Surprisingly for me the seminars at that more businesses end of the conference is what I found more interesting, applicable and useful. Some of the more technical sessions either told me what I already knew, confirmed what we were already thinking or focused on elements of minutia which I believe will be of little effect.

Highlights

Stephen Pavolich

Really interesting field, great approach, definitely someone who majors on majors and knows about the bottom line Also from talking to him later a really nice guy. This has really pushed me to look at the whole area of CRO more and more.

Alex Craven

Steeped in experience, good practical day to day advice on getting things done and working with external development teams which can really louse a project up for you. Lots of application in many environments.

Russell Smith

I loved his insights into the BBC’s new linking policy, and since doing some work for one of the big newspapers I have always held a strong interest in this sector and fins it fascinating.

Caitlin Krumdieck

The session on the application of sales processes to was great practical and Applied both to SEO and the sales of SEO, and as often happened was very useful not only in what Caitlin said, but also in the thought process and ideas that he talk set going in my head.

Lowlights

Dave Naylor – Google vs SEO

This isn’t a downer of Dave I actually loved all of his other contributions to the first day, and feel he had a lot more to give than we got.

I just felt there was much more interesting stuff he could have told us and I disagreed with his conclusions.

I would summarise his view as ‘in effect he was suggesting that Google would become a portal delivering its own content and its own comparison engine, pushing natural search results to the margins of what it does and hurting SEO’s whilst it does that.

“What SEO sales meetings are in the pipeline?”

“I have arranged sales meeting with X, Y and Z. I also need to being company Q this week, as they are just finishing there new website now and want to talk to us about SEO once its live.”

This is the point my head explodes in frustration …. (not at Clare but at the assumption unknowing would be customers make), just after your new website is finished is the absolutely the worst time to start a new SEO campaign!

The reasons being

1. Good SEO consultancy should be giving quality of advice on not just how sites should be built, but into what should be built.
2. Time that could be spent on building links is wasted, and the site falls further behind it competitors whilst no action takes place during the site build phase.
3. All budgets are often used up building a site that probably does not meet SEO specifications, on page SEO changes are impossible to implement due to budget.
4. Technologies or build methodologies which are hostile to SEO are often used without thought in the build process, this either means spend to redo work or a less successful SEO campaign as compromises are made.
5. People are tired of the change process once the new site is up, any further changes required are hard to push past this inertia.

Thus the idea of starting to talk to a customer just as they complete there new site usually fills me with dread, the only thing that worries me more is when internal IT have built there website.

When we would be the best time to start looking at SEO, well I am biased but I would say as soon as possible, the early addition of SEO consultancy to any web project  has three effects

1. As the website has fewer SEO compromises your campaign is more successful overall
2. As you have link building before the new version of the site goes live, you achieve a good ROI much sooner
3. You avoid unnecessary redevelopment costs  after a site has gone live.

These benefits have to be set against the cost of your SEO contract, but in over 95% of causes I am sure that it will be more cost effective to employ your SEO consultants early in the process.

Anyway things not to do when looking for SEO agency or consultant.

1) Do Not Automatically Select The Number One Agency In The SERPS For The term ‘SEO’,

Both of the people I have known who have done this have regretted it and do not have a good thing to say about the agency involved.

Obviously someone in the agency knows what they are doing for them to ranking that position, but judging form results the skill level is no reflected across the agency, and the staff have too many customers and potential customers to be able to do a proper job.

As a principle agencies ranking number one for major SEO terms will either take on too many clients or bump there fees up to a high price to allow potential customers to self-select.

2) Do Not Take Snap Shot Results As Proof OF Competence
I have worked at one company which inherited an SEO customer that already has great results, The salesmen then used the great results we hadn’t got from this customer to sell to other customer in the same market sector, claiming we run SEO for the number 1 site.

Judge results but look for results which are improvement over time and are more sales related than position related.

3) Do Not Take Guarantees At Face Value
As a first principle I don’t trust SEO guys who make guarantees at all. It is an art not a science and if we are honest we can’t guarantee results, we can increase chances and make predictions, but we shouldn’t make guarantees.

Experience has told me that guarantees are worthless (we guarantee you ‘a number 1 position on google’, what they don’t tell you is for you brand term or some term that has no value), misleading Guarantees ( included PPC positions ) or it is just outright lies.

If you find someone who will guarantee you the extras sales which you are actually paying for an I will actually eats my own hat.

4) Do Not As A Customer Decide On Your SEO Strategy
If you approach an SEO agency telling them what you want them to do then you are removing one of the most effective things they can and should be doing for you. Which should be creating your SEO strategy.

You should define your goals and allow the agency or consultant the strategy to get you there, and the package required to fulfil that strategy.

However don’t allow a salesman to propose your SEO strategy either. If required pay for technical consultation before an on-going contract to make sure a SEO technician/ consultant has created your strategy.

Why is it so important, because the wrong strategy will see a waste of resources and a very ineffective campaign, and a lower ROI in the long term.

However most agencies will bring an SEO technician to help on technical support in the pitching process if required.

5) Do Not Be Impressed By A Long List Of Tangible Work To Be Completed.
One of the hardest questions regarding SEO is cost, and the only way the value of SEO work can be attributed is by ROI. We are prone to think of SEO in what tangibles do I get back in return for my money.

