The stuff is just that — some interesting stuff I have been saving to post on, and haven’t had time to blog much lately. I should probably do a link blog, to make it easier to publish these links. Maybe later this summer when I have a minute to breathe.
From Shel Holtz, two posts about RSS: a plain English guide to RSS and RS huh?
A guest post on Pro-Blogger by Toby Bloomberg on how blogs must earn their keep. (And an aside, it was great to meet Toby and a bunch of other folk at the marketing wonk after yesterday’s AMA blog seminar in Boston)
The question is about SEO techniques. I am revamping two, possibly three client websites (cross fingers), to make them SELL not just TELL, and I am curious about some SEO "things." I am NOT an SEO expert and my clients know that. But I have had a lot of online marketing experience, which does qualify me to some degree to know what’s what. So here’s my question:
I believe that a well written website that sells not tells should do well in search engines. Yes, you should make the effort to understand the right keywords to incorporate in the copy, and there is no harm in submitting to the engines and the like, but that done: If your website sells your products AND you have a robust marketing program that drives qualified prospects to your site, what happens with the engines is additive, not the baseline of your marketing success. Agree? Disagree? What am I missing? Bob Bly had a related question on his blog not long ago, but I don’t know that we reached closure 🙂 .
Toby says
Thanks for the mention. Susan one of the highlights of the day was meeting you at the wonk!
J H Shewmaker says
The question in your final paragraph is largely philosophical rather than practical.
Some clients are not satisfied with viewing the conversions which result from SE visitors as purely additive. Some companies feel that the whole purpose of a website is to reach markets which only result from search engine discoveries.
Let me paraphrase your question:
If your Retail outlet sells your products AND you have a robust marketing program that drives qualified prospects to your Retail outlet, what happens with the YELLOW PAGE AD is additive, not the baseline of your marketing success Agree? Disagree?
I think a lot of retail companies rely very heavily on their Yellow Page ad, don’t you?
Isn’t there a parallel for the company that relies on Search Engines?
Susan Getgood says
Thanks for the comment.
So perhaps the issue is different for B2B than B2C. Most of my clients are B2B. In B2B, the yellow pages were never terribly useful whereas I agree that yellow pages, and by extension in your example, search engines, can be terribly useful to the consumer. Hence search engines may be a prime source of leads for B2C. But even here I sense a difference — I think perhaps most useful to service companies (pizza parlors, taxicabs, accountants) than to product companies (clothing, auto etc.)
If I want a pizza in a new town, I’d go to the yellow pages (and now maybe a local search engine), and search “pizza.” If I am looking for jeans, I am (I think) equally likely to search for the specific (Gap) than the generic (jeans). What led me to search for specific? Previous experience, advertising, other marketing efforts by Gap, etc.
J H Shewmaker says
It was after midnight when I wrote that last comment and I am afraid that I expressed myself poorly.
What I was trying to say is that each market and each industry is different and that those of us who design for businesses should not approach a new client (especially in an industry that is also new to us) with a philosophy of private political correctness.
I have become more and more convinced that even though many of my prospects hate it and even though I lose deals over it that DISCOVERY is one of the most important phases of any freelance marketing project. It is important to discover the reality of our client’s market. This includes not only asking questions about the client’s past but also about the client’s competition’s past.
If everyone in a given market is getting over 70% of their conversions from seller initiated efforts then I would agree with the premise of your post. But if you should discover that a viable player in your client’s market is getting over 30% of his (or her) conversion’s from buyer initiated efforts then I believe that the premise of your post fails.
Why is the Washington DC media market inundated with ads from industry giants prior to a bill involving plant closings or the signing of a major defense purchase contract? Because “the ball” is no longer in the seller’s “court!”
Any time that any company realizes that they no longer control the ball and that they are dependant on either visibility or discovery for maintaining their market share in their playground – Website Traffic strategy becomes extremely important.
Notice that I said Website Traffic Strategy. I do believe that SEO has become disproportionately inflated. There are other tactics both for new traffic strategies and traffic retention strategies that should be getting more Press than they are getting.
My blog at Qwerty.us/blog/ sometimes deals with these topics.
Susan Getgood says
I suspect we are more in agreement than we realize. I don’t actually have tremendously strong feelings pro or anti search engines. I do however think that too much emphasis is being placed on search engine optimization *techniques* and not enough on writing good websites that sell. If you DO write a good website that sells, and do what you can to get your prospects there and to take an action, that is more valuable than focusing all your efforts on being first in search results. I would far rather my clients’ prospects type THEIR NAMES into the search engine as a result of the things we have done to build brand awareness than that they type in a generic search term. Even if we also come up first 🙂
Bruce DeBoer says
Susan – I’m in the same camp as you. I’m currently entertaining a prospect who called me about SEO. They owned a mediocre Web site in every respect but were willing to spend thousands a month to get that site to the first page of organic searches.
I’m trying to get them to examine their budget and decide if spending $30,000 per year on SEO is worth it. My feeling is they’d be better off building a quantity of high quality content, exchanging links where it makes sense and building a Web site that causes prospects to interact with their company. There often seems to be a panic about SEO that I think is caused – in part – by SEO companies.
J. H. Shewmaker says
July 2 posting on my blog cites this posting. Link is http://qwerty.us/blog/2005/07/discovery-is-not-dirty-word.htm