there’s a better way to rank in what seems to be an ever-growing list. That said, it’s good to be in the company of many of the folks I respect and trust in our relatively small but tight-knit industry.

Of course, if you’ve read this blog prior to this post, you landed up here through a means other than alltop, and I’ve yet to see what the long term traffic impact might be from the inclusion.

Alltop - Why Bother?

What Alltop offers isn’t unique, and is definitely a subjective way of ranking the blogosphere’s best content on any topic. If you’re relatively internet savvy, you may be able to find this through a number of outlets such as technorati, google blog search, social media, or others, but there are many who still have difficulty in separating the leaders from the followers in a given space.

Hell, there’s folks have no idea how an RSS feed works, so it’s no surprise that a blog directory such as Alltop can be quite useful for those that do not use Google Reader, or any other equivalent. Some of my clients fall right in this category, and they often ask ‘What does one blog about in my space?’.

With the growth of Alltop, answering that question becomes much easier, and often as simple as providing a link to the industry in question.

From an internet marketing stand point, here’s why I would take the effort to submit an application to Alltop:

• Juicy Links
• Targeted Traffic
• Building Subscriber Base
• Might Enhance Brand Reputation by Association

That said, if you’re visiting this post from Alltop, I urge you to subscribe via RSS for exclusive updates and tips that regular online readers do not receive.

photo credit: Larsz

Act in Supplement and You Will Succeed 

Today, I met a top player in the Canadian insurance industry, and left the pitch fairly impressed with their involvement in search marketing. Not only did they have a well run paid search campaign, run in-house, an seo campaign in the works, but to my surprise, were using Google insights for competitive research.

Of course, this begs the question - What could I possibily offer them? Efficiency and Foresight. A recent study proves that agency based SEO is upto 22% (correct me if I am wrong) more effective than in-house efforts. I can attest to this from experience, from working at one of the worlds largest forex brokers as an in-house specialist.

How To Engage in Enterprise SEO

There are a number of ways one can aid, expedite, and provide recommendations on the implementation of seo for the enterprise. First, it is important to identify the key problems enterprises face around seo in the first place:

1. Red Tape or Lack of Corporate Buy-in
2. Complex CMS - Staging Sites, Content Approvals, Process Queues
3. Confusion Between the Roles of Marketing & IT Teams.

Now its time to fix these problems by offering the right solutions:

1. One Time Corporate Buy-in for Agency Managed SEO Recommendations.
2. Site Audit Document that Provides all SEO Fixes.
3. Recommendations are Agency based, Implementation is IT based, and Marketing plans are brainstormed betweent the agency and marketing teams.

A short post, but hopefully something to think about before an enterprise SEO pitch.