Tips for the Unwilling SEO

By: Anita Campbell

An unwilling SEO is what I’ve ended up becoming.

Let me explain. I run a business that relies on the Web. So getting found online and in the search engines is crucial to my business success.

My small business faces conditions not unlike those of other small businesses. Many an entrepreneur or small business owner is in the same boat. We have limited funds and limited staff. Every search marketing expenditure has to count.

That’s where the unwilling part comes in.

As a business owner, I’ve had to teach myself about search engines, paid search advertising, keywords, on-page optimization, and other concepts important to bringing traffic to my website. Whether I wanted to learn or not! Although we use outside service providers to help with some of the work, especially those things that benefit from special skill, I and my staff have to do some of the work ourselves, in order to keep outside costs low.

But I’ve learned important lessons about how to best use my time and the time of my staff, and when to outsource search activities to outside experts. Let me share 3 of those lessons:

1) Learn basic SEO principles
One of the best investments of time I have ever made is to learn some basics of SEO. I am not talking about becoming a search professional – rather, I mean that you need to learn just enough to get by successfully.

Knowing some SEO basics will help you understand what it is best to retain in-house and what makes sense to outsource. Plus, you’ll communicate better with outside service providers if you have some basic knowledge.

To learn, I started by reading SEO blogs in the evenings and on weekends. Pretty quickly I sorted out the blogs that were writing for beginners and small businesses, from those writing for SEO professionals. That was crucial to avoid frustration. Those writing for other SEO professionals generally were talking at a level way above my head, or worse, sometimes they were talking about blackhat techniques. SEO blogs targeting small businesses, on the other hand, give you a level of knowledge that you can more easily assimilate and act on.

A good hub of SEO information designed for newbies and small businesses is Search Engine Guide. From there, take a look at the individual blogs of the Search Engine Guide writers – you’ll find lots of excellent and reliable resources.

2) Spend money to make money
As I look back, the business would have grown faster had I spent more on marketing and sales. Instead of focusing on my expense line, I really should have (a) set more aggressive revenue goals, and (b) worked backwards from there to figure out how to meet those goals and find the funds to invest in the right activities to meet those goals.

Allow your business to be guided by your revenue goals, instead of the goal of merely minimizing expenses.

To do this successfully, you will need to do some serious marketing planning, including detailed financial projections. Set revenue goals for the month, quarter and year. Then work backwards to break them down by what you need to do each week to achieve those goals. Understand exactly which search marketing activities, what they will cost, and the revenue dollars they will bring in if successful. You can find lots of free resources to conduct marketing planning at MPlans.com.

Once you create a detailed marketing plan, it becomes your road map.

3) Know your limitations
I’m all for saving money by doing as much as possible in-house. However, some things take too long to learn or require so many hours of knowledge that it’s not a wise use of time to try to master them.

For instance, if you do a lot of copywriting on your website or a lot of blogging, then it makes sense to learn about keywords for copywriting purposes. That’s knowledge you can use regularly and learning about keywords is an activity you can master with a reasonable amount of time.

On the other hand, technical site architecture issues and pay per click advertising may require the assistance of those who are experts. These are more technical or require daily regular attention. When you take into account the amount of time you would have to spend internally to master these areas, and what else it would keep you or staff from, it could be a favorable trade-off to hire it out.

Do this kind of trade-off analysis of time versus money for every activity. Soon you will have a good idea of what to outsource and what it makes sense to do internally.

In summary, these are important strategic issues to take into account to grow your business. In a way, we all have to become unwilling SEOs to some degree. But you can have the best of both worlds by learning how to balance between learning SEO, doing it yourself, and outsourcing where appropriate to get the best results.

Comments

[Amanda]

This is so true. Having a business online forces you to become familiar with seo whether you like it or not. That is if you want it to be successful & grow. You can spend loads of time learning and teaching yourself the basics but sometimes it's more beneficial to just pay someone to do the tasks you can't completely grasp yourself.

[Susan Payton, The Marketing Eggspert]

You hit the nail on the head. I, too, am an Unwilling SEO. I hate the technical, but as the owner of a marketing/PR firm, I've learned it all too. I guess the good thing is, now I can sell my services doing SEO. It's just not my favorite thing.

