There’s nothing like returning to the bonfire to see how hot it really is. I was a rather good SEO back in the mid-90′s when I considered it fun to be one. Once everything was rigged by money, the work lost its thrill for me.
Even though I moved into Internet software usability and user experience QA testing and usability/user experience web site design, and later, the art of information architecture, I was never able to sever my roots in organic SEO. The way I see it, there’s no logic in pouring money into PPC, ad words, link buying and all related activities if a web site sucks once the target visitor gets there. Note that I said “target visitor”. This isn’t the same thing as throwing money into the search engine breeze, hoping a dollar of it lands on the head of any person who may be persuaded to click into a web site.
In August I officially returned to the SEO industry, working for a local company who had first hired me last year do perform a usability audit for their web site. The company has someone at management level smart enough to understand the value of search engine marketing along with a web site designed to convert once a visitor arrives. Even if a generally vague and unsure person lands on a page, we’re working on making that act convert by creating funnels that signal their specific needs. These are the types of things I recommend to clients but I never get to know if they implemented them. Now, in my new job, I’m remembering why I left SEO.
One of them is the burden an SEO carries. I’ve long sensed fear and desperation by some members at Cre8asiteforums when they come for help. It sometimes sounds as if their jobs are at stake if they don’t get advice. Like politics, if something is desired and it doesn’t happen fast enough, the person(s) doing the work are removed (fired, voted out of office.)
Jill Whalen’s latest newsletter highlighted one of situations with Expected Traffic Increase After SEO. A writer asks,
Our CEO is looking for a specific goal in site traffic generated by organic search, based on our implementing SEO recommendations.
Let me guess. That “specific goal” is a 70 – 100% increase in conversion rates in about 2 months of a mix of organic SEO and PPC. Without needing to read any farther, I know what’s being asked for. It’s a combination of high page rank, high position in SERPS, a sharp increase in traffic and a miraculous leap from that to increased sales. It’s that miraculous leap that CEO’s and management are asking for, without having any clue what it means. They just want it.
And, they want it in writing and guaranteed. Or the SEO is banished from the kingdom.
I have a better idea these days about why black and gray hat tactics remain. They’re there to save an SEO’s ass. Some industries are so filled up with sites that desperate measures are called into play, regardless of whether they are blessed by search engines. I have a natural fear of buying links that comes from experience. Some CEO’s love to gamble though and are perfectly fine with throwing thousands of dollars to buy inbound links from high PR sites. What happens when that link selling site is caught and it’s yanked from search indexes? What does an SEO do when they attempt to describe risky practices and all the while management has their fingers stuck in their ears singing “La La La La, sorry I can’t hear you.”
Jill wrote:
In addition, you probably shouldn’t be looking at a month-to-month increase in anything, but how each month compares to the same month in the year before. This is because there are often seasonal shifts in traffic, even for B2B sites, due to vacations, holidays, etc.
How many SEO’s never had a year to prove their efforts weren’t done in vain?
Unfortunately many of you aren’t wealthy enough to tell your boss to go stick it when they blame you for high bounce rates or low time spent on the site. Even suggesting to management that cleaning up landing pages or performing a usability site audit to find where it throws out visitors is nightmare material. How do you ask them to invest more money when they’ve got you, the holy SEO, to wave your magic wand?
I understand why so many folks who gained fame in the SEO industry jumped ship for related practices such as social media marketing or content writing. The long term success of a company isn’t sitting on their shoulders now. They’ve paid their dues. I also understand why so many SEO companies are rip-offs and scam artists who find it easy to rob companies. It’s because the myth of SEO = conversions has been accepted as reality. Those who hire SEO-fakers don’t ask questions first. Those who write articles and give talks on SEO=conversions rarely mention all the pieces of the pie. To this day, the topic of usability is so looked down on by the SEO industry that even those in the usability industry have given up trying to reach out to SEO’s.
I’d really like to see more SEO practitioners widen the scope of their methods to include insisting that the site’s they’re assigned to convert will follow up with properly designed landing pages, excellent navigation, obvious tasks and calls to action once they get to the site, and decrease bounce rates by not aiming for any old traffic.
Conversions are fools gold when not mined for by those who know what the hell they’re doing. Companies who hire SEO help must be taught exactly what it is they’re asking for so that when they see numbers doing the tango, they will be patient, ask the proper questions and provide the SEO with all the assets they need to make the conversions process work. That includes a professional, attractive and conversion/persuasion designed web site.
It should also include not breathing down an SEO’s neck while they do battle on a company’s behalf.
Another excellent article Kim. I think the biggest challenge is in breaking out of the SEO acronym. It creates an often immovable barrier to people in our industry finding the motive to learn, let alone promote conversions at the organic level; a barrier to designers and developers from taking the advice of the “SEO” person on these topics; and ultimately the site owner from wanting to hear talk of more money needing to be expended when all they want is “SEO”.
It drives me batty when so much money is spent on adwords and PPC with no thought of making the landing page taking it to the next step. When did SEO turn into target practice? Hitting the mark is not dependent on a one shot moment. And it never was. After 15 years of this, it seems as though its time for an education revolution regarding the practice and expectations for SEO.
“It’s because the myth of SEO = conversions has been accepted as reality.”
I spent MONTHS trying to drum this into the heads of my former bosses. I don’t believe they ever accepted that rankings & click throughs did not miraculously lead to conversions, nor were the skill sets of SEOs and usability experts the same.
For them it was a numbers game. For them, everything was a numbers game. They acted as though I was simply trying to avoid having the additional work heaped on to my plate, when the reality was I didn’t have the expertise or tools to do the job they ignorantly wanted to shove under the huge umbrella labeled “SEO”.