How many articles are written? How many directories am i submitted to? How many reports do I get? How many hours on page optimisation do I get? We then try to associate tangibles with worth in the process things gets sticky. Companies use action determine worth and not value to determine worth.

In looking at price with SEO the question needs to be how much ROI am I going to get back at the end of a 12 month process. Focusing on actions makes you agency jump through hoops. Focusing on ROI makes them perform.

Add these five warnings with the five previous pieces of positive advice in my last post and you will be more confident that you can choose the correct SEO agency for your campaigns.

Things to do

1)  Get a Personal Recommendation

Most of the good SEO operatives I know don’t need to tout for work, they will have people referred to them by contented customers. I know that not all of us know people who have had successful Search campaigns implemented, but if you know someone who has, I would suggest use the people they recommend.

However double check what work they have done, what changes they have made to the results, how difficult the two markets compare to each other, but a personal recommendation is the way to go.

2) Talk to a Current Client

When talking with a contractor or agency as to talk with one of their current clients, be aware you will be given the ‘pet client’ to talk to, and not the run of the mill client. But this will still allow you to get a feel for how the company works and operates and what relationship they have with their clients.

Take this step with a pinch of salt, but if an Search Agency does not have a happy client you can to its time to look elsewhere. If you are aware of the SEO companies client list you try to pick the client you want to talk to, or talk to the client they claim they have done great work for.

3) Ask for Client Case Studies

Ask for case studies of what change the Search Agency have made to a client, ask in terms of sales and profit not positions and visitors. A big mistake is to look at one of their client’s current positions. What you need to know is where the client started? What is the change? What was the effect of the change? How long it took? What was the budget?

Without that kind of information knowing that client A ranks in position B for term C is very limited information, with value to you or anyone else.

4) Get to meet the people who will do the campaign.

Companies that only allow customers to interact with salesmen and account managers probably don’t have many quality SEO staff.  In my experience in agencies SEO deals sold or managed exclusively by none SEO staff (read account managers or salesmen) usually screw up. SEO is a technical business and if decisions about sales and campaign direction are not decided according to technical knowledge things go often badly very quickly.

Too many big SEO agencies are smart officers, gifted salesman, clever account management without the technically capable staff to make things really work for the client.  Make sure there are articulate, gifted technicians you can speak to.

5) Get a clear explanation on what a company will do for you

A good SEO company will be willing to tell you what they intend to do for you, why they intend to do it and what effect this expect it to have (ball park). They also should have the capability to do this.

I am not talking about work done I am talking about probable  benefit received by you and time-scales A company that either will not or is not capable of clearly explaining what is does for its money should be avoided.

If you do these 5 things and you will remove some of the risk factor from choosing an SEO company. Next article I will look at 5 things not to do when employing an SEO company.

What do I mean by strategic, I mean a big picture thinker, someone who looks at the whole SEO campaign when they think of any particular component of the campaign, someone who has a game plan, and will then focus any day to day action towards that game plan. Someone who understands there are multiple SEO techniques and can choose the appropriate one for the situation.

Digging deeper the first requirement for a strategic thinker is thinking in the long term, tacticians are short term thinkers, they want to know how to complete their task, in SEO game this means moving up a few places, competing for a new keyword, doing the component parts that make up the long terms strategy, but without linking this to a longer term sets of goals.

In SEO I would expect a strategist would have an outline of a long term plan that would span 2 to 3 years, have numbers of tactical stages which can be measured by milestones, and all tactical decision will be made in pursuit of this longer term strategy. Failure to have the strategic view will lead to pointless tactical successes, wasted resources and campaign under achievement over the longer term.

The second requirement is a commercial focus, SEO is not about positions and traffic it is usually SEO is about sales and profits. If it is not about sales and profits it is about another business goal which is more often not at least one step removed from positions and traffic. A tactician will judge success in terms of what position he has achieved and what traffic he has generated, a strategist will look at how much he has sold and what revenue has generated for his client.

An SEO strategist needs to be able to identify and recommend the right SEO techniques for the right campaign. There are many variations of SEO techniques none are correct for all circumstances, and most techniques have applications in some circumstances. I have seen SEO operatives blindly use the same technique that worked for the last campaign on any other campaigns that they run when it was completely the wrong technique for the campaign.

The worst example was this was an SEO operative who went from aggressive link building on new sites, which he had successfully done, then spent 2 months aggressive link building on a campaign for an old site which already had 200,000 back links but no on page optimisation. His days of worked bore not fruit and had no success.  When he changed tack and spent 1 hour doing on-page optimisation and saw the site come in top 10 for most terms within 48 hours.

SEO is not about machines it is about people, this is a much a people business as it a technical business. To be direct a good SEO consultant should be able to consult. Most importantly this means to understand your client, his or her requirements and be willing to learn as much about his business as possible, it is also being able to communicate to your client in language he can understand, and on points about which he cares about (we are talk pounds not positions.)

This is the role on managing expectation, gently correcting misconceptions through education, sharing knowledge, allowing the client to apply the knowledge about his business than he has.

These to my mind are the differences between a strategic thinker ( an SEO consultant ) and a tactical thinker (an SEO operative); any thoughts?