[Norbert Mayer-Wittmann]

Good article!

I have 2 questions:

1. Since you talk about SEO ("Search Engine Optimization"), which websites would you call "search engines"? My experience has been that people often use this term and actually mean "Google Optimization" or something like that. I no longer use Google very much (primarily because of the shoddy results they deliver nowadays), so I wonder why people still optimize for "Google".

2. Why are you "unwilling"? This is really intriguing -- and I would like to hear you elaborate on that some more. In a recent blog post, I noted that "words are the new brands" (see http://gaggle.info/post/97/om-malik-you-need-to-listen-to-your-audience ) -- do you find using natural language / text to be an unsatisfying element of your work?

Thanks!

:) nmw

[Anita Campbell]

Hi Norbert,

Thanks for your questions. Here are my thoughts:

(1) I use the term search engines in a very general sense, like most small biz people do. Google and all other comers are included -- we'll take traffic from wherever we get it. Most DIY small business owners like me don't understand the nuanced differences between the diferent search engines, anyway. That's a pretty advanced technique -- for true SEOs and search marketers. See, optimizing specifically for say, Yahoo, is the kind of activity I would outsource to a professional because it would take too much specialized knowledge for me to learn.

(2) I am "unwilling" ONLY in the sense that I have limited time and need to wear so many other hats in my business. That word was intended just to convey in a catchy way the choice between doing something internally, and outsourcing to the professionals.

I realize I have to know enough about SEO to know my way around when it comes to content creation, hire the right people, ask the right questions. But I don't really want to get deeply into the details of SEO / search marketing myself. Because if I do, it means I am taking precious time away from other parts of running my business -- I wear many many hats.

By the same token, I would not try to be a Web designer or accountant or painter or garage mechanic, because it would take way too much of my time to try to learn those activities. Better to leave it to professionals. It's not my best and highest use. :)

But when it comes to using natural language in blog posts, yes of course I see the value in doing that. It's not unsatisfying at all. In fact it's one of the activities that I feel can be done internally by relatively inexperienced small biz people.

Best,
Anita

[Matt McGee]

Your comments are interesting, Norbert. Are you aware that you're in the minority in calling Google results "shoddy"? No search engine is perfect, and I use different engines for different types of searches, but Google is light years ahead of all competitors in market share. Depending on who you follow, Google currently gets 60% to 70% (or more) of all searches.

So, as an SEO, my job is to make sure clients are optimized for Google -- that's where the vast majority of the traffic is. Fortunately, the best SEOs know that, in most cases, when you build the kind of site, content, links, etc., that Google loves, you'll often be rewarded in Yahoo, Live Search, etc.

[Norbert Mayer-Wittmann]

Thank you for your thoughtful and well-written response, Anita! At the pace things move these days, such attention to precision and accuracy in writing is a truly wonderful experience! I am planning to write a blog post about this (and how it relates to Charlene Li's analysis of social media in "Groundswell") in the coming days (so keep an eye on http://Gaggle.INFO/News ;)...

You mention "content creation" -- and that is, I feel, very important. In fact, content and container are in somewhat of a hierarchical relationship (for example: here, "thought_leadership" is contained in the "blog.looksmart.com" container; but "blog.looksmart.com" is ALSO content: it is contained in the DNS -- a very RELIABLE database, due to the fact that the authorship/administration of domains are registered... in the traditional / publishing / print library / database setting, this was commonly referred to as the "statement of responsibility" -- and so online, this is the container that COUNTS [all other content is more/less ephemeral]).

@Matt McGee (re: Are you aware that you're in the minority in calling Google results "shoddy"?)

Yes, I am aware that I'm in the minority. There are far more teenagers and newbies out there who don't yet realize how poor the results from Google.COM have become. If you would like to learn more about this, please read the "Wisdom of the Language" ( http://Gaggle.INFO/Miscellaneous/articles/wisdom-of-the-language ).

Also: Before you start making grandiose statements about market share, I suggest you first define the market: What precisely do you refer to as a search engine. Is shopping.com a search engine? How about Cars.COM? Why or why not?

