Liberty Interactive - Search Marketing Blog » SEO

Oh No Daddy! GoDaddy Redirects Cause Major SEO Issue, now what?

Liberty Tsighis — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 17:54:15 +0000

If you are a GoDaddy customer you will want to read this.

Part of our weekly SEO routine for clients is to check search engine Webmaster tool accounts, in doing so we usually find something interesting, disturbing or exciting. This week, we noticed that a domain that we permanently redirected to a new one back in December was showing as a top inbound linking site to the domain in which is was supposed to be redirected.

We asked ourselves, “How could this be?” Was the site moved to a new host without our knowledge? Was the domain being redirected properly?

And so our investigation began.

Our Findings:
This client is a GoDaddy customer and back in December we had permanently forwarded the domains in GoDaddy’s Domain Control panel which at that time issued a proper permanent redirect telling the servers and search engines that this was indeed a permanent redirect (otherwise known as a 301 redirect).

Today, when we checked the server headers it said that the redirect was a temporary redirect (otherwise known as a 302 redirect). We went a step further to investigate some of the other domains that also had been setup as permanent redirects in the GoDaddy system. And to our dismay, they are all showing as temporary redirects.

We logged into GoDaddy to make sure the permanent redirect settings were correct for our domains AND…they were.

We then called GoDaddy to understand why the domain settings marked to permanent redirect (301) were showing as a temporary redirect (302) in our third party checking tool.

The GoDaddy tech support person told us that “all of their forwarding now only issues a temporary 302 redirect” and if we wanted “to make it a permanent 301 we would have to do that at the hosting level.” They also could not tell us what type of redirect would be issued if we actually selected temporary redirect as an option or why there are two choices if they both do the same thing.

There are three situations for when you would use redirects:*

If you are launching a new site and switching to a new domain.
If you have deleted, removed, changed or are planning to change web page URLs.
If you have a list of URLs that are derivations or misspellings of your company name/main site domain that you want to forward to your main site.

*Redirects can be configured for site domains and specific web pages/URLs.

There are two types of preferred redirects for these situations:

a) 301 which is for files that have been permanently moved.
b) 302 which is for files that have been temporarily moved.

Why are redirects such a big deal?

In the SEO world, redirects affect everything. A redirect tells servers, search engines and browsers how to handle the domain when someone requests it. If a page is deleted, a site is relaunched, or a page is renamed it is important for both SEO and usability to make sure you have those old pages going to either a new relevant page or appropriate URL.

If URLs/domains are not configured properly you can lose valuable search engine visibility. Keep in mind that people and sites are linking to your content and inbound links are one of the key influencing factors to search engine rankings. Use of 301 redirects should be used to preserve search engine rankings and any inbound links to that particular URL. This way search engines will index the new address instead of keeping the outdated URL. It is the best option to avoid negatively impacting search engine ranking.

The reason you don’t want to use a 302 redirect is this signals to the search engine that the old URL should be maintained in the index as an active URL, it just has been moved for now. This causes none of your new URLs to be indexed.

If a search engine doesn’t know where to go and runs into a dead-end URL/page this can impact your search visibility not to mention your user experience if they follow a link to a URL that no longer exists.

How do I fix my forwarding domains in GoDaddy to be properly configured for permanent redirection?

Note: If you are redirecting a domain, you DON’T want to just switch the DNS to your main site – this will cause a mirrored site and create a duplicate content issue for you. Search engines will not like that and you may get penalized for it by search engines.

The first step is to remove or turn off the forwarding in your GoDaddy domain control panel. Go to Domain Management and find the domain, and go to Forwarding and click on Manage next to it. Edit to turn off.
If the web site you are redirecting to is hosted with GoDaddy, add the domain as an additional domain to the root through the Hosting Control panel.
If the web site you are redirecting to is NOT hosted with GoDaddy, change the DNS records in the Domain Control panel to point to the IP address of the site you are redirecting to. Add the domain as an additional domain in your host’s control panel. Or your virtual hosts file.
Add the following code to the .htaccess file for the main site. Make sure to create a RewriteCond and ReWriteRule line for each domain you are redirecting. Make sure to redirect both the www and non-www version of the domain if needed. And always immediately test your .htaccess to make sure there are no errors. .htaccess can be tricky, better to be safe than sorry. So always backup your .htaccess before making any changes.

Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine on
rewritecond %{http_host} ^newdomain.com [nc]
rewriterule ^(.*)$ http://www.newdomain.com/$1 [nc,r=301]
RewriteCond %{http_host} ^olddomain.com [nc]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.newdomain.com/$1 [nc,R=301]
RewriteCond %{http_host} ^www.olddomain.com [nc]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.newdomain.com/$1 [nc,R=301]

It is wise to speak with an SEO consultant prior to making your site live to the redirects of old pages and domains are appropriately handled. If you are relaunching a site or looking to increase your online visibility? Give us a call regarding your SEO.

4 Pieces of Advice To Get Links Approved On Quality Blogs and Web sites

Katie S. — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 05:03:45 +0000

Link building can get a bad rap sometimes. Often people think it’s just spam, but really link building is a very beneficial component of a successful SEO campaign. Some companies buy links or hire companies to post automated links (which is heavily frowned upon by search engines and degrades the Internet experience, in my opinion). Why would you want a computer to do your work, when you can get better results by posting legitimate quality links?

Here are four pieces of advice to getting your comments and links approved:

1. Be real. I find the most successful way to get your back links approved is to be your authentic self. Go ahead, state your opinion on the topic, as long as you can tie it to the topic of your link or keyword. This way you’re posting a real comment as if there was no link there. Saying “Great Post, I will bookmark your site and read more.” is not a real comment, it’s spam.

2. Be relevant and respectful. Always make sure that the blog or article you’re posting a comment to is related to the link you’re posting. Once you find a relevant site, read the article and leave comments that reference something that was mentioned in the article.

3. Be a social non-spammer. If you think of link building as providing the author and readers with helpful information or added value in your commenting versus trying to get a link, you will likely see an increase in the number of approved comments. In my experience, being myself has worked to my advantage when link building. Occasionally my efforts are misinterpreted as spam since I’m including a link. On the other hand, there are occasions when people comment back and a conversation begins, which to me is very valuable because you are building a trust with the individual whose blog or news source you are leaving a comment on. They know you are leaving a legitimate comment and the fact that there is a link there is fine by them because they either like that your comment was real and related to their post or know that you may be working an angle by link building, but they are okay with that since you are adding value.

4. Don’t take it personally. It will get frustrating at times when your comments and links are not approved. Experiences like these can teach you about your link building approach and technique. For instance, you may find that you need to shorten your comment or try another approach, or maybe the topics don’t relate like you thought they did. There are so many factors that can determine if your link gets approved or not, but the bottom line is to not get discouraged and to keep it real.

photo love to: seattleclouds.com

Google Instant: Is It Really and How Will it Affect You?

Liberty Tsighis — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 23:03:35 +0000

Google launched a new feature to their search engine yesterday called “Google Instant” that allows users to start entering their search and based on past searches will “predict” what you are looking for. They claim it to be a “search before you type” feature that will make it much faster for users to find what they are looking for. After previous attempts at launching a similar feature in 1999 and 2003, they have decided that Instant is the winner.

Google Instant is search-before-you-type. Instant takes what you have typed already, predicts the most likely completion and streams results in real-time for those predictions—yielding a smarter and faster search that is interactive, predictive and powerful. – Official Google Blog

Is it really instant?
It’s not really that instant. It actually causes several problems. For instance, let’s say you are a Librarian in the New York Public Library which houses 11 million books. Imagine if every visitor who came through your doors asking you for help started their search with one letter and then added the next and then the next and so on and so forth, very much like a “hurry up and wait” scenario. That is what is happening with Google Instant. Each letter now acts as an individual query, pinging the search engine database on every keystroke. Which now means, it is not really that instant for new searches since there will be no prediction and the information you are looking for may actually be delivered much more slowly to you.

Also, there is a usability issue with prematurely hitting the enter button that causes further interruption in getting results quicker. There might be a vulnerability within Google’s automated query detection system. How will they determine which is an actual search query by the user or a script? I’ve been punished already for prematurely hitting the enter button, to which Google greeted me with the “Sorry, we think you are sending automated queries” screen and forced me to enter a captcha code in order to view search results.

