SEO Is Upside Down ATM - Are You Scared?

by zannix
8 replies
The fact of the matter is that, right now, SEO is turned on its head and, quite frankly, noone can even guess where your site will end up ranking if you build any kind of backlinks to it.

To those of you offering offline SEO services, how do you deal with this? I must admit I've only just started venturing into the offline and so far have acquired only one client, whose site is still solid #1 for its keyword, but I'm not touching it as long as this madness lasts because I'm afraid I might cause more damage than good.

I have a reason to be concerned because many of my personal sites have taken a dive recently and they've been fine for over two years.

So now I want to make more offers, get more clients, but I'm really not comfortable making any promises while Google is drunk (I can't put it any other way). If you check the SEO section of the forum, you'll see plenty of ridiculous sites that are ranking for some of the most competitive terms on the market. This is clearly an indication that something is wrong...

Are you still confident selling SEO at this point, and if so - how do you do it?

Regards,
Zannix
#atm #scared #seo #upside
  • Profile picture of the author econnors
    SEO is always getting turned on its head, ear, toe, etc. This is nothing new and folks have been raving about it for a while now. The worse thing is that "SEO is dead". OMG! What are we all to do?

    We do the same thing that should have been done in the first place - selling a solution. Don't sell a "rank". Ranks are peanuts. What you want to sell is conversions. How do people behave when they land on the site? Is it user-friendly? Does the content make sense? Does it drive a buyer through the sales funnel in some fashion?

    If you call a business to sell SEO, you will always lose. If you call the business to increase their profits, your batting average is much better. Furthermore, it isn't about making promises as you mentioned above -- it's about properly setting clients expectations that they will receive some benefit from your efforts. Local keywords are somewhat simple to optimize as long as you find ones without high competition.
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    • Profile picture of the author zannix
      Well, personally I don't need to care about conversions or content too much. Most of the small business owners just want a presence online, in other words, they want to let people know that they exist, and how and where they can be found. That's done through some simple SEO and a 3-page website setup with some cute graphics and attractive font. Nothing big here.

      And they seem to be willing to pay for it, simply because they don't know how to do it themselves, which is quite understandable...

      But I do see your point, since local SEO is much easier and there's a lot less competition, I think I should just focus on onsite SEO and very few backlinks to support it (like social signals and related directories).
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    • Profile picture of the author StevieJK
      Originally Posted by econnors View Post

      SEO is always getting turned on its head, ear, toe, etc. This is nothing new and folks have been raving about it for a while now. The worse thing is that "SEO is dead". OMG! What are we all to do?

      We do the same thing that should have been done in the first place - selling a solution. Don't sell a "rank". Ranks are peanuts. What you want to sell is conversions. How do people behave when they land on the site? Is it user-friendly? Does the content make sense? Does it drive a buyer through the sales funnel in some fashion?

      If you call a business to sell SEO, you will always lose. If you call the business to increase their profits, your batting average is much better. Furthermore, it isn't about making promises as you mentioned above -- it's about properly setting clients expectations that they will receive some benefit from your efforts. Local keywords are somewhat simple to optimize as long as you find ones without high competition.
      I think this post sums it all up perfectly. Nuff said
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      • Profile picture of the author ElijahBrewer
        Originally Posted by StevieJK View Post

        I think this post sums it all up perfectly. Nuff said
        I agree. You have to do things to generate business for clients, The offline game is not SEO, SEO is a component of services that produces results for offline clients. In fact, I beat up "SEO guys" all day long with offline clients. I focus on generating revenue. SEO is like putting up a big billboard on the highway...no one is going to get off the exit unless there is something good on that sign!
        -To your success
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        • Profile picture of the author RRG
          Or said another way . . .

          SEO is a feature.

          More revenue and profits is a benefit.

          Sell benefits, not features.
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          • Profile picture of the author santi
            Selling SEO or websites to clients is another reason why IT guys do not do very well. People are not interested in backlinks or On Page SEO - they just do not care. What they want is more leads to their business's - especially in today's tough economic business climate.
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  • Profile picture of the author iAmNameLess
    SEO isn't upside down... the SEO community that thrives on misinformation, hype, and myth... is upside down.
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    • Profile picture of the author ePolymath
      My company has a huge number of established websites.

      A lot of them are focused niche sites. Not the spammy 1-2 page ones you see but with 10+ pages of good engaging content.

      While some are not ranking as high as they used to. A lot of them have increased in rankings recently. That's just how SEO works - you gain some, you lose some .

      There is not enough time in the day to do anything else if you obsess over each ranking you lose or gain. We build a site, add high quality content, put the SEO guys on it and forget it.

      So far it has worked just fine. I'm not inclined to start tracking the rankings anytime soon.

      Google is always going to blow smoke to scare you. Stop reading too much into and keep working on your website. If you are not already doing so, definitely a good time to consider diversifying your traffic sources.
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