Two Ways To Justify SEO In Uncertain Times

During uncertain economic times like these, our advice is to always stick with the fundamentals to maintain business efficiency and progress. No matter what your business model, performing the fundamentals will keep you on-track and in-line for leveraging future success.

If the C-level executives in your company are having any doubts about the value of SEO and are hesitating to release more funding, it’s time to perform a cost-benefit exercise. It’s your job as an in-house SEO manager to reestablish their confidence in the value of SEO as well as your value and the value of your team.

When funding gets in the way, having a narrow focus, putting it on the table, and describing company goals you are committed to are all very important.

1) Leverage Your Paid Search Data

To demonstrate implicit value for SEO, start with a baseline. Show where your key terms currently rank in organic and multiply by the cost-per-click value. Run the numbers for the value of direct clicks with high search intent.

One way to go about this is to calculate an Effective Cost-Per-Click (eCPC) for your organic listings:

1. Access the Keyword Tool within your Google AdWords account.
2. Type your best performing (for instance, 20) keywords.
3. Select descriptive words or phrases and synonyms.
4. Click Get Keyword Ideas.

This will produce a report; select Exact within the “Match Type” field and click on Approx Avg Search Volume.

1. Look at the Cost-Per-Click column to acquire the CPC value (let’s assume it’s $2.00).
2. Go to your web analytics data and identify the number of organic clicks for these keywords (let’s assume 20,000/month).
3. Multiply the two (CPC times the number of organic clicks (in this case $40,000/mo)).
4. Create a spreadsheet with your best performing keywords and make the statement, “if we paid for this organic traffic it would cost us $40,000 per month. This is your SEO eCPC.

Our internal research tells us that about 56% of search engine users are clicking on the top four organic listings while about 15% of users are clicking on the paid ads. This means you will also stand to benefit from additional traffic when your organic listings for targeted keywords are in the top four vs. poor organic performance.

2) Leverage Your Content And Social Network

Most businesspeople acknowledge a competent SEO strategy is mandatory to be competitive in today’s online marketplace. A long list of studies we’ve collected over the years attest to this. For instance:

• Search has the lowest cost-per-lead of any marketing strategy (Piper-Jaffray PowerPoint presentation)
• Search marketing is cost-effective in terms of conversions and ROI (Marketing Sherpa)
• Not only does search traffic drive offline sales (Yahoo!), organic traffic yields more conversions (Marketing Sherpa)
• 60% of searchers click on an organic link over a sponsored link (iProspect & Jupiter Research)
• Organic clicks outnumber PPC clicks by 5:1 (Marketing Sherpa)

Most recently, we are seeing third-party surveys record ranges between 56% and 70% of Internet users begin a shopping quest on a search engine before buying a product or service. According to Nielsen/NetRatings, there are 157 million active Internet users in the U.S., and 127 million of them are active search engine users. Let’s spare any more numbers; it’s easy to show your C-level execs that they can’t afford to miss all the potential opportunities with organic links.

Now that we have Google universal search with its demand for the indexing and ranking of vertical content (blogs, video, news, images and products), and all the user-generated content from social computing and networking, search engines are gathering new sources of traffic. So you must continue by optimizing your blogs, press releases, videos, images, and all the content creation that’s relevant for your business and consumers.

Explain to your C-level management that while you are doing this and creating secondary sources of traffic, you are also increasing your visibility in the SERPs. This in itself is cost effective. In addition, you can economize by consolidating your optimization tactics through implementing best practices across all of your content channels (blogs, video, news, images and products).

Conclusion

While the global economic crisis is preying on the minds of both companies and consumers, SEO is a top-performing marketing tactic that has a history of producing large dividends. It’s time to stand behind your SEO strategy so it continues to perform during periods of consumer belt-tightening and waning consumer confidence.

Enhance In-House Search Thru Offline Media

Thegood news: eMarketer projects 17.4 percent growth in US internet ad spending this year compared to last year. The bad news: the amount estimated to be spent this year was downgraded by a billion dollars ($24.9B vs. $25.9B). Should we be worried? Not really, because internet ad spending will likely continue to grow at the expense of traditional media. Still, it’s always wise for in-house SEO/SEM teams to strengthen their marketing efforts.

Previously, I wrote about the importance of in-house teams utilizing all relevant search marketing tactics for maximum ROI (see “Total Search Marketing,” Part 1 and Part 2). This month, I’ll cover the importance of using offline media to enhance the effectiveness of your in-house search efforts.

I’m sure everyone is aware of the ubiquity of URLs on TV, billboards, print, radio, direct mail, etc. But did you ever stop to think how these offline ads influence online search behavior?

The Influence Of Offline Marketing On Search Behavior

A 2007 iProspect survey revealed 67 percent of search engine users were influenced to conduct a query on a search engine in the previous six months as a direct result of exposure to offline marketing. Of that 67 percent, 39 percent ended up buying a product or service from the company that brought about the original search with its offline ad.

Increased conversions are a pretty powerful statistic. But it’s not the only reason to use offline media to enhance your online search campaigns. It costs less to process a transaction online than to process it in-store or by phone or mail. The more your offline efforts drive consumers to search and convert online, the better your company’s bottomline.

Are marketers getting this? Not really. A new iProspect report conducted by JupiterResearch (now owned by Forrester) shows that only 55 percent of search engine marketers are integrating their search marketing efforts with offline channels. Maybe the other 45 percent just don’t realize the power of offline ads to drive consumers online and sometimes convert.