:) nmw

[Kelly Hayes]

Anita - good points and good info. to share. It is hard however to find a company to actually trust to do this very important task. Many claim to have the skills, but the cost is pretty high for the trust part.

nmw - Your blog page is certainly a mind full of information to share with the average business person! I worked with one of the original developers who worked in a think tank on linguistics back before online search existed. Heck, back before e-mail really existed. They wanted to do things like figure out what you *might* want to purchase based on what you purchased at a store, etc. The computers for the registers needed to "understand" various linguistics to accomplish this task. That was about 20 years ago.

Fast forward to today and it seems that people are only just beginning to catch on to the importance of linguistics in web searching. I do agree with your concepts but I have a feeling it may take another 10 years or more to really "get there" for the main stream business market.

Most business people we sell to are somewhat behind the times in terms of computer skills. Of course we sell to owners and upper end managers a little over the 18-29 demographic. In a few more years I guess they will be our market.

[Ron Spinner]

I can tell you from years of experience, that it is best when the client learns how to use keywords on the website and PRs. Since they are usually doing the copy writing anyway it is most efficient for them to write for the engines at the same time. We have developed Cookbooks for these activities to help them do this--we just do a little tweaking. This way we are free to do the more complicated activities and time intensive activities.

[Anita Campbell]

Hi Kelly, I feel your pain. It took me a little time to find an outside SEO expert to help me with activities I felt I could not take farther on my own without help.

Blogs are actually a good way to find an SEO professional. That's how I found mine.

Read the SEO blogs, especially those who say they are writing specifically for small businesses. Leave some comments.

Jump over to their website and examine the services they provide. There's a lot of specialization now among online marketing professionals, so carefully look at what they say they do. Just the fact that the company has a blog tells you a lot about its commitment to sharing informaiton and becoming a trusted partner.

To me that's one of the best parts about blogs: it gives you a way to check out a company or service provider you may want to do business with.

Good luck in your quest!

Anita

[Norbert Mayer-Wittmann]

Hi Kelly,

thanks for your comment -- and guess what? Apparently the really "heavy duty" article link didn't work correctly (it seems to have redirected to the main blog page -- perhaps because there was a problem with capitalization [hadn't realized that wordpress is case-sensitive]). Well so the really *most confusing / advanced* article is http://gaggle.info/miscellaneous/articles/wisdom-of-the-language (maybe it's just the most poorly written ;)...

I have had people tell me that I am "generations ahead of my time" -- well, it certainly does seem difficult to get my message across.

To me, the message is quite simple: "hotels" domains will be the most reliable source of information about hotels; "cars" domains will be the most reliable source of information about cars.

And this is "baked in" to Google (and Yahoo, and Live, and...). Indeed: one-size fits-all search engines have no choice, because that is what users EXPECT. If users search for "movies" they do not expect to see "used-furniture" as a result (if they did, they would probably feel spammed). So anyone who wants to be a top result for movies, should get a "movies" domain name -- it's as simple as that (but note that what matters are *EXACT MATCHES*, not some runtogetherstringofkeywords ;).

[Jeff Paul]

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[Lauran]

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lauran

SEO

[MIracle Studios : web site design company]

Yes, SEO has become the foundation stone for a grooming "Online Business" .......

Without, web marketing intertwined with SEO, the websites would have been living in the "LOST WORLD".........

But thanks to "SEO's" --- as we love calling them the "Massiah's for online business"..........

SEO's are juggling there acts to bring the websites in to the limelight.........

Once again i want to reiterate : We have to live with fact : --"SEO is the base of "Online business" ----

[SEO]

Great tips here. I'm such an amateur at the more technical stuff, I'm looking forward to learning more - but I'm still taking baby steps!

[SEO company]

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[seo services]

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[seo company Los Angeles]

These are important strategic issues to take into account to grow your business. In a way, we all have to become unwilling SEOs to some degree. But you can have the best of both worlds by learning how to balance between learning SEO, doing it yourself, and outsourcing where appropriate to get the best results. I agree with your post. thanks

-faith-