Is it really a positive game changer for search engine users? What about Adwords advertisers?
In the past 24 hours, Instant hasn’t made my searching easier or quicker it feels more like the old “paperclip assistant” interruption on Microsoft Word than it seems to be productive.

In USA Today, Kevin Lee, CEO of search consultancy Didit, compares Google Instant to a manic companion who incessantly interrupts you as you’re trying to say something, never allowing you to finish a sentence. Google has set out to “influence what you’re seeing and distract you to view their recommendations,” says Lee. “You start to lose the individuality of what the searcher set out to look for, and you end up with search lemmings.”

How will Instant impact search advertisers using the Adwords program? If indeed, users get sidetracked during their search that means more irrelevant eyeballs on ads which means potentially a higher cost to the advertiser and less targeted visitors to ads.

Is Google Instant going to kill SEO?
No, as long as folks are using keyword based search engines SEO will still be relevant. Google Instant is a user interface change, not an indexation change, you still need to be indexed to be shown. The bottom line is you still should include SEO in your online strategy. Google won’t instantly (pun intended) know what you are relevant for so it is important they know how to appropriately index and categorize your web properties as well as where to rank you in search engine results. If you’re worried about how Google Instant will impact your SEO initiatives, don’t be. As long as you adhere to best practices and provide relevant, targeted content to users you should be fine.

In an article in Adage this morning, Google executives noted that natural search results, and techniques companies use to land higher in Google search results, won’t change. Johanna Wright, director of product management for Google Instant, said one difference is that they will direct users to “page two” results faster. “As you continue typing and narrowing your search, the instantly changing and refreshing results below the search box will be giving you more relevant results,” she said. “So if you previously looked on the second page, now those same results come to the top of the pile for you.”

For SEO and marketing professionals it may in fact prove beneficial as a research tool. “What may be useful is seeing the most common searches and getting results faster than using a SERP rank tool,” said Nathan Burgess, Senior Account Executive at BlissPR, a B2B public relations firm. Burgess also believes Instant may drop site bounce rates, and hits/refreshes to Google’s servers on bad searches and may educate the normal user on how to best use search.

Perhaps, this new feature will indeed change how our brain thinks and uses search. It is too early to tell. But, thinking back on all of the things that are “instant” doesn’t paint a great picture in my mind of quality. Instant coffee (taste), pudding (taste), polaroid pictures (still have to wait for it to develop and the pictures fade with time), fast food (unhealthy). So while Google Instant is merely a few hours old (at least in the public eye) we’ll have to see if it can give “instant” a better name.

The Trinity of Technical SEO: Latency, Indexation and Bandwidth

Mike Swan — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 19:25:46 +0000

The Trinity of Technical SEO: Latency, Indexation and Bandwidth
As most of us know, SEO goes way beyond Titles, Tags and keyword selection. Gone are the days where heavily optimizing a page for “crazy purple widgets” will get you where you want to be. As the Search Engines focus on their core goal of providing the most authoritative and relevant results for each query we as Internet Marketers are faced with a new challenge. As web technology progresses, we must look beyond what a site “says” and look at what a site “is”. Structure and construction become even more important.

Site Latency: How fast do your site pages load?
Let’s first start with Latency. The Latency of a site is the speed in which the page loads for a visitor. There are many factors that contribute to the Latency of a web page including, but not limited to, site construction, reliance on external resources, server capacity, page size, etc. We do our best to reach a happy medium with the factors we can control. Not every site can afford Google-size processors and server capacity; most are sharing their server with hundreds or thousands of other sites. When this is the case we have to focus on factors we have more of an influence on like how our site is constructed and how bulky it is. In the end there is only so much speed you can get out of your site for your given budget.

How does one assess site Latency?
There are many tools out there that can be used for testing the latency of a site. Some are paid which we use extensively, and some are free, which we also use extensively. One of the most useful resources is Google Webmaster Tools. In April 2010, Google officially announced they would be incorporating site speed as one of the 200+ site signals used in determining search rankings and now have become sort of the de facto authority on this topic. Let’s use an actual site example where we are using Google Webmaster tools.

