Featured Article - How Not to Work With an SEO/SEM Firm
› › › Search Results BY Shari Thurow June 06, 2005
Recently,
I informally surveyed SEO and search engine marketing (SEM) firms about
their most common client and prospect complaints. Today, I offer the
results. To protect confidentiality, no one is named.
The statements below are the firms' own attempts to deal with clients' and prospects' unrealistic expectations.
You'll have to change your Web site. Accept this fact before contacting us.
"We
have a difficult time talking to people who honestly believe we can
wave a magic wand and miraculously make a Web site appear at the top of
search results, even in this day and age," said one SEO firm staffer.
"In order for us to optimize a site, the site has to change:
copywriting (and not just the meta-tag descriptions), information
architecture, page layout, link development, you name it. The
prospect's site must change in order for the prospect's site to receive
increased 'natural' search engine traffic."
Another SEM firm echoes
this sentiment. "When we said that the text content on your pages will
need to be changed, what we meant was: the. text. content. on. your.
pages. will. need. to. be. changed."
Search experts don't make these
statements to be rude or condescending. They simply want clients and
prospects to have realistic expectations. Our time is just as valuable
as yours.
Your site has no more right to high rankings than
anyone else's, regardless of your standing in the field or your brand's
renown.
I can't count the number of times I really, really
wanted to make this statement face to face. Search engine spiders don't
have emotions. They don't ooh and aaah over your brand name, or your
expertise in your field. Search engine spiders index text, follow
links, and measure popularity.
I once asked a prospect if he felt entitled to be on the front page of the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Chicago Tribune, and Los Angles Times
every day -- without the need to follow any publication guidelines.
Unfortunately, he said, "Of course I do. Who wouldn't?" I chose not to
work with this person. If he had unrealistic expectations about
appearing in major newspapers, he had unrealistic expectations about
appearing in major search engines.
Tell your Web developer to get with the program or get lost.
I've
received this comment from multiple SEM companies. Most Web developers
don't understand how to make a site search-engine friendly or how to
make a site search friendly.
"Our staff took a usability class
with a bunch of other Web developers and usability professionals," said
a search expert. "A usability professional from a major U.S. auto
manufacturer was one of the attendees. He kept saying to me over and
over again, 'We have the best designers in the world working on our
site.' I finally spoke up and said that I didn't care. If his design
staff were so damn wonderful, then how come the site has problems with
the Web search engines?"
"It doesn't matter how many awards your Web
design/development firm won, or how many big-brand clients they have,"
the expert continued. "What matters is that their prospects can find
their products on their site and take desired actions, not go 'Ooh!
Aaah! Look at the pretty Web site.'"
Kudos to the SEO staffer who
had the courage to stand up to big-brand arrogance. "If you don't
create a search-engine friendly Web site, don't expect the search
engines to be friendly," said another SEO firm.
Marketing staff: take and pass an HTML 101 class (no cheating).
"Look,
I'm not expecting marketing folks to be able to code an entire Web
site," stated another SEO expert, "but I at least need them to
understand the difference between a title tag and a meta tag. And why
one is more important than the other, at least from a search
perspective."
This complaint came from multiple SEM firms. Seems
marketing professionals expect search experts to wave that magic wand
again. In the real world, we must modify HTML code and the content
within HTML tags. All we ask is online marketing folk understand HTML
well enough to have a common vocabulary with search experts.
IT staff: take and pass a marketing and usability class (no cheating).
Fair
is fair. Many firms express equal frustration with IT staffers who
don't respect the marketing staff's skills and expertise. Web
developers often create information architectures and URL structures
that make sense only to other Web developers, not to the target
audience. That's not search friendly at all.
Make peace with your IT department.
"Whether
you like it or not, your IT department usually creates and maintains
your Web site," said one SEO staffer. "You can choose to have an
antagonistic relationship with them, or you can choose to work together
with a common goal." Agreed. However, many IT staffers tend to be a bit
threatened when an outsider comes in to criticize their work.
We
just spent six months optimizing your site. It's a little late to tell
us you worked with three other SEO companies that specialize in
cloaking, and that also mirror sites with identical content.
I
could feel the frustration oozing from the e-mail submissions. Clients
and prospects, let SEM firms know about previous SEM firms you worked
with. Tell them what did and didn't work. Why pay for duplicate work?
SEM
firms, if you haven't already, rewrite this complaint and put it in
your discovery questionnaire. Heck, put it in your contracts. Our firm
has a rule: if a client or prospect has knowingly and deliberately
spammed the search engines, it has 30 days to stop -- or it's no longer
our client.
Thanks to the SEM firms that contributed complaints. On
the surface, it may seem they're blowing off steam. In reality, SEO/SEM
firms genuinely want to help their clients' sites achieve user and
business goals. All we ask is for clients and prospects to share the
same goals. |