There can be a number of reasons for failing to integrate online and offline marketing, such as not enough budget and not enough human resources. A lack of senior management buy-in is also a factor, as well as the fact that separate groups manage search marketing and offline marketing efforts.

Integrating Offline With Online Marketing

Most companies that have in-house SEO/SEM teams will also conduct traditional marketing campaigns. But how often are the online and offline campaigns integrated? This requires close coordination. For instance, you need to coordinate the keywords, messaging and calls-to-action within your offline campaigns to match the keywords, messaging, and calls-to-action that you find most profitable within your SEO/SEM campaigns. This kind of integration technique can produce more conversions and better marketing ROI for all campaigns.

Many companies find this a difficult endeavor, especially the way online and offline marketing teams are siloed and each team has its own specialized marketing tactics. The one advantage the online team has is the availability of data that can be used to show the offline team how they’ve optimized their messaging to maximize ROI. That’s a task your in-house SEO/SEM teams can undertake to gain buy-in for the marketing integration process.

Planned Coordination

It’s important to plan ahead with any kind of marketing, and more so when you’re coordinating your offline and online marketing efforts. Usually, the URL is what counts in offline marketing, because the consumer has to remember this to use it online. Get creative, help trigger memories that relate to your brand and non-brand terms. If consumers hear your ad on the radio, they can’t just reach over and type it on their mobile right away. They’ll do it later when convenient and input what they remember. This is how branded terms can help.

By working basic keywords related to your campaign into your offline ad URL, you could help strengthen your marketing campaigns in other channels. For instance, a hypothetical radio campaign for American Express with a URL like “myamericanexpressrewards.com” is too long to remember. However, “American Express” and “rewards” are two fairly memorable terms. You can optimize and buy these keywords and link them to your offline campaign landing page. This should improve the results of your radio ad and likely drive conversions on your site.

That’s just one example with a radio ad, but the same principle applies to TV, billboards and many other offline channels. Use the ubiquity of URLs in the environment to enhance both your online digital and offline traditional campaigns.

Total Search Marketing, Part 2

In the first installment of this series, Total Search Marketing, Part 1, I wrote about the eConsultancy research showing that natural search (SEO) was the most frequently used online marketing tactic for lead generation. Yet, most marketers put the bulk of their search marketing budget into paid search. Many of these marketers felt their company wasn’t exploiting search marketing as effectively as it could be.

Because it’s important for in-house search teams to be effective in all search tactics, we emphasized the need for “total search marketing,” covering organic natural search, paid search advertising, paid inclusion, international search, local search, vertical search, social search, mobile search, universal search and search personalization. We discussed the first five tactics in Part 1. Below are some tips for exploiting vertical search, social media optimization, mobile search, universal search, and personalized search. Your in-house team should be proficient in these tactics to extend your online reach, generating more traffic and conversions.

Vertical search engines

Business users who need industry-specific information, as well as shoppers and consumers seeking information on niche topics, are increasingly using vertical search engines. You may recall the 2006 Outsell study reported a 31.9 percent failure rate among business users on general search engines. Jupiter also did a study showing 41.2 percent of professionals found irrelevant search results on general search engines. Since then, vertical search has been on the rise, so it pays to get a listing or advertise on B2B vertical search engines like Business.com, depending on your industry and site goals.

Check out audience demographics to see which verticals might be of value for your business. Selecting the right vehicle for vertical search advertising is key to success. It’s important to inquire about the engine’s user base and income level, bid management tools, and click fraud protection policy. Potential verticals should also be tested for ROI before committing large sums of money. Below are some of the advantages of advertising on vertical search engines:

• Lower per-click costs than Google, Yahoo and Microsoft
• Less competition for competitive keywords
• Easy to test ad copy and suitability for your business
• It can provide an additional source of traffic and conversions
• Because they’re smaller, you’ll get personalized customer service
• Because they serve a niche audience, you’ll reach highly-targeted audiences

Social media optimization (SMO)

In its simpliest form, SMO is the process of driving traffic to your site from social networking sites and online communities. By leveraging large social news sites with millions of users, you can make your story popular enough to be noticed by hundreds, or even thousands, of bloggers looking for such content as fodder for their own site.

Social media optimization can drive huge amounts of traffic to a site, making it possible for your site and ideas to be noticed. You’ll be driving traffic through new channels because search engines are no longer the only way to drive traffic. From an SEO perspective, your objective is to create hot content that will spread virally and naturally collect links. The top social news sites include Digg, Mixx, Newsvine, and Reddit, to name a few. Tips: Post hot content on your blog, make tagging easy, reward linking, and participate on related blogs.

Mobile search marketing

By 2009, over 95 percent of the US population will have a mobile phone, and there will be more mobile phones than PCs. As smartphones proliferate, it’s important to develop and optimize a separate site for the mobile screen. Don’t transcode your wired site into mobile because it won’t provide the user experience needed for the small screen. Tips for creating your mobile site:

Design: Place navigation buttons below important content, displaying content above the fold while making nav buttons visible to users. Put text links on top for main navigation. Provide a site map. Keep important inner pages within three clicks of the homepage.

Coding: Write correct code in XHTML, avoiding unnecessary code. Use external CSS and ensure correct display across multiple devices. File names should be short and keyword-rich.