This is a site that relies very heavily on external resources, with a lot of multimedia. There is no way around this, so the speed of the site is limited by the speed of anywhere from 6-12 other servers to provide it with the data it needs to load a page. Here is a screenshot from Google Webmaster tools showing the time it takes to load a page:

As you can see, over the last 90 days the sites pages load on average just over 4 seconds. This is a site that has been receiving exponentially more traffic over this time frame. I want to also make the point that in the third week of June the site was redesigned and recoded for a better user experience and greater efficiency. As such, you can see the line is very erratic until July when the spikes smooth out a bit and on average the time has decreased. Remember we are only talking a spread of 1.3 seconds between the high and low. Not a huge amount off is it? Most visitors wouldn’t even notice a difference. But Search Engines do.

This brings us to Bandwidth.
Bandwidth is defined as “the maximum amount of information (bits/second) that can be transmitted along a channel”. Why does this matter? Search Engines have a limited amount of capacity available. Granted, their “limited capacity” far exceeds anything most of us can dream of, but it is also a really big Internet to crawl (over a trillion pages). Based on this, the Search Engines will allocate a certain amount of resources to crawling a particular website based on its perceived value (whether it is stated or not). CNN.com is going to get a substantially larger portion of Google’s resources than my Dog in Funny Hats blog.

So what does this mean to the rest of us? It means that we have to make the best use of the resources that are given to us. Basically, when Google comes a-knockin’ it is in your best interest to make sure it has the most clear path through your site and can get as much information as possible before it leaves for its next appointment (probably cnn.com). This is why building the most search-friendly efficient site is critical.

Below is a screenshot of the same site, same time period as before, this time showing how much bandwidth is afforded this site by Google in a given day:

Notice the trend of increasing bandwidth up until the third week of June, when the new site design was launched. Immediately before the 2.0 version of the site was launched the site was receiving a peak high of almost 89,000KB of attention from Google. Then it decreased substantially and immediately to 12,000KB and has since settled in somewhere around 39,000KB. The initial impulse is to look at this and say that a mistake was made, Google isn’t as interested in crawling this site anymore. This next screenshot shows the truth – how many pages is Google crawling in a given day:

This chart pretty much speaks for itself. Based on this chart we can see, that while the Latency of the site has only moved within a narrow band, the bandwidth usage has dropped considerably, which has allowed Google to crawl more pages on a given visit. This is a strong case for optimizing your entire site presence, not just your Titles and Tags. During this time period of this example, no on-site SEO elements were changed.

And by the way this third chart mimics the organic site traffic trend as well. How well is your site performing, contact us today to conduct a Technical Site Assessment and start improving or rebuilding your online presence?

Turkey Teaches SEO and Social Media #thanksgiving

Liberty Tsighis — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 05:05:41 +0000

Last year in my hurry to get everything prepared, cooked and ready for our glorious Thanksgiving spread, I forgot to change the setting on my oven after roasting veggies from “broil” to “bake” and my turkey only cooked half way. The top of the turkey was juicy and a gorgeous golden brown, but the bottom was severely undercooked and I had 14 hungry turkey bird eaters ready to feast. And well, my turkey mishap got me thinking about similarities between SEO and Social Media.

Turkey Mishap teaches SEO

2. Once the turkey was in, it was on the “set it and forget it” method. Like cooking a turkey, SEO is not a “set it and forget it” initiative. Just as I should have been monitoring the progress of the turkey, your SEO efforts need to be monitored continuously for progress and adjusted accordingly to achieve desired results.

Turkey Mishap teaches Social Media

1. Although I was mortified by my mistake, I assembled the appropriate team to help me deal with the situation and I didn’t hide from my mistake (although I wanted to). In your Social Media communication it is important to remember that your customers know you will make mistakes, but it is how you handle them that they will be watching. Remember, be human. People make mistakes and don’t be afraid to get others involved to help you solve the issue.

2. There was no mistaking that the turkey was undercooked when we cut into it. Same for your Social Media communication, people will see through the golden brown coating if you don’t have a well planned and executed social media strategy. A good product and great customer service are only two of the ingredients in a recipe for social media success.

3. If at first you don’t succeed, fail fast, and then re-evaluate how to resolve and respond to the situation. Then, move forward quickly, the side dishes are getting cold and people will start to leave if you are unable to respond to the situation or provide an adequate solution.

