Chris Hooley’s -ThinkBait-

Recently tons of articles have been floating around about how hot the talent search for search engine marketers has become. The average salary for mid level search marketing managers is almost 6 figures, and ones with experience can expect salaries of around 120k with bonuses. With SEO and the need for a good expert becoming so mainstream, it got me to thinking…

I wonder how many people are getting ripped off by so called “experts”. SEO is a relatively new marketing profession, and there really is no formal education on it. As a whole we are a self starting, self taught bunch. Since there is little formal documentation of our art form / science / business model, it seems really easy for an SEO to pull the wool over a business person’s eyes.

I worked at a company who outsourced their search marketing to an unnamed local interactive firm in Phoenix. It turned out to be a mighty bad idea, in retrospect. Reports such as “Good news, your page rank is up” or “Good news, you have gained 6 spots for your 157th most important phrase” were common.

My responses were “By page rank do you mean the relative position of my site for a major keyphrase, or the green pixie dust on the Google Toolbar?” and “Ok, how much traffic is in that term and where do we rank on Google now?”

The answers where “Your page rank, you know Google Toolbar? duh!” and “I don’t know, but you are are on the 7th page of MSN now!”. How does PageRank affect traffic or income streams? It doesn’t. Your relative rankings matter. Your traffic matters. Your ability to convert a visitor into a sale matters.

Needless to say, I didn’t feel too badly about firing them. But what would have come out of that business relationship if my old company didn’t have an SEO nerd on their staff? Who would have known the right questions to ask, or how much the service is actually worth? It probably would have continued for far too long, and consumed far too much cash.

There are SEOs who will charge a few hundred dollars, there are ones that will charge a few thousand, and there are even bad ass SEOs that can even charge a 50k down payment. Regardless of what they charge, you need to do some research before you choose your SEO. Maybe that 50k guy is worth it for your business…

Here’s a quick exercise. Think of how many visitors currently get to your site per month, divide that my how many sales your site generates and you have a rough idea of your conversion rate. Then also think of your net profit per product (otherwise known as your margin). These are important when making your SEO evaluation. [see below]

Here’s a few quickies to ask before you hire a potential SEO / SEM (Search Engine Marketer)

• Show me 10 rankings that you are proud of, and how you got them. If they own a major term like, let’s say student loan consolidation (shameless self promotion) they may know what they are doing
• How much traffic can my best term get for my site, and how can you track it? [use your conversion rate for a very rough idea of how many more sales you can get, times your profit margin and then you have an idea how much your rankings are worth]
• How did the top site for [insert your best keyphrase for your site] get their rankings? Can you compete with them? [If the answer is no, they are either not aggressive enough, don't know how to do it, or your product is legitimately very difficult to nail- but remember nothing is impossible. If they DON'T say no, they may be lying anyways, so be careful!]
• Do you create doorway pages? [Answer must be no]
• Do you create pages or text just for the search engine? [answer must be no]
• How long will it take [Answer must not be unrealistic. In most cases it takes a few months and with new sites usually about a year]

Of course, there are TONS of other questions to ask. The main thing is results. If the company or person you are dealing with can show real results, they are probably worth considering.

If you would like some guidance in choosing an SEO, feel free to contact me at chris [at] mcpmedia.com. I’d be glad to steer a few more companies away from the Kool Aid, and towards the high performance energy drinks. :-)