Is SEO really the be all and end all for risidual income?

9 replies
My question is regarding attempts to get local companies to the top of Google organic searches. Search Engine Optimisation, in my definition is purely about getting clients via the search engines, yet in recent times people seem to have lumped Social Networking into this category.

Really what I am getting at here is regarding offering LOCAL businesses SEO services, why is this such a popular thing to do? To me it seems like "easy risidual income".

I used to work for a large, but shoddy SEO company who provided their service on the "cheap" (compared to other companies) but all we did was SEO their page titles, meta data and on page content and then add them to about 10 directories and that was it. The ongoing monthly fee the client paid was so we sent out a report each month which showed them where they appeared in the different search engines for their 2 or 3 keywords we targetted.

I found that for some keywords we would offer, the very uncompetitive ones were easy to get into the top 10, but these were not searched for very often. So how is that helping the business?

It got more competitive with estate agencies and photographers and many others, and our SEOing of their site just didnt get them anywhere near the top and alas to say these were the people I was constantly on the phone to blagging them into "giving things more time" and pi$$ing them off even more.

Now obviously, as I said the company I worked for only did a very limited job per client, and sure dedicating more time to these clients would probably yield better results, but it seems every web developer now offers SEO as part of their service and every man and his dog are doing it. It seems that its become so saturated, that starting a campaign now just may not be worthwhile.

It seems that Google Places and Facebook are much better options specifically for business who only operate locally. I am not sure how easy or difficult it is to get a business listed on the first page of the Google Places listings, but I have seen many of these still unclaimed by the business, so I am guessing people are not yet fully exploiting this service.

But Facebook seems like a perfect opertunity with the ability to create pages, people to share links, like pages, open up discounts and offers just by liking a page and all this gets shared amongst that persons list of friends. Facebook offers a platform where the company lets it's clients advertise for them to all of their friends!

I am just about to venture out into my own Offline business and have had real hangups about offering "SEO" services through past experiences. But I feel offering mobile Mobile websites, SMS campaigns, Google Places listings and Facebook page creation and updates makes for a good RISIDUAL income service.
#end #income #risidual #seo
  • Profile picture of the author barbling
    Originally Posted by JToneyUK View Post

    ...
    I am just about to venture out into my own Offline business and have had real hangups about offering "SEO" services through past experiences. But I feel offering mobile Mobile websites, SMS campaigns, Google Places listings and Facebook page creation and updates makes for a good RISIDUAL income service.
    I've discovered that it doesn't matter what *you* think...it matters what the client thinks is important. And since everyone and their coffeecup is baying about SEO, your clients might expect that too.

    Bundling in SEO with all the great ideas you listed on top certainly makes sense! But you have to demonstrate just *why* you feel that would help your future clients.

    It all comes down to, what's the best way of driving targeted, buying traffic to your client...and then positioning that in a way the client understands. I have clients who are in the top 10 for all their local keywords but because they themselves don't understand how Google search works, they don't value that. But hearing that customers came in because of 'their cool webpage' - that they listen to. Go figure.

    Hope that helps!
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  • Profile picture of the author JToneyUK
    Lol yeah I know what you mean. If they want an SEO service I can provide them that, but I will not ever promise them I will get their website onto Page 1. If there's not a guarantee, they might not want the service, but I'd be there to discuss why it's not a promise I can make and that there are oter ways to market themselves.
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  • Profile picture of the author oogyboogawa
    If the extent of your SEO campaigns is going to be similar to the company you used to work for, then you're probably right it's relatively useless for you to start doing that for the companies.

    However, I've been successfully doing SEO for my own affiliate and adsense sites and just recently started looking at offering services to local businesses - and I have yet to see a localized search that I would truly consider competitive. I'm not going to say it isn't there, but I haven't seen it yet. And I've looked at a handful in cities like Chicago and Boston.

    Sure those might take longer than a listing in Bushton, Kansas (I just zoomed in on a map of Kansas and chose a random town)- but it is certainly doable with time. It just takes a whole lot more than optimizing the title tags...
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  • Profile picture of the author JToneyUK
    But the point being, for example, the phrase "used car sales in Bushton" will probably get searched for a handful of times a month if at all, so where's the benefit to the client? I could tell them that term doesn't get searched for, but "used car sales in Kansas" does, they would wanna be found for that which then becomes massively competitive (probably). And obviously a car dealer based in one town does not wanna be being found on a search referencing the entire State obviously.