Mobile SEO: Traditional SEO best practices with targeted keyword copy, meta tags and links to accommodate the small screen. Keep in mind that mobile queries are shorter when selecting keywords. Avoid pop-ups, frames, and Flash. Solicit links from relevant mobile sites. Go easy on embedded objects (images, scripts) as they don’t download well. Test across devices and validate your mobile site with mobile code checkers. Submit to mobile search engines.

Universal search

Universal search rankings are advantageous because you can get more visibility by creating and optimizing content in multiple formats resulting in multiple search listings. Below are some suggested formats you can use to create and submit content for increased visibility.

Google Blog Search: Communicate with your customers and stakeholders through your blog. Tag your posts and submit to Google Blog search.

Google Image Search: Create and optimize relevant images on your site to demonstrate products and services. Optimize images with descriptive, keyword-rich file names and ALT tags, using accurate descriptions.

Google Video: Create and optimize relevant video content using descriptive, keyword-rich file names, title tags, description tags, and a video site map. Create a web page to launch your video, optimizing content for organic rankings, using anchor text wherever possible. Submit to video search engines, directories, and video sharing sites.

Google Maps: Give your site a local presence through the Google Maps Local Business Center where you can get a free basic listing and increased visibility in the SERPs.

Search personalization

The impact of user-generated content in search results has increased since the advent of Web 2.0. Google introduced personalized search, using information from users’ location, search history, bookmarks, personalized Google homepage, and Google services to personalize search results for Google account holders. Personalized search results are more relevant because Google infers intent by looking at previous behavior, eliminating much of the information that makes general search results irrelevant.

Search personalization creates an opportunity for you to gain rankings by optimizing for long-tail keywords. Personalization also minimizes the importance of ranking reports. It’s more useful to rely on relevant metrics rather than on keyword rankings. Web analytics can provide more granular information for optimizing a search marketing campaign, and your site can gain insight by setting up a dashboard of key performance indicators (KPIs). You can then track performance to improve your search rankings, web site performance, and ROI.

Conclusion

Taking advantage of online lead generation is important for many businesses. Don’t be among those who fail to exploit this marketing tactic. Ensure that your in-house search team is knowledgeable in and takes full advantage of all the SEO, SMO, and PPC tactics covered in Part 1 and 2 of “total search marketing.”

How To Structure An In-House SEO Team

Why are businesses so persistent about handling search in-house? There are many good reasons for centralizing both natural and paid search in a large organization. We’ll be talking about natural search in this article. Web site optimization for natural search visibility, commonly referred to as SEO, touches every aspect of your site and organization, with people involved at every level. Therefore, the coordination required makes it easier to handle in-house.

A fast-moving target like natural search exists in a dynamically changing environment and can challenge even those who have been managing search for more than a decade. Here are some tips that can enable your in-house teams to achieve better performance.

Need for diverse resources

In my own experience dealing with large Web sites (100,000+ SKUs and 70+ servers), the best way to go about natural search is to acquire ongoing expert training for your internal search team. Hire an expert who specializes in natural search training to coach your in-house natural search team so you and your team can continue ramping up for quick wins.

It is critical to infuse external influences to enlighten, educate, and influence the team, opening their eyes to entirely new strategies, and not just the well-known current SEO tactics.

Make sure your expert is willing to hook you up with all of his or her network of consultants. Every project I have worked on required external influences and expertise beyond my own capabilities. No single expert can answer all of your questions and fulfill all of your needs in a space as broad and deep as natural search—it will be a collaborative and community effort.

Every industry requires training to keep up-to-date on the latest tools, techniques, strategies, and tactics. In the search realm, if you’re not engaged with learning something new at least once or twice a month from specialists willing to come in-house to share their expertise, it will be very difficult to maintain momentum. Every in-house search manager I’ve met admits to the need for ongoing training. An expert can get you started, and once your team is trained, you can use a small retainer for ongoing advice and consulting. The money will be well spent as you get to know and work with a network of people who have refined natural search over years of testing.

Getting started

First things first; everything should point to your business goals. These goals should encompass more than just marketing objectives, since natural search can be leveraged to influence many different aspects of your business. Tracking, measuring, and reporting on the progress of key performance indicators (KPIs) is paramount for benchmarking and driving growth. One crucial step in defining success is segregating brand and non-brand keyword traffic. While both types of traffic are driven by natural search, they are influenced by entirely different marketing strategies and serve different purposes.

Once business goals and KPIs are established, you should move forward with a Needs Assessment Report (NAR) for both paid and natural search. This will identify strengths and weaknesses and help you make critical path decisions for building a team within your company. I could write a whole series of articles on the NAR itself. It represents your anchor point for all future needs, training objectives, priorities, action plans, and accountability.

Team setup or reconfiguration

Look for quick learners who are detail oriented and have a high tolerance for day-to-day change. People with an affinity for solving complex puzzles, multitasking, and experimenting with different solutions also make good candidates.

Assign one person to be in charge of natural search. This person must be knowledgeable of your overall site architecture, have a good handle on total business goals, and understand the infrastructure of various departments within your organization. Preferably, this will be someone who would make a good firefighter—cool, calm, collected, and an excellent communicator. From this position, a reliable team can be built using existing resources from NOC (network operations center), development, copywriting, marketing, graphic design and brand managers, public relations firms, and/or other third-party agencies.

IT vs. Marketing

One of the reasons turf battles exist between IT and marketing is that IT personnel must deal with the regular accoutrement of existing and historical hacks; therefore, taking ownership of the site as “their baby.” They don’t want marketing telling them to do more stuff. Marketing, on the other hand, does its best to get the upper hand on changes, updates, offers, and messaging.

