ISEdb.COM

Search engine marketing is an extremely complicated topic. With the sector starting to branch off into several highly specialized fields, SEO/SEM is becoming more difficult to explain to those not involved in the industry. Now that SEO/SEM has become an essential element in website marketing campaigns, businesses are spending more time researching the sector before choosing a SEO/SEM firm. The increasingly complex and stratified environment has made it harder for companies to make an informed decision when choosing a service vendor.

Consumer confusion regarding SEO/SEM is a problem in the sector, especially as this confusion can have a big impact on clients’ expectations of their chosen vendor. There are a number of simple things SEO and SEM firms can do to help guide consumers through the growing labyrinth of information available to them.

Keep your site simple
The first and most important thing is to keep your website simple. Think about who is visiting your SEO/SEM site and why they are there. Unless they have already made a decision or are an existing client, every visitor to your site is a potential client either today or in the future. They are at your site because they are looking for information on SEO or SEM services and are likely comparing companies. Generally, site visitors are looking for three pieces of information when they visit SEO/SEM sites.

- Potential clients want to know that you know something about search engine marketing. Let your potential clients know a bit of what you know. You can write for years about SEM without giving away business secrets. Trust me on this one, the firm I worked with has been writing about SEM for five or six years and has only gotten busier every year. Clients trust these guys because they wear their business on their sleeves and make it easy for clients to make decisions.

- Potential clients want to know you are honest. Post a code of ethics on your website and adhere to this code. Define what the business means to you and how you do business with others. Not only will posting a code of ethics help you gain business, following ethical business practices helps the entire sector. One day, in a more professional universe, the majority of practitioners might actually agree on a standardized code of ethics but, unfortunately, that day has not yet arrived. In the absence of defined industry-wide ethical standards, potential clients want to know that the firm they choose has some.

- Potential are interested in your fee structure and long-term costs of the campaign. The bottom line is almost always the breaking point when it comes to making decisions. Oddly enough, how much you charge is often less important than how well the potential client understands why you charge it. As difficult as the idea may be, try to break down what you do, how you do it and the reasoning behind how you value your services. For many SEO/SEM firms, this is easier said than done as fees are often calculated based on gut-sense and educated guess. Every website that comes to an SEO/SEM firm is different and presents different challenges. Defining how you base your fees is a very difficult task however, you do have some form of method and even if it is based on your gut sense, you should offer some form of explanation.

If you can satisfy visitors’ questions on these three points, the business of sales is much simpler. If your site doesn’t provide this information, you are likely losing business to your competitors.

Help Define the News and Views for your Clients
Offer links (target=”_blank”) to specific discussion forums or highly read news-sites. There are seven major forums and news sites most SEOs and major media reference for their information. Letting your potential clients know about them should help confirm your grasp on the industry and the incredible amount of information associated with the industry.

http://www.isedb.com/news
http://www.searchenginewatch.com
http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/
http://www.webmasterworld.com/
http://www.ihelpyouservices.com/forums
http://www.seotoday.com/
http://www.webpronews.com

These are the sites that the major news-wires carry content from. There are other important news-sites SEOs refer to daily but they tend to originate from the older, more established SEM firms and thus subtly push the services of those firms.

Offer Real Statistics
Which offers a better PPC conversion rate, AdWords or Overture? What about the other PPC engines, what is the market share they serve? The real question is, “What are you spending my money on?”

Clients really do want to know that their idea that Google rules is correct. They should also know that Yahoo, MSN, AOL, AskJeeves and Vivisimo exist and serve a large enough segment of search-engine users to think about.

Communicate in Plain English
Lastly, give the potential client a break and speak to them in a language they can understand. Ten years after the advent of the world wide web and many who work on it still think they need to impress potential clients with geek-speak and techno-babble. One might think this impresses other geeks but, after working with mainstream business X# of years, geeks who choose vendors want to choose someone who can talk to their boss and make him or her feel smarter than the average CEO. Chances are, you are just as smart as the average SEO, so don’t try to out-style the CEOs, you really don’t need to.

There are a few other things SEO/SEM sites can offer visitors who are researching the industry or specific vendors but these are the ones the majority of my clients seemed to want information on. As service vendors, we need to remember that SEM consumers have a huge amount of information to wade through before they can begin to feel informed. SEO/SEM firms can help turn a data swamp into a placid pool by offering direct sources to consumers. By simply making it as simple as possible, the entire sector will benefit and SEO scamsters will have a harder time making their spameo appearances.