The SEO Girl

It’s no secret that client retention can be very difficult in SEO. Unlike Pay-Per-Click where clients can see an exact ROI (Return on Investment) figure, SEO has no such metrics. Sure, you can measure keyword rankings, traffic, and revenue, but there’s always the clients who simply don’t see the correlation. These clients are very numbers-oriented and success driven, and there’s nothing wrong with that, it’s just very difficult to quantify SEO.

I’d like to hear your take on this – how do you measure SEO ROI? I’m toying with the idea of utilizing the client’s web analytics program to view the non-paid search revenue they made during the months we managed their campaign, versus their SEO management fee. Still not an exact ROI, and works best for sites we started managing as soon as the site went live. How about you?

I passed the IMU certification course, go me!

I apologize for the recent lack of posting – I’ve come down with a bit of a summer cold, and have been mostly resting. In between my Coldeeze and TheraFlu today I came across something fun on SEOmoz in Rand’s “Link Consolidation: The New PageRank Sculpting” post. I do admit I’m getting a bit tired of the PageRank scultping commentary, but the tone of a certain Michael Martinez gets the mozzers quite inflamed, I felt like I was watching the SEO version of Jerry Springer. Oh now, I never thought I’d say SEO and Jerry Springer in the same sentence.

The point behind Michael’s comments, that the success of PageRank sculpting really can’t be measured, is true, in my opinion, however his tone was one of attacking Rand and the others who went up against him. We’re all allowed a bad day, and perhaps he was doing this intentionally for the publicity, but it made me roll my eyes. We’re grown ups here, act professionally – state your opinion, no need to attack. This sort of back and forth attack is what takes professionalism away from the SEO industry. Sure, there’s rarely an absolute in SEO and constructive debating is always welcome in my book, but attacking another is just immature. But hey, that’s me

It may sound a bit cheesy, but I absolutely love the excitement of knowing a holiday is coming up. Outside my window is a gang of warriors shooting off canons in the street (a few 8 year olds with some fire crackers), and everyone just seems to be a bit more excited this week with the 4th of July coming up. I feel the same with the SEO industry – we’ve had a checkered past, filled with spammers, and we’ve now entered the present, where spam is frowned upon and brands with real people behind them who take the time to reach out to their customers are the ones that last.

It’s exciting to imagine the future of SEO – I feel that SEO and social media will continue to integrate, with search engines even giving value to links in social media realms (I know, we’re a long ways off with all the spam still present in social media, but someday!). To all those who say SEO is dead – SEO is constantly changing and evolving, and I read that 75% of searchers click on organic results over paid. If that doesn’t mean SEO has staying power, I don’t know what does.

The old school thinking of SEO as “trumping” the search engines is definitely dead. New school SEO is very much alive and integrates social media elements and knows that the real way to be ranked well these days is by abiding by search engine guidelines and creating a site, and brand identity, that people actually want to talk about and find.

Goodbye, spammy SEO’s, and hello to the new guard. Time to celebrate. Onward!

I took the Inbound Marketing University exam last night, and here’s to hoping I passed! The course was a series of webinars on internet marketing, primarily SEO and social media, presented by SEO greats like Rand Fishkin and Chris Brogan (my heart’s aflutter for those two!).

I find out the results next Wednesday, July 8th. I feel I knew most of the questions, but I’m still nervous!

They’re having another IMU course in August , just go to the Inbound Marketing University site and fill out the form for more info. It was definitely worth my time – even if you’re an online marketing veteran, a little refresher never hurts!

So, alas, I was without Internet connection for two days, and a very wonderful friend uncovered the mystery issue and voila! I now have Internet once again. I honestly don’t think I could survive if someone took away my laptop, Internet, cell phone, ipod, etc for more than a week. I know that’s sad, but it’s true for me. Same goes for a certain Victoria Secret’s lipgloss.

