The answer’s were very telling.

The company representative responded that the client could expect a monthly detailed analytics report, on-going keyword updates and a quarterly consultation.  He also suggested their pricing was very competitive and that they knew of competition that charged much more for the same service.

To the layman, these answers might sound reasonable, but to me they are all wrong.

First of all, on question #1: Being guaranteed that I will receive paperwork and a sales pitch for my $5,000 to $50,000 investment (I’m hoping for those higher numbers that there is much more going on that just website SEO) may sound efficient, but it misses the point.

SEO is not a destination, its the vehicle you use to get to your destination.

If you are spending over $10,000 for search engine optimization and you haven’t had the following happen, you might want to look elsewhere:

• An analysis of your business and your competition
• A consultant that you are comfortable talking with, plus one that enable you to understand and build reasonable expectations
• Firm business-focused goals established before the first quarterly session beings
• More leads, more sales, more of what your business needs…not your website or Google’s search engine.

Being comfortable that these needs are being met helps answer the second question about pricing.

If you spent $30,000 on SEO and you reach the end of the year and you’re still confused about it being well priced, you have a problem.  Obviously the consultant didn’t do their job…or they are focusing more on the “con” in their title.

When year one ends, you should have some hard numbers generated from your reports vs goals achieved.  If I spent $10,000 on a SEO campaign and I can show my company gained 50 leads (each lead being worth say $1000 each to the company) then I can determine that $50,000 in leads was well worth the $10,000 on the campaign.  If I spend $50,000 on a campaign, but I’m confused as to whether I’ve made any money directly from it, then it might be a good value or a horrible value, but I’ll never know and I’m susceptible to sales speak based on analytics numbers that are just that…numbers.  And the company may survive on numbers for a year or two, but the cracks will show soon in the bottom line.

If my consultant pulls out a report and tells me my bounce rate is 25%, who cares? If my website is three pages and has a contact form on the home page, bounce rate doesn’t mean a thing to me.  Bounce rate helps me navigate the terrain…its not what I want to achieve.

Why do so many web development companies answer SEO questions with responses of tools rather than results?  Because that is what they understand. They are in the business of building better websites, not building better businesses.  Also, that leap into the business world can leave some developers vulnerable to questions they can’t answer.  It is much safer to bring the conversation back to technology so that the client is at the disadvantage.

Yet, if clients realized that they could learn a lot more about their web developer’s SEO capabilities by forcing the conversation back into business results…they might actually find out if they have someone who can really build them a successful campaign.

If you pull one thing from this post…the business goal is what you want to achieve, not good numbers on an analytics report or top search engine placement…those are just tools to get you there.

New technologies have similar problems to the ones being faced by network television.  In the old days, you had a captive audience.  For the most part, you had ABC, NBC, CBS, maybe an independent channel and PBS as your only sources for entertainment on the tube.  It was very easy for these networks to battle it out and make an impression because they owned about 20% of the entire television viewing experience.  But now, with a myriad of cable networks, they own only partial percentage points and their impact has dwindled tremendously (as well as the quality of their writing pool).

So how does a brand new search engine like Blekko (released to beta yesterday) make it in the oversaturated world of Google, Bing, Yahoo, Wolfram Alpha, Ask and so on?

Ask Apple…its about simplicity.  Creating tools that make life easier and faster for people.

Upon my first glance at Blekko yesterday, I was immediately confused.  I had to figure out what this “slash” concept was.  To do so, I watched a 5 minute video that is conveniently located on the home page.  But is this what the average person really wants to do?  Learn, or think about how to do a search?

This point immediately comes clear when you think about the upcoming holidays.  What is more frustrating that trying to navigate six different languages in your “Quick Set Up” guide while putting together that complex toy for your child on Christmas morning?

It will be interesting to see the development of Blekko.  It has some nice tools for web developers and marketers to help them figure out the algarhythm that determines search rankings in their engine (oh, if only Google would give up their secret formulas), and the slash concept actually is kind of cool, if you take the time to learn it.  But if no one goes there, then all of this information is only partially educational as to the workings of a search engine.

So will this search engine catch on, or will it just end up in a pile with all of the other search engines crushed beneath Google’s feet.

Remember, Google’s main concept is a search engine that is fast…and that is not full of clutter.  It is simple…just a search box and a couple of links on the page.  What could be compelling enough to get people move away from that?

Now Google is going one step further.  Over the last couple of years you may have noticed the search bar on Google (and Yahoo! and Bing for that matter) has become more dynamic…showing you multiple results and filtering as you add more text.  Now imagine that same kind of instant recognition of your search results…IN the search results?

That is the new direction of Google and they have just released a test version to the general public.  Its smart programming figures out instantly the list to provide you.  Hit the backspace button (or delete for my Mac challenged friends) in the middle of typing Web Design Greenville…go back to the word Design, add in Hendersonville and instantly see the results on the page without refreshing.

This could make it much easier for searchers and more difficult for SEO.  Now you’ll have to anticipate that people will be playing instantly with results…creating a need to get yourself under more secondary keywords.  In other words, just showing up at the top of a single keyword search won’t be as important as showing up under many.  This could lend validation to your site if it constantly shows up whenever parameters are changed.

I’m not sure how long it will be before this is integrated into real search (they will have to work out how the Local Business Center works into all of this)…but it might be time to talk to your web developer (hopefully that’s us) about doing a keyword analysis to build your stable of secondary keyword phrases.

Check out the new search on Google.