4. Don’t try to do too many things at once, but if you do, have a plan. Most importantly surround yourself with people who can help you implement and execute your plan seamlessly.

Gobble Gobble Lessons for SEO and Social Media

Track and monitor progress; adjust along the way.

2. Check to see if the oven is on. Review all elements and components of your Social Media Plan and on-site and off-site SEO. Sometimes it can be the most simple and obvious things that can foil your plan.

3. Share your experience. Mistakes create an opportunity…for content! Case studies, articles, contests, etc. How can you share your experience to benefit your customers or provide added value to others?

Happy to say this year the turkey was juicy and delicious…and cooked all the way through. Picture above. Happy Holidays.

Lessons Learned: How to Launch Your New Website

Liberty Tsighis — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 02:41:29 +0000

Most of the time we are so excited to get something new and shiny that we forget that the old did provide value, holds history, and credibility. This is the same for your Web site. Don’t we want to preserve those qualities and carry them over to the new? Of course. If you said no, stop reading.

Before you go launching your new Web site, ask your SEO and web development firm(s) if the following has been done before you flip that switch. If your SEO or web development firm says no or “what are you talking about”, STOP RIGHT NOW. CALL US IMMEDIATELY AT 602-275-3935.

Checklist before you launch:

1. Tracking: Make sure all tracking codes are in place and have been tested on the new site. Missing a few days of tracking could mean missing a few days of knowing how the new Web site impacted visitor behavior and sales.

2. Redirect URLs: If your old site has a good history and has built up some good inbound links to interior pages, or even if it hasn’t and you just have a few inbound links – you still want to make sure you are preserving them when you move to the new site. Make sure old site URLs are mapped correctly so that search engines are notified and pages that are indexed can be appropriately redirected. If you don’t do this and the new site has a different URL structure, any old pages that were indexed in the search engines will send back a nice 404 error, not to mention you may have lost a few new customers.

3. Marketing: Do you have years of vanity domains that you used for marketing? Do you have landing pages that current online marketing or other offline marketing sends traffic too? Make sure these pages are not archived when the new site launches. Make a checklist (in addition to this one) that lists out all of these pages and domains, make sure you to notify your current SEO or web development company of these pages so that they can be moved seamlessly without worry of lost traffic or conversions.

4. Customer Database Management: Very very very very important. I remember when FoodTV and Allrecipes launched their new Web sites. I had my recipe box filled, sure I hadn’t been back in a couple of months but I used my profile and “favorite recipes” box a lot. I went back one day and they said my account didn’t exist. Imagine how upset I was, I had years of recipes that I had collected and without any regard for my feelings they just wiped them all away. They might as well have taken a baseball bat to their brand because that is how I felt about them. So “lesson learned” make sure you transfer all customer information over to any new databases, etc. Don’t throw out the baby with the bath water. Just because your data isn’t as clean as it should be, it is still data and you should hire someone or assign someone to take on that responsibility of organizing it. If your web development company says “let’s blow it up and start all over,” – DON’T LISTEN. Preserving customer information is vital and can save you from having to find a boat load of new customers because you decided to break up with your existing ones by changing the locks on the door. Your customer is your biggest asset, don’t forget that.

If you’d like consultation on any of the above, we are happy to help contact Liberty Interactive Marketing today.

Google PageRank Is NOT Best Way to Rate Online Influence

Liberty Tsighis — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 15:43:09 +0000

As if explaining SEO to those unfamiliar with it isn’t hard enough, Steve Rubel published an article in Adage complicating things even more and misinforming the mass media. This action encourages the continued proliferation of misinformation by traditional agencies as many try to play in a space in which they are not equipped.

Every SEO expert out there would agree with me when I say Google’s PageRank is not the best way to rate online influence. And what exactly is Mr. Rubel referring to when he says “online influence”? Not to mention that there are an infinite number of ways categorize online influence, be it links, content, subject, history of site, bookmarks, etc.

Many discussions on Webmaster World and from Google themselves have been discussing for the past few years whether to remove PageRank from the toolbar and most recently they will start to pull back it’s presence with new toolbar releases. The toolbar Pagerank is separate from the Pagerank number that Google incorporates into its search algorithm. So the number we see has very little to do with rankings at all. It is merely a metric by which the uninformed will be unnecessarily impressed.