The role of in-house coach

When natural search gets in the middle, requiring technical and editorial changes—look out. IT wants a complete explanation of why a change is necessary, and marketing wants to know what’s in it for them.

The in-house expert and coach you hire will smooth things over by helping the in-house natural search manager prepare detailed answers for both sides prior to making any recommendations. Often, this process revolves around the NAR (Needs Assessment Report) and a natural search diagnostic audit. Executive buy-in is also key in stemming departmental turf wars. A clear directive coming from the top, making natural search an organizational priority, is often required to get everyone on the same page.

Stay tuned for the next article, where we’ll cover the NAR basics, providing access to an example SEO wiki. Meanwhile, for another great look in-house SEO, see Laying the Foundation for In-House SEO Success in Large Organizations, by Melanie Mitchell, vice president of SEO/SEM at AOL.

In House Managing In-House SEO For 17,000 Domains

All complex systems can be broken down into manageable components or modules. SEO is no different; whether you have 17,000 domains or 10,000,000 product SKUs, the system for managing this load is always the same.

A complex system doesn’t necessarily mean it’s based purely in technology. Microsoft, Cisco, AOL, Oracle, and HP are all examples of complex systems wherein people manage numerous components or modules. National magazine publishers and state fire departments are also examples of managing complex situations through a central system. According to Wikipedia, a complex system is any system of interconnected parts, which exhibits one or more properties that are not obvious from the properties of the individual parts.

Complex systems are studied in natural science, mathematics, and social science. Fields of specialization include systems theory, complexity theory, systems ecology, and cybernetics.

We have developed complex system models in many different disciplines for efficient decision-making. In general, all complex systems can be divided into five main categories, and each manager can handle up to five categories at one time. We won’t go into the whys and wherefores, or even try to justify this statement; it’s a universal truth in management systems.

In-house SEO for 17,000+ domains

We were recently approached by a company interested in building an in-house team to manage SEO for 17,000+ domain names. The company’s primary goal was to acquire great natural-search results for all 17,000+ domains.

As with every other SEO project big or small, we use what I like to call the “hub and spoke” model.

The hub and spoke model integrates all of the information and functionality into the central hub and pushes adjunct functionality off into separate spokes for occasional use. For example, an SEO needs assessment report displays a critical path with priorities as its main hub, allowing the managers within the company to create and remove priorities directly from the hub itself.

If you’re confused, you’re probably not alone, but envision this: at the end of the day, your system should resemble a small number of connected wheels, where each hub integrates most of the content, and the spokes enable completion of ancillary SEO tasks.

Let’s just say the hub and spoke model works. So, what’s next?

Collaboration

Once you understand the value of having a system in place for managing complex situations, data, and distribution, you must collaborate effectively with the various hubs inside and outside of your organization.

This is where your personality as an in-house SEO manager comes into play. Making SEO fun for those around you will ensure success. People want ‘relevant’ and ’simple’ as their mantra during their day-to-day work environment, and SEO is a day-to-day working system within just about every seat in your company.

In a nutshell, how do you manage 17,000+ domains for in-house SEO? First, get top-down company-wide buy-in for SEO. Next, create SEO best practices documents for each division within your company and distribute these documents to key stakeholders within each division. Voilà! In-house SEO becomes a hub and spoke environment, wherein each person involved has transparent access to the SEO requirements relevant to their position and department. Questions, anyone? Don’t hesitate to contact me for more details.

Managing In-House SEO For 17,000 Domains

All complex systems can be broken down into manageable components or modules. SEO is no different; whether you have 17,000 domains or 10,000,000 product SKUs, the system for managing this load is always the same.

A complex system doesn’t necessarily mean it’s based purely in technology. Microsoft, Cisco, AOL, Oracle, and HP are all examples of complex systems wherein people manage numerous components or modules. National magazine publishers and state fire departments are also examples of managing complex situations through a central system. According to Wikipedia, a complex system is any system of interconnected parts, which exhibits one or more properties that are not obvious from the properties of the individual parts.

Complex systems are studied in natural science, mathematics, and social science. Fields of specialization include systems theory, complexity theory, systems ecology, and cybernetics.

We have developed complex system models in many different disciplines for efficient decision-making. In general, all complex systems can be divided into five main categories, and each manager can handle up to five categories at one time. We won’t go into the whys and wherefores, or even try to justify this statement; it’s a universal truth in management systems.

In-house SEO for 17,000+ domains

We were recently approached by a company interested in building an in-house team to manage SEO for 17,000+ domain names. The company’s primary goal was to acquire great natural-search results for all 17,000+ domains.

As with every other SEO project big or small, we use what I like to call the “hub and spoke” model.

The hub and spoke model integrates all of the information and functionality into the central hub and pushes adjunct functionality off into separate spokes for occasional use. For example, an SEO needs assessment report displays a critical path with priorities as its main hub, allowing the managers within the company to create and remove priorities directly from the hub itself.

If you’re confused, you’re probably not alone, but envision this: at the end of the day, your system should resemble a small number of connected wheels, where each hub integrates most of the content, and the spokes enable completion of ancillary SEO tasks.

Let’s just say the hub and spoke model works. So, what’s next?

Collaboration

Once you understand the value of having a system in place for managing complex situations, data, and distribution, you must collaborate effectively with the various hubs inside and outside of your organization.