Aardvark (found at vark.com) is taking this one step further. They send out your question via social networks. They try to find the most appropriate answers and send them to you. The only drawback is they send them to you via IM. I don’t know about you, but my Yahoo! Messenger account hasn’t gained much use in the last year or so. Plus, you have to wait for an answer. Its like letting others do the research for you.

It will be interesting to see if it catches on, how successful the feedback is, and if people are willing to wait for answers in a world of instant gratification.

UPDATE: I found Aardvark difficult to get a response from. It doesn’t really let you know easily. It would be better if it emailed you the answer.  Also, Google recently bought Aardvark, so it will be interesting to see how the Goliath handles making it better.

Its time to start looking at some of the elements of your website that are critical to search engine success.

Next to the website’s URL, the site’s title tag ranks very high on the mythical search engine favorability chart.  Title tags show up in two very important places.  First, if you bookmark a page or look at the top of your browser, you’ll see the title tag prominently displayed.  But the other place a title tag is used is in your organic listing in Google, Yahoo! or Bing.  If you have the right stuff in your title tag, including those juicy keyword phrases you just spent that money on…it can make your organic listing as eye-catching as your AdWord advertisement.

So what should you put into your title tag?  How should you format it?  Here are a few tips for those wishing to use this powerful element.

• First off, don’t go overboard
  Google, Yahoo! and Bing on average only show 60-70 characters.  The other words will still get some power, but your tag will be cut off in search engine results.
• Use keyword phrases
  Okay, pick one or  two keyword phrases that are related to your page content (especially the main title of your page…the <h1> tag to you coders).  Make sure you use these keywords in your page and meta description tag also.
• Divide your content for easy viewing
  When I used to work in radio, I would cut my ads up with hashes so I knew where to breathe and how to see where things stopped and started. Having your phrases | separated | makes them easier | to read.
• Feed what they are looking for
  If they are wanting to buy, use keywords like “shop” “purchase” etc.  If your page is a catalog or information, provide more keywords related to the content.
• Put your company name last
  The beginning of a title tag is more powerful than the end of it.  Make your keywords show up first and then use your meta description tag your company identifier.
• Choose a format and stick with it
  Nothing gets more annoying than going to a site where things change drastically from page to page.  Same with your title tag…make sure it uses the same format throughout your site.

If you use a content management tool, make sure it allows you to customize your title tags or ask your developer how to affect them.  In our content management system (CMS), when you type in a title to your page, it is automatically distributed to the title tag and to other critical parts of the page for SEO.

It is also critical to make sure you are using the right keywords.  Just because they seem powerful to you, doesn’t mean they are going to get results.  There are plenty of great secondary keywords and keyphrases that can be just as powerful as the main ones.  A good keyword analysis will get you off to a good start with your title tags.

Happy editing!

In January, the average price for competitive keywords were pushing around $2 to $5 and secondary terms were being found at $.10 and $.25.

No longer my friends.  If you have logged on lately, you will probably find $1 per click is the going rate for most decent keywords…and we haven’t really even seen the full turnaround of the economy.

So, if your Search Engine Marketing partner was pushing you to delve deeply into AdWords without working on your organic results…you may start paying the cost for bad planning.  I have seen customers who are running these AdWords campaigns getting less and less traffic to their sites just within the last month.  Amazingly many of mine are seeing an increase in organic searches but an overall loss due to heavy concentration on AdWords.

Now is the time to make sure your site is ready for the search engines.  See how you’re doing right now by using the free form on this site evolveyoursearch.com.  If your organic ranking is not your #1 priority, it may be time to talk to someone who can get you there.

My answer is usually not as simple as just “avoid it.”  I like to give advantages and disadvantages to my clients so they can make an informed decision.

So with that in mind, I also looked for some credible resources to feed their opinion on the subject.  In a world where SEO techniques are growing more and more in demand, I find that drives the decisions of most people.

My main arguments against Flash for full site design include:

• many Flash sites reside on one page which means bookmarks are useless,
• search engines like Google are learning to spider Flash but sometimes you get very undesirable results,
• it becomes very hard to maintain your own content which ties you to a web developer,
• it is another program that not everyone has access to (a bug with IE8/Vista on my computer refuses to install it) so some people may miss your whole site,
• you have 10 seconds to win someone over to your product – most Flash sites I’ve been on take 3-5 seconds to bounce up a navigation…unless you’re selling “Loading” and percentage rates, you’re wasting valuable attention grabbing time, and if your site doesn’t respect their time – do they think your product will?
• customers don’t care about cool effects – they want to know if your product is worth while, if you are selling Flash design then maybe it is worth demonstrating, but most of my clients are trying to sell something else,
• Flash is costly to develop and update,
• and with JQuery you can do many of the things Flash can do to a lesser degree but with much better search engine results (see one of our customer’s non-Flash pages).

For Flash in general, I am also not a big proponent.  I can say that I’ve been to some very nice Flash sites…but I have never bought anything from one of them because their site has a fancy Flash presentation.  In the business world, that speaks volumes.

So what are my pros for using Flash?  It makes me a lot of extra cash as a web developer….it looks nice if done right, and it is less annoying than having a site with white text on a black background (I start seeing spots when this combo happens!  …by the way, if you like this combo…bookmark this Google page for your searches: Blackle)

Other articles to read:

• Search Engine Journal Article
• SEOmoz Article
• Conversation Marketing Article

Have something to say on this subject?  Leave a comment below, we’d love to hear from you.