I’m not going to argue for or against what PageRank really is because there is no argument. PageRank is useless as two commenters on the original post would agree. Additionally, I can’t believe that this article would have been posted as a linkbait mechanism because AdAge also chose to publish it in their print addition which is where I first read the article.

My real reason for responding to this article is to disperse any rumors out there and to let people know they should really check their sources and the facts before publishing anything SEO related. Just because you use the Internet doesn’t mean you are an expert on SEO.

Is Online Marketing In Your Real Estate Marketing Plan?

Liberty Tsighis — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 23:20:02 +0000

It better be. According to a recent study published by the National Association of Realtors and supplemented on MarketingCharts, 87% of home buyers start online. While this is no surprise to Internet Marketing professionals there has been some inconsistency in this percentage over the last four years depending on who you talk to in the real estate industry. Now we know.

Here’s the skinny:

87% of home buyers used the internet to search for a home purchased through a real estate agent,
72% of non-internet users were more likely to purchase in a private transaction directly from a builder or from an owner they already knew.

What information source did home buyers use:

87% Internet
85% Real-estate agents
62% Yard signs
48% Open houses
47% Print or newspaper ads
Fewer buyers relied on home books or magazines, home builders, television, billboards and
relocation companies.

When asked where home buyers first learned about the home they purchased:

34% said a real-estate agent;
32% cited the internet;
15% said yard signs;
7% said from a friend, neighbor or relative;
7% said home builders;
3% said from a print or newspaper ad;
2% learned directly from the seller;
1% from a home book or magazine.

Bottom line is that while the real estate industry has remained pretty traditional in method – using an agent, driving around looking at neighborhoods and finding open houses – online is and has been playing a significant role as an information resource to home buyers and you must be there to take advantage of it. No online marketing company is going to tell you they will sell homes for you, and if they do, you shouldn’t believe them. Hiring professionals to put together an online strategy that can be incorporated into your marketing plan will be the best bet. The key is visibility, online presence, and lead generation. Home buyers want to find the perfect home, and you might just have it, but you’ve got to be online so they can find you, thus providing a forum for them to reach out to you and visa versa.

Get the most up to date Real Estate stats regarding:
First Time Home-Buyers, Current Down Payments, Agent usage by Buyers and Sellers, Foreclosure Purchases, Features and Incentives, and Additional Demographic Information by reading the full article at MarketingCharts.

About the study:
The 2008 National Association of Realtors Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers is the latest in a series of large national NAR surveys evaluating demographics, marketing, preferences and experiences of home buyers and sellers. NAR mailed an eight-page questionnaire in August 2008 to a national sample of 133,000 home buyers and sellers who purchased their homes between July 2007 and June 2008, according to county records. There were 10,053 usable responses and the adjusted response rate was 7.9%. All formation is characteristic of the 12-month period ending in June 2008 with the exception of income data, which are for 2007. Because of rounding and omissions for space, percentage distributions for some findings may not
add up to 100 percent.

Selecting a Search Marketing Firm: What you should ask.

Mike Swan — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 10:00:13 +0000

What makes a good Search Marketing Firm?

As a business owner, CMO or Marketing Director, the choice of a Search Marketing Firm will be one of your most important decisions. In order to fully realize the benefits of Search Marketing, it is crucial to understand what role Search Marketing will play in your organization and choose a service provider that supports this role.

What is the focus of the Firm?

It is very important to understand what the prospective service provider specializes in. Lately, it seems that everyone is getting into Search Marketing. There are hosting companies, web design firms, web development shops and traditional agencies all trying to get a piece of the market. It is often the case that no firm can do it all, or at least not do it all well. It is best to choose a firm that specializes in Search Marketing. There is no strong argument for using your web developer or your hosting company for your paid search management to keep it under one roof. The worst combination is a traditional advertising agency that offers Search Marketing services. That is like getting heart surgery from your pharmacist, they may have heard about it, maybe even read about it, and may be able to talk the talk, but they don’t do it day in and day out. No matter what type of firm you are talking to, ask them who will be managing and performing the Search Marketing work. Is it handled in-house or outsourced to another firm?

How do they view Search Marketing?