This is where your personality as an in-house SEO manager comes into play. Making SEO fun for those around you will ensure success. People want ‘relevant’ and ’simple’ as their mantra during their day-to-day work environment, and SEO is a day-to-day working system within just about every seat in your company.

In a nutshell, how do you manage 17,000+ domains for in-house SEO? First, get top-down company-wide buy-in for SEO. Next, create SEO best practices documents for each division within your company and distribute these documents to key stakeholders within each division. Voilà! In-house SEO becomes a hub and spoke environment, wherein each person involved has transparent access to the SEO requirements relevant to their position and department. Questions, anyone? Don’t hesitate to contact me for more details.

Developing In-House SEO Functionality

My last Search Engine Land post, In-house SEO Functionality resonated with many in-house SEOs. “Eletitor” commented on the necessity of getting the entire management team on board for in-house SEO success. Kevin Cheng mentioned the need for preparations prior to hiring any in-house SEO, as well as the bureaucratic red tape that can hinder its progress. I’d like to further elaborate on these issues, as they certainly must be dealt with to achieve optimum in-house SEO functionality.

The SEO’s vital role in internet marketing

Most companies realize the importance of SEO to their Internet marketing strategy. While SEMPO’s State of Search Marketing 2007 tells us SEO is still a small percentage of the search dollars spent (10.5%) compared to PPC advertising (87.4%), it is more important than ever, as shown in the data.

* Nine out of ten advertisers (89%) use SEO
* Over half (56%) said they expect to spend more on SEO in 2008 vs. last year
* 54% of advertisers will manage natural search entirely in-house this year

When it comes to in-house SEO, it’s important to get the program working right to achieve the best possible results. Attaining in-house SEO functionality is a complex process that takes time; not only that, progress is dynamic and planar rather than static and linear.

1. Get the management team on board

To develop SEO successfully in-house, the entire management team must be involved and in agreement. One way to do this is to show people the research behind the facts. SEO is the most popular search tactic, hands down. Here’s some ammunition for getting non-believers on board for SEO success.

a) Start off with the most recent SEMPO data showing 89% of advertisers use SEO. An earlier report (Ad Age 2007 Fact Pack) shows organic SEO was the most popular form of search marketing: 75% of advertisers used SEO, while 71% used paid search. With over half of North American advertisers increasing spending on SEO this year, marketers realize the tremendous power of SEO to generate and increase conversions and provide excellent ROI. Not only that, when you combine SEO with paid search or display ads, you may get a lift.

b) SEO is the mainstay for Internet marketing. Why? Perhaps because SEO links are preferred over sponsored links. B2B users clicked on organic results 75% of the time (Marketing to a B2B Technical Buyer, Enquiro, 2007).

c) Search gives you brand lift. A Google-commissioned study found significant correlation between companies in the top organic/sponsored links and lift in consumer brand affinity, brand recall, and purchase intent (The Brand Lift of Search, Enquiro, 2007).

d) SEO and paid search are top tactics for lead generation. Organic search led the way in lead generating tactics for UK firms (78%), with paid search and email coming in second (72%) in a study performed by E-consultancy.com and commissioned by Clash Media, 2007.

2. Prepare prior to hiring the in-house SEO manager

Challenges and departmental turfs should be explained so the new SEO manager knows what battles he or she may be facing. This kind of preparation can help anticipate cooperation or resistance when determining what assets will be useful from various departments.

a) Announce hiring of the new SEO manager beforehand.

b) Publish the accomplishments of the new SEO manager so he or she will be well received.

c) Arrange for the new SEO manager to meet with various departments beforehand to gain perspective on how SEO can enhance various departmental objectives.

SEO might be a part of marketing, or it can be a department of its own. At any rate, a new SEO manager must leverage any enthusiasm to build the types of lasting relationships with other departments that will serve well in implementing vital changes in site structure and content. Get this buy-in from the very start.

3. Eliminate red tape

Kevin Cheng made a point regarding the role of bureaucratic red tape that can hinder SEO progress. How do you eliminate the red tape to execute needed changes? Again, the answer is early education and pre-selling ideas to stakeholders.

Upper management must have a clear picture of how SEO can help the company achieve its goals and why SEO trumps all other Internet marketing tactics. The SEO manager must identify potential roadblocks and get upper management to support him or her when there’s resistance.

Hire an SEO consultant to work with your SEO manager to get the team started in the right direction. With top management backing you up, you can implement the changes and track progress toward achieving goals.

a) Start with small projects and the low-hanging fruit, working up to more complex projects after recording a few successes.

b) Top management must give the SEO manager the authority to get changes made, tracked, and then reported on as progress is made.

c) The SEO manager should sit in on meetings in various departments to be aware of customer needs and product trends.

d) Provide the SEO manager with access to analytics reports for site assessment and to identify areas for improvement.

Basically, the new SEO manager needs to win hearts and minds over to the overarching SEO philosophy while getting to know the company and its short- and long-term planning goals, as these factors must be taken into consideration in planning the SEO strategy.

Success is the result of communication between management and the SEO manager on overall business goals and long-term company planning. Knowing the business goals, the SEO manager can develop a useful plan and strategy. This is critical because SEO executions will require consistent reporting progress to prove positive direction on a day-by-day basis.

Linking Prowess For In-House Teams

Linking is still de rigueur when optimizing for Google and all major engines. Linking strategies have run the gauntlet, from simple link exchange requests to buying links. For a good review of current best practices in linking tactics, I refer you to The Link Spiel by Debra Mastaler and “11 Experts on Link Development Speak Out” from Sugarrae.

