Heini van Bergen's Blog

This week I realized I’m already in the SEO business for almost ten years now. Back in the late nineties we were optimizing for Altavista, Inktomi (the engine behind MSN.com), Ilse.nl (typical dutch search engine) and we strongely believed that Alltheweb was the new kid in town with their Fast! Search Engine. Unfortunately they were acquired by Overture (one week after they already acquired Altavista) and that’s the last we’ve heard from them.

We were submitting day in and day out using tools that caused real RSI. Search engines experimented with all kinds of revenue models since their shareholders finally wanted to see some cash. Some models included paid placement, pay to get spidered more often and before Google launched Adwords it was actually possible to buy the first 3 sponsored links for a fixed price on Google.com.

Those were also the days when cloaking was everyday fun and keyword rich domainnames came flying all around. Only one link from DMOZ could get you on top on very competing phrases and paid(!) links from the Yahoo! Directory did really matter.

Before getting too melancholic on looking what’s behind us, let’s take a look at what SEO is about nowadays.

Today almost all SEO knowledge is open for everybody. Allthough lot’s of people still don’t understand what’s it all about, there are still less “secrets” on the algorithm of Search Engines. We know what the quick wins are and even search engines are providing more and more information on how to “optimize” or make your website accessible for their index.

So, what added value do SEO’s have to offer than?

Offcourse we still have our knowledge in such a niche market and new developments are on our way, like blended and universal search. It will take time for “dummies” to understand how to deal with that. But as SEO’s, the most value we can add, is to get all the recommendations we do implemented in our clients websites. As you can imagine, this is also the hardest struggle.

In my company, Tribal Internet Marketing, facing this problem is a daily routine. We can’t say that clients or specific contacts are unwilling to implement our advice, but most of the time it’s just a matter of to many parties within one company who have to do something “new” which is no top priority. To work around this and to really getting things done, we’ve developed a simple but very effective way of working.

This way of working exists of 6 very common steps, but which are overlooked too often.

Step 1: Manage your client
The objectives you’re being told, are not always all right or realistic. Since SEO is still a new thing for a lot of clients, many of them see SEO as an alternative for PPC and will set you goals like: lower our monthly Adwords costs, get our top terms on #1 next week, triple our monthly traffic. It’s very important to make the client understand what is realistic and what’s not. This will prevend disappointments on the rest of the job.

Step 2: Getting to know your stakeholders
SEO is very often initiated by the marketing manager, but needs coorporation from many other parties within the company, like webmasters, copywriter, content owner, product managers, etc… Make sure you know all who are involved, convince them on the need and benefit of your SEO activities and create a organogram to know exactly who’s in charge and on what area.

Step 3: Analyse existing systems and infrastructure
Never try to implement changes when you already know the existing systems can’t handle it. Sometimes you run into complex infrastructures and internal procedures that hold you back from implementing the ideal SEO strategy. Just face it and try to be creative, implementing only 60% of what’s right, is often already a huge step ahead. Next to this discuss the problems your facing with your contact and show him the short and long term benefits of switching to a new system. Since search is still the number 1 traffic generator, the company has to face to problems they are running in.

Step 4: Build a case
SEO is no top priority for companies most of the time (unless they are kicked out of Google). So to get the train moving ahead, a small but strong pilot business case can achieve quite a lot understanding. Make sure you do a thorough baseline measurement and keep on reviewing during the whole pilot. Present the results in a simple way which is also suitable for the top management. Make clear what’s already achieved and underline what’s still out there. And for political reasons, honour all who have supported you!

Step 5: Keep it simple
SEO is no rocket science, so don’t try to make it that way. Don’t get the kick out of showing that you know all, but feel happy when your client understand what SEO is really all about.

Step 6: Communicate
Most of us SEO’s have some kind of technical background (not me actually) or did always like to figure out what others thought was boring. This profile does not always come inline with high communicative skills, however, exceptions are always there. Even if face to face communications is not your cup of tea, don’t try to avoid it. Succesfull SEO is more and more about convincing and persuading people and in the end, it’s the kick of top rankings that counts.

Those are the steps that I want to share with you. Offcourse there are lot’s more steps to add, so please feel free to put them in the comments section.

About the author;
Heini van Bergen is Operations Manager for Tribal Internet Marketing, a Dutch based internet marketing company with offices in ’s Hertogenbosch, Amsterdam (both NL), Freiburg (DE), Dublin (IRE) and Shanghai (CN).