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Demystifying the Complexity of SEO
By Paul J. Bruemmer, Bruce Clay, Inc. (c) 2005

"SEO is still a tiny portion of the total search marketing
spend." So states MarketingSherpa in its recent Search Marketing
Benchmark Survey. I find it hard to understand the
under-utilization of organic SEO compared to PPC (pay-per-click)
advertising when organic listings are preferred by 5 clicks to 1.
The natural organic listings convert better, too. So what gives?

MarketingSherpa also states that organic results are "better
noticed, read and clicked on than paid listings." The report
notes that organic listings convert as well as, or even better
than, paid listings (4.2%, versus 3.6%). Study after study
continue to demonstrate the power of organic links.

Delight and Dismay

MarketingSherpa researchers were both "delighted and appalled
by the year over year data on marketing search spending."
Delighted because more marketers said they would allocate larger
portions of their marketing budgets to SEO to gain valuable
organic listings. But appalled at the "continuing disconnect
between paid search spending and SEO investment."

The keyword is "investment." SEO is an investment in time,
resources and knowledge - an investment that is accountable and
yields an excellent return. The benefits of SEO are long lasting
when compared to PPC because paid clicks can start or end
immediately, depending on your budget and a variety of other
factors. Conversely, organic SEO changes to a website stay with
you indefinitely.

Requisite Site Changes

Organic SEO takes a lot of expertise, and it also takes
cooperation by the client in executing the recommended site
changes that allow a site to rank well in the major search
engines. A recent JupiterResearch study states there are
numerous obstacles to achieving necessary site changes when
search marketers outsource SEO to vendors. In fact, 64 percent
of the marketers and agencies surveyed said they did not
implement their SEO vendor's recommendations. This leads to the
assumption that they didn't achieve good organic SEO results.

I myself wonder just what the "SEO recommendations" were that
the marketers did not implement in this study. Why? Because
I've seen and heard a lot of inappropriate and/or weak SEO
recommendations over the past ten years.

While the reasons cited for not following through with site
changes are reportedly varied, the most common were (1) "lack
of internal human resources to implement changes," (2) "timing/
frequency of update issues," and (3) "lack of outsourced IT
budget." In my opinion, this is by and large due to the SEO
vendor failing to set proper client guidelines and expectations.

The Communication Workaround

Can any client trust the advice they receive from any given SEO
vendor? It seems like a catch 22 for the politically correct --
clients pay big bucks for SEO services, but they don't get
results because they can't make the site changes. I say horse
feathers to this assumption -- clients come to an SEO vendor for
help. It is the vendor's responsibility to guide the client to
success. Failure occurs when the vendor fails to communicate
what is required of the client prior to signing a contract.

A partial remedy for not implementing site changes would be to
task the SEO vendor to FTP the site changes, but many companies
will not allow outside consultants to access their site. The
best solution is for the vendor to be clear upfront in
communicating with the client, coming to mutual agreement on a
procedure and schedule for making recommended site changes.

SEO vendors need to be more explicit in delineating the IT vs.
marketing tasks necessary. They also need to consider the
expertise and knowledge factor. SEO experts can likely
accomplish the site changes in less time than the client IT
technicians; however, there is tremendous value to in-sourcing
SEO in the long run. Vendors can provide a realistic time
schedule for accomplishing changes and factor in time for
unknown contingencies due to client company operations. Explicit
communication between the SEO vendor and its client's IT and
Marketing departments will lead to much better SEO results - a
win-win for both parties.

The SEO Mystique

The MarketingSherpa report stated that "SEO under-spending" is
a trend that will continue in 2006. The researchers asked, "Why
don't more marketers invest in SEO?" The major reason given by
respondents was "Don't understand SEO, overall complexity."

Despite the fact that users prefer unbiased organic links, and
the conversions from organic links average higher than those
from sponsored links, some marketers won't invest in organic
SEO because of its ambiguity and complexity.

That's why it is necessary to educate marketers and technical
people on SEO, demystifying the process. It is really not
difficult to understand when examined step by step, but the
problem lies in identifying qualified SEO vendors. SEO requires
specific knowledge of appropriate methodology and a bit of
perseverance. Some of the vendors with marketing visibility lack
such traits, leaving a lot to be desired.

Another obstacle to the widespread adoption of organic SEO is
that experts in the field offer conflicting advice. A lot of
what you hear on the Forums is rhetoric and hearsay. Then there
is the lack of SEO standards and a code of ethics, which further
erodes the integrity of the industry.

Some SEO experts talk in very general terms, e.g., all you need
to do is write your site content for both your customers and the
search engines, give each page a keyword-optimized Title and
Description Meta Tag, and get as many quality inbound links as
possible. Others will say it's more a matter of technical
changes, "you need maintenance." Very few know what goes on
behind the scenes, and this contributes to the SEO mystique.

SEO Made Simple

First, you need a site review. This includes establishing your
business goals with respect to search engines, leading you to
measurable organic SEO results. I'm talking about Server Header
Status, your IP C Block, dotting the (i) and slashing the (t) in
the basics of server-side status, site architecture, page
construction, content and inbound link popularity.

Next, a competitor review tells you what you are up against.
Your site is obviously lacking several criteria or you wouldn't
have such poor positioning. This will also wake you up to the
reality of what is required to achieve good positioning. Hello!
I think Wake Up is the keyword here, get specifics from your
vendor and don't settle for rhetoric or marketing lingo.
Here's your script.

I want evidence that my IP address is not IP blocklisted, I want
to know why a robots.txt file should be in my root directory, I
want to see I have a site status header 200 when you ping my
server and not a 400 or 302. I want to see if my HTML is being
read properly by a spider read, a browser read and a request
read. I want to know how to determine what my odds are of
acquiring my strongest competitor's best positions in Google. I
want to know I will be spam free, and I want to know how my site
should be arranged so that spiders can find, crawl, index and
rank all my data.

And if you need more info on demystifying SEO, drop me a line.

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Paul J. Bruemmer (pbruemmer@bruceclay.com) has provided search
engine marketing expertise and consulting services to prominent
American businesses since 1995. As Principal Business Analyst
for Bruce Clay, Inc., (http://bruceclay.com/) he is responsible
for strategizing and implementing business development activities.
Paul is well-known in the industry, having written articles for
ClickZ, Search Engine Guide, Pandia, iMediaConnection,
MarketingProfs and SitePoint. He has also been a featured speaker
at the Search Engine Strategies Conference and eComXpo.
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