While linking is a critical component of your in-house SEO tactical plan, it is also important to be careful in selecting the sites you link to. If you link to a site that’s totally unrelated to your own, search engines will become confused about your link neighborhood.

Defining link neighborhoods

A link neighborhood is a collection of like-minded or like-themed sites on the web. It could be a group of sites focused on niche areas like auto racing, women’s health issues, or sports, each linked to other like-minded, complementary sites. For instance, the graphic below shows some link neighborhoods that could represent a number of sports hubs on baseball, basketball, boxing, football, hockey, skiing, surfing, tennis, volleyball, etc. The best strategy is to focus on getting links in your own neighborhood.

What is a bad link neighborhood?

Broadly speaking, a bad neighborhood is a network of sites with a number of penalized or banned participants. These networks might also link to sites involved in hosting spyware, malware, offensive material, and/or illegal activities like phishing.

If you link to a bad neighborhood, this can categorize your site as part of the network, thereby damaging your theme and ranking strength.

Dangers of bad neighborhoods

Sometimes sites will get into a bad link neighborhood by linking to sites or pages whose only purpose is to exchange links for high search rankings, regardless of any relevance to the sites the links point to. Such sites will accept and accumulate links from anywhere, no matter what the topics of the linking sites might be.

If you are ever promised a link to a page contingent to your returning a reciprocal link, disregard the offer unless you verify the source is authentic and relevant to your site’s theme because it could be from one of these bad neighborhood sites.

Google’s take on bad neighborhoods

Google does not approve of the following types of web sites; thus, linking to these sites will have a negative effect on your Google rankings.

• Free for all (FFA) links pages
• Link farms (automatic linking with multiple unrelated links)
• Known spammers

General guidelines on bad link neighborhoods

Search engine personnel have posted on forums from time to time regarding linking and bad neighborhood penalties. Below is a recap of what has been documented in the past.

Bad neighborhood linking patterns: Search engines look for linking patterns and do not generally penalize a site for one or two accidental “bad links.” Search algorithms are focused on looking for patterns of egregious linking behavior on individual sites and collectively. One way they do this is to monitor the rate of acquisition of links to a site. The addition of too many links too fast can be an indicator of “unnatural” link buying activity, potentially jeopardizing a site’s rankings. Search engines also look at the rate of removal of incoming links to a site. Too many sites doing this simultaneously call for closer scrutiny.

Shared IP Addresses: The affiliations between a linking site and the linked-to site are inspected by some search engines. If two sites share an IP address or have a common postal address on the “contact us” page, the link is ignored at best, or can result in penalties.

Auditing outgoing links: Broken outgoing links that are not promptly taken care of are also noticed and can harm rankings. It’s a good idea to regularly audit your outgoing links to ensure you’re not sending visitors to inappropriate or 404 pages.

Outbound links and Google’s supplemental index: Despite much speculation to the contrary, Google personnel insist it is unlikely that a site’s outbound linking is the cause of its pages being listed in the supplemental index.

Best practices for buying links

Buying links remains a controversial tactic. However, many sites continue to buy links and feel it is safe. If you decide to use paid links, be aware of the following best practices:

• Your site and the sites linking to you must have some relevance to each another.
• Ranking benefits can increase in a matter of hours or days once relevant links are in place.
• Ranking benefits can also decrease in a matter of hours or days upon removal of those links.
• Direct URL links purchased from highly ranked, relevant sites may deliver click-through traffic in addition to search ranking benefits.
• While JavaScript or other script + database links are useful for providing click-through traffic, they do not increase search rankings. Only direct URL linking are proven to increase search engine rankings.

A linking mantra

Links, paid or otherwise, are necessary for decent search engine rankings. Use the following mantra when developing an in-house linking strategy: My link sources must be relevant, consistent, reputable, and from the right link neighborhood.

Lessons Learned As An In-House SEO Consultant

Jessica Bowman’s article in the Winter issue of Search Marketing Standard, “Bringing SEO In-House,” defines the In-House SEO Life Cycle as: Courtship, Honeymoon, Reality, and Synergy phases. In the courtship phase you recruit the best in-house SEO possible. When the honeymoon is over, reality sets in. That’s when you have a chance to develop synergy. She also suggests two different options for your in-house search marketing team: All In-House or Hybrid Outsourcing.

Based on our experience at Red Door Interactive, there usually seems to be a certain amount of outsourcing by in-house teams, even though the company does SEO in-house. We’ve consulted with companies about the in-house SEO conundrum for years now and find that Bowman’s Hybrid Outsourcing model works well for conducting SEO in-house and typically yields remarkable results. That’s because there are many experts in the field who can make problem solving much quicker and easier, allowing in-house teams to accomplish their SEO campaign goals faster and better.

Hiring SEO staff

When it comes to staffing for conducting SEO in-house, the obvious choices are either train existing employees to do the job or build a new staff, preferably with at least one person who has a few years’ SEO experience and maybe a couple of others with the aptitude and desire.

The scarcity of well trained SEO technicians is documented as early as 2000, when research started to show that experienced SEO personnel were hard to come by. More recently, MarketingSherpa’s 2008 Search Marketing Benchmark Guide reported one-third of the marketers in its survey said it is “very difficult” to attract qualified SEO technicians.