    Anyway, I guess you have to weigh up the costs/benefits for the client, or they have to.
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  • Profile picture of the author oogyboogawa
    You basically took the opposite of my point and ran with it... My point wasn't that you should start calling up businesses in Bushton. My point was that even the terms that get a decent amount of traffic are still doable, they just take more than optimized title tags.
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    • Profile picture of the author JToneyUK
      Originally Posted by oogyboogawa View Post

      You basically took the opposite of my point and ran with it... My point wasn't that you should start calling up businesses in Bushton. My point was that even the terms that get a decent amount of traffic are still doable, they just take more than optimized title tags.
      Yeah I get what you mean, but I still don't like the uncertainty of the business lol.
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      • Profile picture of the author oogyboogawa
        Originally Posted by JToneyUK View Post

        Yeah I get what you mean, but I still don't like the uncertainty of the business lol.

        My whole point though is that I don't get what uncertainty you're talking about. I don't see how it's really that much more uncertain than anything else.

        That's like saying, why should I sell SMS services to clients because what happens if no one ever signs up for their text messages. Well, yeah if neither you or the client have a clue what you're doing, then things may never go anywhere and the money will be wasted. But hopefully if you are selling the service then either you know more about it than that or are working with someone that does. So you wouldn't have to worry about them not getting sign ups because you know how to get people to sign up.

        If you know SEO or are outsourcing through someone who does, there really isn't as much guesswork as you're making it sound like with offering SEO services. Sure, I wouldn't promise them they'll be ranked #1 and receiving 25 leads everyday by the end of the first month - but if whoever is doing your SEO knows what they're doing then the client's site will at least be moving up gradually.

        You're relating it to your experience working with a shoddy SEO company, but some people do a lot more for SEO than optimized title tags and a handful of directory submissions. That to me is the equivelent of selling an SMS service, printing off a sign promoting the SMS list, and then sticking that sign in a drawer where no one will ever see it. It will never go anywhere but if someone does that it doesn't mean that SMS services are uncertain hardly worth using.


        SEO doesn't happen overnight on searches with higher competition, but then neither does building an SMS list, or an email list, or most other things of that nature - that doesn't mean they are too uncertain to be viable.


        That was a lot longer than I intended originally. I wanted to explain more though because my main background is SEO so that's what I understand more, and sometimes when I am looking at other marketing techniques that I'm not as familiar with it can be easier to discount them. So I want to caution you not to do that because I catch myself doing it. Instead, I am trying to challenge myself to learn more about the different strategies that I'm not as familiar with and see how they can be used effectively.
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  • Profile picture of the author JToneyUK
    Yeah I know what you're saying, but my point of uncertaintly is more about SEO and it's workings being in the control of Google, rather than the SEO provider.

    SEO people are basically finding ways to work the ever changing system. Example being the Panda update and how it affected so many sites. Then there are other sites being "slapped" because Google doesn't like the goings on. I am not saying this will even happen to a professional SEOer, obviously people will do it the right way. But it is still not fully in the SEO persons control.

    Infact I'm sure the panda update was a gold mine for some SEO companies in that they then had to figure out how to get their clients back up the rankings and maybe brought in more revenue.

    With a SMS campaign, it can be started and stopped and is in my full control what gets sent when (unless my service goes out of business). I can GUARENTEE to the client that I can send out an SMS text promoting an offer to them to a targetted list. I can't guarantee them that "at some point down the line" they will be on the first page of Google, because that is out of my control.

    Hopefully you get me. Don't get me wrong, if many of my clients are asking for SEO services to get an organic google ranking and they want to pay me well for it, I would look into it more, but really make sure they are aware of the unknows of SEO and Google.

    I just don't fancy the hassle of clients wondering why they are still not in the first 5 pages for their keywords and I can't tell them anything other than "I'm doing all I can which usually works with other websites, it's not in my control though, it's in Google's".
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