Sphinn - Don't Always Blame The SEO

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Don't Always Blame The SEO

Went Hot: September 3, 2008 - 5:25 pm
Posted By: UtahSEOpro 306 days ago
Topic Type: News Story (Jump to http://searchengineland.com)
Category: SEO

One of the easiest things to do in SEO is to poke holes in someone else's SEO strategy. I proudly admit to having done this on countless occasions when someone asks me to look at their site and give my "expert opinion." It's very easy to take a look at the code for a few seconds, spout off about 10 things that haven't been done on the site, impress the potential client with my knowledge of alt tags, esoteric ranking methodologies or meta tag knowledge and then ride off in the sunset. The potential client looks at me like I am the SEO cowboy who promises to save the day if you just ask. I'll come riding in with my white hat and algorithmic silver bullets and put you on top of the SERPs, banishing your enemies to Google hell.

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from finalrune 305 days ago #

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Great article. Hilarious as well as insightful --

"the brand manager comes through door touting the latest and greatest search engine un-friendly content management system ... they saw at their booze filled conference in Vegas ... The IT department loves the system because the sales rep bought them doughnuts and promised them they wouldn't have to do any work. And the VP is too worried about his constantly devaluing stock portfolio to worry about something as trivial as a content management system. We all know how this story ends."

brilliant, and tragic

from javaun 305 days ago #

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Thanks so much for writing this. I've been an in-house SEO in my last two positions and this rings true.

In my prior position at a Fortune 500, I was already doing SEO but not doing enough to call it "SEO" when our top executives heard the buzzword and declared it, as you said, a silver bullet for all our woes. SEO was supposed to fix our broken website plus solve global warming and defeat Al Queda.

My co-developer and I handed them a roadmap of 11 basic tactics to knock down in the next 12 months. These were simple things like unique title tags, meta tags, text links to overcome javascript navigation, and a more complex URL rewrite. While we pushed on a few of these, the company also did a 4 month RFP, hired one of the most expensive big SEO agencies in the country, who promptly told us we needed to do all of the things on our original roadmap. 12 months after hiring the agency and $300,000 in consulting fees later, we still hadn't completed all of the original tactics and many were still outstanding.

Like us, the agency realized that the real issue wasn't identifying the basic tactics, it was getting the project pushed across the different stakeholders in our company: IT, marketing, web, and our local divisions. Many big organizations have different management silos with competing interests, and these issues are way bigger than SEO. My new position has been markedly different, and I came into an organization that already had buy-in.

I think one key to working in a big organization is to realize, as you pointed out, while they often live off branded traffic and they often have untapped link equity, the biggest issues are internal buy-in and coordinating across departments. If you do get buy-in, you may only get one shot, so your first one needs to count. And keep expectations low. You don't just have to show positive ROI for your tactics, but you have to show that time spent on SEO is more valuable than time and money spent elsewhere.

A lot of good agencies come in and set the expectation that SEO can take a year to yield results, and companies hear that and then still expect instant results. If they're not already doing PPC you might start them there (most are already doiing it), or you might go for the lowest of low-hanging fruit and one or two easy tactics like title tags. Honestly, this is tough one and I can't claim to have figured it out.

I'm looking forward to your next post!

from danperry 305 days ago #

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Your newsletter... May I subscribe? :)

Seriously, it is blatantly obvious that you've "been there". Easily the best article I've read in months. Keep up the good work, and looking forward to the next one.

from Psycray 305 days ago #

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We were hired by a large firm with a dozen different "silos". Some of the silos were very responsive and posted changes in titles, meta tags, etc. as soon as it came into them. Other silos still have not implemented the most fundamental changes. It can become quite frustrating.

from Jeremy 305 days ago #

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And all the in-housers said amen, twice.

(great read)

from mridout196 305 days ago #

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Very good article indeed and so true. I am often voicing, shouting and screaming which are sometimes ignored or not fitting into the "brand". Then quickly followed up with a "why are we not ranking for blah?!" - listen to your in house SEO's people!!

from incrediblehelp 304 days ago #

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"From a natural search point of view, most large corporations get by on their brand. The companies usually have incredible off-the-page SEO assets that go to waste because of simple on-the-page faux-pas committed by overeager IT or marketing staffs in the so-called interest of the brand."

I see this as the main issue with big brands.

from svalenzuela9312 304 days ago #

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Amen Amen

from homelessSEO 304 days ago #

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From my experience with Fortune 500 brands, I see the actual main issues as both CMS related and architecture. Some of the Web sites I have worked on have 75,000+ links but will upgrade to large and expensive CMS solution and watch their organic rankings vanish.

Problem is, usually we aren't brought into to consult until after the rankings have gone. No redirects, no unique titles, terrible URL structure, internal navigation in AJAX, you name it. Just give me a unique title & control of the architecture.

Internally placing importance on pages and yes... even passing PageRank to deep interior pages is still a challenge with most architectures.

from NatashaRobinson 304 days ago #

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@ Javaun re: "SEO was supposed to fix our broken website plus solve global warming and defeat Al Queda." That needs to be on a t-shirt

from yojpotter2 304 days ago #

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Thanks for the great article..I agree..it's not your SEO experts fault all the time when your site can't make it to the top page...you should also cooperate with your SEO to help you get more positive results.