This same study shows approximately two-thirds of American firms perform search marketing in-house. Many of these firms outsource a part of their efforts because of the difficulty of finding qualified SEO technicians. Jupiter Research shows 63 percent of large search marketers outsource at least one SEM function to agencies (reported by SEMPO).

Proliferation of SEO/SEM training

In the meantime, the SEO/SEM training field has mushroomed over the past year or so. There are now training sessions at Search Marketing conferences, SEMPO Institute, DMA SEM training, as well as Google and Yahoo! PPC training. Savvy companies started hiring SEO/PPC consultants a couple years ago, and their search departments are now ahead of the curve.

Brands must be proactive

It’s important for brands to have access to expert SEO/SEM consultants as there are far too many SEO issues that can arise unexpectedly. In addition, the frequency and multitude of changes within the search engines themselves requires fast adaptation by specialized search optimization technicians.

Just look at a few of the major changes that transpired over the past year: search personalization, universal or blended search, social media networking and optimization, the rising importance of site reviews and product demos, etc. How can one person or even several within the search department have expertise in all these areas at once when they’re happening one on top of the other?

The continuing changes in user trends or algorithm shifts will keep the staff so busy figuring it out that they can’t concentrate on meeting their campaign goals. The practical answer is to call on various outside consultants and experts within the search community. It’s just too much to handle alone, especially when in-house staffs have additional job responsibilities besides SEO/SEM. Heaven help you if you’ve got a new-hire; it’s going to take three to six months to acclimate to the new job, and doing this in addition to SEO integration is just too ambitious for an in-house SEO team to tackle alone.

Many companies reconcile these facts after several months and end up hiring a consultant to assist the team. Some don’t admit it until a year goes by and have to settle for mediocre results. Competition is increasingly keen, and companies that want to hit it out of the ballpark (highly competitive markets) should seriously adopt Bowman’s Hybrid Outsource model from day one.

Conclusion

The only way to survive in an environment where trends and tactics are changing rapidly is to constantly be informed and quickly learn how to adapt. The best way for in-house search teams to remain nimble is by availing themselves of SEO/SEM expertise through expert consultants within the search community. Lastly, in-house SEO teams will likely find that ideas they have proposed in the past will gain acceptance when an outside consultant researches, supports, and validates the same recommendation.

Is The Time Ripe For Search Marketing Standards?

Over the past ten to twelve years, various SEM practitioners have brought up the need for industry standards. I started asking the question in 1998, and others have brought it up since, but the industry seems to have a laissez faire attitude.

Albeit, we’ve seen some standardization steps taken by the search engines themselves. Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft got together on the Sitemaps protocol, and Google, Ask.com, and Microsoft are now anonymizing log file data. Subsequently, Google called for international privacy standards. The November 2007 FTC public forum on behavioral advertising also focused on privacy concerns. These are all steps toward industry standardization with regard to consumer privacy, an issue search engines must address to maintain public trust. But search engines are not as motivated to establish standards for search engine marketing tactics.

Obstacles to standardization

The legion of search engine marketing practitioners is too fragmented to have a leader calling the shots that others will follow. After years of competing against each other, the white-hat/black-hat divide seems to be gravitating toward white-hat dominance, although there are still some black-hat practitioners in the marketplace. Matt Cutts recently said in his blog, “I was looking over a list of 20+ black-hat SEO companies that I compiled back in 2002. The majority either went out of business or have transformed into white-hat SEO companies.”

The wide variance in range of services provided by SEM firms is another reason why industry standardization is difficult to achieve. We have standalone SEO or PPC providers and firms that provide both SEO and PPC. Then we have the ad agencies with specialized search departments. Many traditional and interactive agencies provide search engine marketing in addition to a bevy of traditional and online marketing services. You can get email marketing, search marketing, banner creative, direct mail, and media buying services from these one-stop shops. By the same token, many of the SEO/PPC firms have expanded their services to include search and other marketing services as well. Part of the reason for the lack of industry standardization is the fact that your typical SEM firm is in no way typical.

Looking beyond the obstacles

Looking beyond these drawbacks, I also see signs that we may be getting ready to establish standards. For one thing, the industry is maturing. In some respects, search is still in its infancy because ongoing changes occur rapidly. But the saturation point is fast approaching in search marketing as growth begins to slow. Search marketing was a $9.4B budget item in 2006 when the SEMPO State of Search Marketing survey reported a 62% growth rate over 2005. SEMPO’s report for 2007 is not out yet, but industry experts believe growth is slowing due to market saturation and maturity.

Another sign of industry maturity is the growth in search marketing training programs. In addition to all of the individual courses and seminars, there are also search training courses in conjunction with search industry conferences like SMX and SES. We have a number of organizations offering certificates of completion for online and offline search marketing courses like the SEMPO Institute Search Engine Marketing courses and the DMA Search Engine Marketing Certification Program. There are even a few universities that offer search engine marketing courses in their curriculum. These advancements also indicate the time is near for establishing common search marketing standards of behavior and techniques.

To understand why little progress has been made over the past decade, below is a brief review of past attempts.

The history

Act 1: In August 1998, Danny Sullivan wrote an article in SearchEngineWatch, “Promoters Call for Certification.” The article stated that principals from four major promotion and design firms had sent an open letter to the major search engines calling for establishment of a certification program for optimization professionals. At the time, Danny said,

“The letter is the first such coordinated move from the Web promotion community ever regarding search engine positioning issues.”

