The only guarantee with SEO is there are no guarantees

SEO and guarantees. It's like running with cotton socks, mixing water and oil and drinking and driving. They do not belong together! I have a potential client who is gun shy about working with me because I will NOT guarantee top rankings in organic search. Just recently, I lost another client who was wooed away by a guarantee-driven SEO firm. This is the response I received:

"So (SEO company - I'll spare the name) agreed to work with us on a no results no fee basis. They have pretty much guaranteed me that by the 3rd week in October we will be listed among the top 10 spas in SF on the google search engine - if not nothing lost on our side.We don't have to sign a contract or anything unless we see the results."

My friends at SEOMoz wrote a great article titled "Why Reputable SEO Firms Don't Promise Guaranteed Search Engine Rankings". The article hit the bullseye and is well worth the read. However, there are three points worth reemphasizing.

1. We're dealing with technology folks! In particular algorithms that are constantly changing. The pure nature of the industry means that rankings are in a constant state of fluctuation. Besides, search results vary across different geographical regions and are moving toward more personalized results. So, guaranteeing a top ranking is like hitting a moving target traveling at the speed of light.

2. Rankings don't equal more traffic. Assuring the client the top position in the SERPs is completely useless unless the keyword drives traffic to your website and causes a conversion of some type. Yes, traffic should be the measure of success, not rankings.

3. “No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google.” I did not say this, the search engine giant also known as Google clearly states this on their SEO guidelines page. If you're still not convinced then I have some swamp land in Florida I would like to sell you.

Ben Franklin was quoted as saying "but in the world nothing can be said to be certain except death and taxes." It's safe to say that even today that statement holds true even in the world of SEO.

Simple SEO Tips for Bloggers

A lot of my clients know that blogging about their products and services is an important part of marketing in today's social media crazed cyber world. Yet, they are not quite sure how it will help them with their search rankings. Regardless of what platform you use (Blogger, Drupal, WordPress, etc.) make sure you follow these best practices for blogging as they will assist with your SEO efforts.

* Identify a few targeted keywords that you want to be ranked and found by the search engines. These keywords will need to be the most common words used in your blog post and make sure they are in the title, URL, used in outbound links and are bolded.

*Change your permalink (i.e. permanent URL) structure to show the title of your blog post rather than the default URL (ex. "yourblog.com/?p=123"). This will make it easy for search engine spiders to find and crawl blog content.

* Write the title of your blog as a headline in order to grab the reader's attention but also include targeted keywords because your blog will get archived and your titles can become searchable.

* Categorize your content so it allows the aggregation of content according to themes, thus making it easier for search engines to understand your content and giving you a better chance of ranking well on particular topics.

* Keep the content fresh in order to keep the readers and search engines coming back. From a search engine perspective, if your blog is updated frequently, it will attract the attention of spiders and causes more crawling and faster indexing, thus allowing your new content to become searchable more quickly.

* Create internal links by deep linking anchor text to product and/or information pages on interior pages of the site.

* Encourage interaction through comments. This will help create a more active community, which will translate in more content, traffic and eventually higher rankings.

SEO Should Still be at the Top of the List

Businesses seem to spend a lot of time, resources, money and effort on designing and developing a website and fail to spend as much time on their online marketing initiatives. Driving traffic to a website is challenging enough, let alone retaining and converting visitors into buyers or subscribers. That's why deciding on a marketing channel is an important decision as any.

Deciding on where to spend the marketing dollars is not an easy choice. There's affiliate, blogging, display, email, mobile, pay per click, social media and search engine optimization (SEO), to name a few.

The type of business, industry, business model and, of course, budget have a lot say in this decision. However, one could argue that SEO would be a good channel to start with. Let's examine a few supporting points.

1. SEO is both art and science. Meaning, it allows us (the business owner) to examine our marketing message, keywords and competition. Other channels don't off an in depth look at these areas.

2. Search Engines is the starting point to the world’s information. Yes, social media is picking up steam in knowledge sharing but search engines provide a comfortable user experience coupled with high quality search results. Surveys show that ~ 65-70% of searchers are more likely to favor natural search listings when seeking information or purchasing a product or service.

3. There are a bevy of tools that support SEO efforts. For example, after launching a website, Google's Webmaster Tools is the logical next step and perfect complement to improving your site's visibility, identifying site errors and understanding keywords. There are also a number of page ranking, keyword density and competitor related reports available at no or little cost.

4. ROI for SEO can be in the thousands of percents. No joke. SEO can help you build traffic levels in a cost-effective way versus, say, pay per click or banner advertising where keyword bids or impressions may be costly over time. Besides, very few websites are in the business of driving traffic short term so if you take the long-term approach then your return on investment will eventually start to grow.

5. There's a lot of cross over into other channels. Working on SEO allows you to venture into the world of content writing, social bookmarking, directory submissions, article writing, blogging, press releases, forum posting and more. The end result of this overlap will drive incremental traffic and build up relevancy via external linking.

6. Numbers speak for themselves. According to IAB/PWC Internet Advertising Report, search represented 45% of the overall advertising revenue in 2008.