Do they believe that one aspect of Search Marketing is more important than the other? Or do they believe that all initiatives work together and view search holistically? As you interview service providers it is highly recommended to learn a little about the space. You don’t have to become an expert, just have some basic knowledge. Unfortunately there are a lot of charlatan’s and snake oil salesman out there. By doing an hour or so of prep work on your own, you’ll find it is much easier to avoid many of these scammers.

What are their Search Engine Optimization tactics?

White Hat or Black Hat? Learn this terminology, especially if your company’s reputation and long term success are important. Basically White Hat SEO Firms play by the rules of the search engines and understand the uncertainty involved in playing by the rules. Black Hat SEO Firms will tout quick and/or guaranteed results. Never has it been more accurate that “If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.” Black Hat SEO Firms stretch the rules and manipulate them often to the eventual detriment of their clients. There is nothing wrong with preferring the Black Hat Route, it does work, usually, but not for long. Getting banned from Google is real, and blaming it on an SEO firm will not get any sympathy or get you back in. Make sure you know which side of the fence they are on.

What is their Paid Search Pitch?

Are they guaranteeing clicks, traffic or sales? Ask how. Beware of the “We have a relationship with Google”. I get cold calls on my cell phone from firms claiming this all the time; some of the pitches are quite smooth. If they had a relationship with Google they wouldn’t be talking to you or offering services, they would be using their relationship for their own benefit. Saying they know a guy at Google is like knowing a guy at the Lottery Commission. It is common for an agency to have a Rep at Google, we do too, but that does not in any way indicate an inside track or special arrangement. Beware the Google Partners or Resellers claim; that means they make a cut off your Paid Search spend.

Do they stress bid management and special software as their competitive edge? While this was the answer many years ago, times have changed. Every major Paid Search venue uses some variation of a quality score and smart pricing. This means that the entire campaign from keyword to landing page needs to be tested and managed, not just the bids.

If fact, the bids are pretty much the least important factor since they are derivative of the account performance as a whole. Google made $16.4 billion last year from people clicking on ads. They don’t care if you bid a million dollars a click; if your account has low relevancy to the search term your ad won’t show. If you have a significant spend budget in a highly competitive and fast moving niche there can be a benefit to bid management tools, but only as an enhancement to active management, not a replacement.

And another thing; taking Google or Yahoo! or MSNs advice on how to manage a campaign, or worse yet having them manage the campaign is like having the IRS do your taxes. Enough said.

The Disconnect in PPC vs SEO Spending – A Response to SeoMOZ

Liberty Tsighis — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 19:19:11 +0000

This is just a quick post in response to Rand Fishkin’s post about the difference in SEO and PPC spending by companies which can be found here: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-disconnect-in-ppc-vs-seo-spending

Basically, Rand finds that companies spend only a fraction of the amount on SEO as they do on PPC. Specifically:

SEO: $1.3 billion (11%)
- Source: SEMPO data via Massimo Burgio, SMX Madrid 2008

Not surprisingly, search advertising should continue to be the largest category, growing from $9.1 billion in 2007 to $20.9 billion in 2013.
- Source: C|Net News, June 30, 2008

Now, there are a lot of good comments on this post talking about how the major reason companies spend this inordinate amount of money on PPC is because it is immediate, measurable, and controllable. These are all things that HiPPOs like. One of the inherent problems with SEO is that it requires companies to have patience in seeing the results. All SEO projects take at least three months of commitment, with the majority requiring six months or longer.

While this is all well and good, I think one of the bigger issues with PPC vs SEO spending is the fact that they are targeting two different types of searchers. I know that when I am in consumer mode, I will specifically look at the PPC ads, because I know they are offering me something I might want to buy. More often than not, I consider organic listings to be information oriented, which isn’t a bad thing! It just means that targeting PPC means you are targeting people who are in ‘buy mode’. SEO is more of a presence oriented machine that will ultimately increase sales through credibility and relevance. This is proven by a recent study that showed PPC converts 50% more than organic.

A major problem in the future, I think, will be that SEO will become the base standard of good operating companies and that their relevancy in the organic listings will force purely commercial companies out of the top rankings. Instead of “God made man, but Samuel Colt made them equal”, you might say “Tim Berners-Lee made websites, but PPC made them equal”.