I was among those signing the letter to search engines, asking them to develop an SEO certification program in order to eliminate spammers and other search engine gaming techniques. At issue was the fact that Infoseek, then a popular search engine, had banned pages redirecting to other pages. In those days, optimization techniques depended on the redirects, which were the only way to record visitors and charge for optimization. I thought Infoseek’s ban came about due to the heavy abuse of redirect pages loaded with spam by the adult Web site industry. Reputable SEO firms weren’t interested in spamming with redirects, and the idea of certification seemed like a good remedy for the “Wild West” mentality of the day. However, the letter was politely acknowledged and ignored, except for Danny’s comments.

Act 2: In November 2001, Sullivan wrote “Desperately Seeking Search Marketing Standards,” a review on further attempts to establish search marketing standards. He started by saying every so often there’s a new push for search marketing standards and then cautioned they’ll need lots of luck because “the barriers to establishing standards remain substantial.” He opined that search engines are reluctant to be transparent because overzealous SEOs would likely come up with heretofore unknown spam techniques for favorable rankings.

Sullivan mentioned early efforts by WebSeed to provide a “Search Engine Promotion Code of Ethics” in 2000 (no longer available online) and, of course, Bruce Clay’s “Search Engine Optimization Code of Ethics,” which has been used extensively by search marketers since then. Both documents supported Clay’s position against doorway pages, a controversy then and now.

Sullivan discussed the whitepapers issued against spam, like “The Classification of Search Engine Spam” by Alan Perkins, as well as the disagreements over what constitutes spam. The article reviewed several attempts to begin the dialog on standards, including the efforts of Terry Van Horne’s SEOPros.org, the World Association of Internet Marketers (no longer online), and the heated threads on this topic at WebmasterWorld. All was to no avail.

Act 3: In April 2004, Sullivan wrote, “Spam Rules Require Effective Spam Police.” This article countered Kevin Ryan’s assertion in “Spam, Unprofitable Spam” that the industry has no rules. Sullivan pointed out that the rules are implicit in the Webmaster guidelines posted at Google and Yahoo!.

He discussed the futility of lobbying for standards by saying, “SEM pioneer Paul Bruemmer pushed for search engine optimization certification back in 1998. But as I wrote then, just having a “rule book” doesn’t mean an end to spam. We also had a push in 2001 for search engine marketing standards, which also has gone nowhere in terms of reducing spam in search engines.”

Sullivan suggested that a real solution to the spam problem would be for search engines to publish a list of companies they have banned. While this seems like a good way to help consumers avoid non-reputable SEM firms, the search engines were afraid of possible lawsuits.

He mentioned SEMPO’s reluctance to enforce spam rules for its members, agreeing that it’s not the responsibility of a third-party group to enforce rules they don’t create. Since then, SEMPO has created a Metrics and Standards Task Force with a mission “to develop a set of standards and guidelines specific to search marketing.”

Back then, the only advice Sullivan could give to those seeking standards was to follow search engine guidelines and ensure your vendor does as well if you outsource. He cautioned the engines are good at detecting spam and other non-sanctioned techniques, and while they can’t catch every single instance, it’s not worth the risk of being banned.

Where we stand today

In August 2007, the IAB and DMA in the UK launched a certification program (one that left Danny less than impressed). In January 2008, the IAB announced a successor program, an online best practice resource to “reinforce its commitment to trust, transparency and accountability within the search industry.” The new initiative has the backing of Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft. To be hosted on the IAB UK Web site, the Search Best Practice Resource will provide access to materials promoting an understanding of key search marketing issues and how advertisers can conduct search marketing responsibly.

Complementary to existing material on the site, the new resource will include how-tos on search marketing best practices for basic and advanced techniques. There will be checklists to help advertisers through key steps in the search process, and a section describing basic search engine policies on trademarks, user privacy, and fraudulent or invalid clicks. The resource will be managed and updated through the Search Council, which is leading the project in conjunction with the DMA and other search industry projects aimed at advertising agencies.

While the IAB and DMA have taken some steps to establish search marketing standards, SEMPO states in its FAQs that it is not a standards body or a policing organization:

“Is SEMPO a standards body for the SEM industry? SEMPO is not a standards body or a policing organization. Membership in or involvement with SEMPO is not a guarantee of a particular firm’s capabilities, nor does it signify industry approval or disapproval of their practices.”

SEMPO has a Metrics and Standards Task Force, and we have contacted the committee to see where they stand with respect to search marketing standards. As stated on the committee’s description, “The mission of this task force is to develop a set of standards and guidelines specific to search marketing.”

Call for standards circa 2008

As you can see, the call for search engine marketing standards dates back to 1998, and the industry hasn’t stepped up to the plate yet. Search has grown and become mainstream, but the industry needs to increase its value, authenticity, and integrity by identifying a set of standards to help replace devious SEO techniques that still tarnish our industry.

The lack of SEO standards is one reason why some businesses give this valuable marketing strategy short shrift. While 75% of marketers say they use SEO (MarketingSherpa 2008 Search Marketing Benchmark Guide), they obviously spend more money on PPC (SEMPO State of Search Marketing 2006). Right now, the only thing that marketers can do is obtain a methodology statement from their search agency, read it carefully, and ensure the agency follows search engine guidelines, which are somewhat similar but also vary.

Many search agencies say they’re committed to SEM best practices. But establishing standards will take more than lip service. Real people will have to stick their neck out to get this done. It will take leadership by individuals, by search agencies, and by our industry trade organization. We need search standards to bring more credibility to our trade.