I’m very excited – The Geek Girls Network, one of my very favorite technology blogs, added The SEO Girl blog to their “Geeky Favs” section today! Thank you so much to all on the site, I appreciate it. Readers – if you haven’t been to Geek Girls, you must check them out. These ladies are absolute tech gurus and extremely intelligent, bright, and always interesting.

More posts to come now that my Internet is back up and running! No more staring at blank walls, watching water drip…

I’m all about change and constantly looking to the future, and I firmly believe in the quote “Change is the only constant”. You’ll start to see a few new recurring features at The SEO Girl blog:

• Ask The SEO Girl – I often get emails from readers with SEO and social media questions. I’m still always available at theseogirl@gmail.com to answer questions, but will now be sharing some questions and answers right on the blog. Email your SEO or social media question to theseogirl@gmail.com with “Ask The SEO Girl” in the subject line!

• The SEO Girl To The Rescue – I’m always wondering around online, and as a happy SEO geek, often spot ways to improve a site’s SEO. I’ll be randomly choosing a web site to review and making a few SEO and social media suggestions for the site. Sure, I may annoy a webmaster or two, but constructive criticism should always be welcome. Want your site reviewed? Email theseogirl@gmail.com with “The SEO Girl To The Rescue” in the subject line.

• SEO For Your Industry – I believe there is no “one box” style to SEO, and although the core SEO strategies are relatively constant, there are different SEO and social media techniques for every industry. I’ll be chatting about SEO/SMO tactics for different industries in this feature.

Have any features you’d like to see? Leave a comment and let me know!

I love blog comments – they show the author of the blog that people are actually reading and want to take the few minutes to actually respond to what the author had the same. We all have such busy lives, so taking those few minutes really means a lot. But alas, there are always those persistent blog comment spammers. Why oh why must you spam my comments?

I received my very first blog comment a few days ago, and was so excited when I saw it so delightfully appear in my blog’s dashboard…only to realize it was complete spam and submitted just for a link back to their site. I of course promptly hit the “Unapprove” button.

It mystifies me on on why blog comment spammers exist. Most blogs “nofollow” links inside comments anymore, so they’re typically not receiving any rankings benefit from it. There’s the traffic aspect of it, but if your actual comment says (paraphrased) “gobbleygook”, then chances are no one is going to actually click through to your site.

I do leave comments, with a link to The SEO Girl blog, on various SEO and social media blogs from time to time. But here’s the difference – these are blog posts I’m actually reading, find interesting, and leave a thoughtful, yes thoughtful, comment on! I’m not entirely a purist – I do have “more blog readers!” on my mind when leaving the comment, but I hope that my comment piques their interest enough to make them want to come and visit my blog and see what other rambling tidbits I have to say.

I love comments, I love real people, and I love conversations, so if you’re real and like to actually converse as well, leave me a comment from time to time

Hi there! I must admit I’m feeling a little frustrated today. It was suggested today that SEO should be more of a “boxed” approach, where you give a site owner a set amount of content, a set amount of paid links (bad as they are!), directory submissions (because it’s so 2001!), all without much customer support and minimal reporting. It’s a production line approach, and I’m simply not down with it. I feel that SEO and social media is an art – you work with the client on a unique, creative strategy that can help set them apart from the pack, and then continually tweak that stategy as you go along.

The emphasis in SEO should be on Innovation. I understand that the core SEO tactics, like SEO content and quality links, apply to most any site. But the methods of actually making SEO content and links successful varies so dramatically from site to site. SEO content doesn’t have to just meet SEO content best practices – it can, and should, be written creatively to also be link bait. Paid text links are in my opinion a complete waste. Besides the potential for being penalized by search engines, no one’s going to see your site’s tiny text link on another site. Taking the time to network with blogs and sites in your industry and giving them an actual reason to link to you will not only help your rankings, but most likely your site will also receive traffic from them.

This sort of boxed approach honestly makes me worry about the SEO industry. Yes, SEO companies want to make money, but the companies that are going to last are the ones who create custom SEO campaigns and know that every client should have a unique strategy.

<Pulls hair out>

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