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01.30.06
Just
Say No To Discount SEO
 By
Lee Odden
You know you're in blog trouble when you start your posts with, "It's been too
long since my last post…." Hey, we're busy as hell and we're hiring: SEO Specialist,
SEO Copywriter, Linking Specialist, Admin. More about all that on the TopRank
site.
Now on to this malarkey about discount search engine
optimization:
Over the years I've had many opportunities to give prospective search marketing
clients "good deals" for a variety of reasons. Early on in your business, there
are some compelling reasons to do so, but my advice? Don't. Here's some classics
along with my feeble replies:
"We want to see what you can do
with organic SEO for a month or two, and if we see results we'll pay more."
Great, sounds like you're focused on results. For the short term, your
best bet will be a paid search program. We can have a Google AdWords account setup
with the approriate keywords, ad creative, landing pages and conversion tracking
within 2-3 business days. We can monitor progress and scale the program up or
down accordingly.
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At the same time we can begin the process of optimizing your site
for improved organic rankings which will take some time. Organic SEO should be
thought of as a long term strategy. As we refine your site to be crawlable by
search engines and enhance content as well as incoming links, your site will become
more relevant for the search terms your prospects are using. If you're going to
optimize your site for organic rankings, it should be done correctly and long
term or not at all.
"Our brand is very strong in the marketplace
and working with us could be an entry point to bigger things. So give us a lower
rate now and we'll introduce you to bigger opportunities with our other companies
in the future."
I can see you're very proud of your brand.
We're very proud of the results we've been able to deliver for our clients. The
value we provide our clients is not something we discount. We would be happy to
try a smaller project with you and scale accordingly based on the merits of that
program.
"We want you to optimize our site on a pay for
performance basis."
Unless we have near full control over
your site's content and design, a pay for performance program is not practical.
An effective search engine optimization program almost always involves improvements
to the content, organization, linking and usability of your website.
There are many others and it's tempting to just say, "thanks but no thanks". I
can say every time we've ever given a discount for any of the reasons above, it
almost always turns out for the worse. That's why we don't any longer. What's
needed is better education on what SEO is, what it can do and when it is appropriate.
About the
Author:
Lee Odden is President of TopRank Online
Marketing. He publishes daily search engine news on the Online
Marketing Blog and also writes regular search marketing articles for AllBusiness.com,
Lockergnome.com and Practical eCommerce Magazine. |