And, as Alan pointed out above, if “SEO” is all they want, it is important to explain that “SEO is all they’ll get” by pointing out that SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION is, at its core, merely the means by which a site achieves strong rankings and subsequent clicks through to a site from SERPs. Controlling or attempting to control what happens when that click through occurs is another skill set/expertise entirely.
I agree 100% Kim, I’ve been working in SEO since ’99 and I’m amazed at the skill-set needed to get the job done these days, it’s a strange mix of tech and marketing all rolled into one.
As an in-house SEO I get this kind of pressure from above all the time. One thing that I have to continually drum into their heads is that SEO changes can take months, sometimes many months to have an effect and if you are looking for a quick fix, SEO is not going to do the trick for you. Now, being an in house SEO I can have much more influence in site design and usability, and having spent years in product merchandising I can also influence which products get featured prominently on the site, but at the end of the day, as an SEO conversions are the goal by which I am measured. For me it’s a bit of give and take. If I drive more qualified traffic and get more conversions that way, great. On the usability side, if the web team makes changes that hurt conversions I have to suck it up and live with it, just as when they make changes that improve conversions, that will benefit me. I do agree that holding an SEO responsible for conversions when they have no ability to affect the on site experience or the product merchandising, makes no sense.
Any consultant needs to manage expectations, and every SEO needs to do the same. When the job is assigned, it’s time to clarify expectations… not later. For direct questions like “how much increase in traffic will I see after SEO plan A” the answer needs to be “No one knows. Sounds like you need a test study, which can provide data for basing estimates”. Enter the boiler room SEO who needs to say YES to close the deal, or the weak employee who doesn’t know how to stand up with the truth.
A HUGE part of a good SEO consultant’s toolbox is decision support. It’s not magic and we’re not fortune tellers. But if we’re good, we know what we need to know to make estimates that support decision-making, and we know how to tell when such estimates need revising (and why), or when results don’t match SEO expectations (and we know how to investigate why).
Another great post Kim! And I do believe that’s exactly what you mean by Usability and HOLISTIC SEO.
I do think that as much as SEO is considered only as a means to improve rankings and CTR via search, and Usability as a means to improve user experience and business, there really is an asymptotical goal here which is optimization in general (to improve performance and be efficient)–and that in itself should be drummed into each HiPPO’s head.
It will always be an integrated effort. It will always be inside and out.
I loved the line: “How many SEO’s never had a year to prove their efforts weren’t done in vain?” because that is so true. It’s so much easier to prove results to the clients we’ve had for years than the newcomers. But the ones we’ve had for years are the ones who are sold on SEO anyway by definition, so it’s a Catch-22.
I agree; company should know exactly what they are paying for. SEO is no shortcut it can take many months for the results to appear. I think that it is also the responsibility of an seo to guide the company management in the right direction before hand so they can not say anything when results are getting late.
What a great post. I think you completely capture the issue. The biggest problem is an approach which does not see website from big picture. All the parts need to be optimized for website to work. Website has to look good, be user friendly, be optimized for conversion and get a traffic. And it has to happen in the same time. Of course without traffic even the best website is completely useless. That’s why I think every company should have someone to deal with all issues and everyone who deals with website should have basic knowledge of all related fields and issues.
Regarding CEO and their number games I think it is quite funny that it is normal to spend millions on untrackable offline marketing campaign but when it comes to online we need fast, trackable and miracleous results.
It seems like there are sooo many different sources for what is correct with SEO that it must make a SEO or SEM position in a company the ‘hot seat’. As Google and Bing play with their formulas often, new SEO ‘guru’s’ pop up out of the woodwork and create the latest-and-greatest ways to enhance your sites, there will be even more obsolete courses (in and out of universities) piling up and providing more chaos. Not to say I don’t like SEO – I have been playing with learning it for the past 12 months and really geek-out to it!!..very fun, but I wouldn’t want to base my paycheck on it on a day-to-day basis!
Bobbee
Inspired article, Kim!
John Andrews said it very well above. The role of SEO requires a great deal of decision-support and managing expectations.
SEO is not about waving a magic wand. It’s about testing, proving, and improving.
In the past, I was sometimes asked to “increase conversion on page x” but “not change the content or design of the page.” I’m still baffled as to what that person thought SEO is.
All the best,
Glenn
Conceptually SEO’s should not bear the burden of conversions, but in reality we do.
Driven by ignorance, misinformation and the need for immediate results, it’s no wonder that decision-makers rarely have a solid understanding of what it takes to develop a site, attract qualified traffic and then convert that traffic. Unfortunately the job of damage repair and education is often left to SEOs that don’t have enough control over the components necessary to produce results in a reasonable time frame.
I echo Michael’s sentiments above, however it’s important to note that CEOs believe that their marketing campaigns are trackable, regardless of reality. When confronted with the choice of a “solid” Return on Investment and a range of what may happen, I think most would go with the solid number….
We could talk a lot about this subject, but the truth is that without creativity we can do nothing, so not only learn everything you need to know about SEO, but also feed our brains to create new ideas.
Greetings.
Sergio Vergara
Hi there,
I started out as an SEO in the 1990’s and was associated with many of the early pioneers in the industry. As the story goes, my career took two sharp turns while working for some big name companies. Firstly, I got into user interface web design. Then, it was Internet software QA testing in the area of usability, user experience and functionality. When I switched to the latter, there were faint few resources for me, so I developed my own UX test plans and procedures that I rely on to this day in one form or another. I may still be only SEO/UX person skilled in the discipline of Requirements Gathering and Defect Tracking. I’m sub-contracted long term to a company for their Information Architecture needs for each client.
testking VCP-410
Kim thank you for the Inspiring article.
Regards
Adam