subject: Get The Most Out Of Your SEO Professional [print this page] Many businesses go through all kinds of steps before hiring a search engine optimization professional. Unfortunately, they often then sabotage that person from the outset.
Get The Most Out Of Your SEO Professional
As a person providing seo services, I can tell you there is one area that is almost always a point of conflict with clients. This area has to do with communication, particularly from the client to the person or business handling the seo campaign.
Many businesses sabotage their seo professional right from the start of the game. It all has to do with knowledge. A seo professional is very knowledgeable about the search engine ranking process. He or she can tell you oodles of information about algorithms, back links, inbound links, keyword density and other issues you probably are not particularly interested in. On the other hand, it is a mistake to assume your seo wizard is knowledgeable about your product or service area.
Any business has a secret bit of crucial knowledge locked away in the minds of a few individuals high up in the company. This knowledge is protected with great effort since it is deemed to be the key to success for the business. Although each business is different, this nugget usually has to do with why prospects purchase the product or service being offered by the business. If you do not provide this information to your seo professional, problems will arise.
Consider the following situation. A seo firm is retained by a client selling products. The seo rep asks all kinds of questions about the typical customer for the business, product lines and so on. From this, a keyword list is developed and the client is asked to review it and make any comments about any additions they can think of. The business reports no changes. A year down the line, the client has top rankings on dozens of high traffic keywords on Google, Yahoo and MSN, but sales are less than expected.
At this point, there is usually a serious meeting with the players to try to figure out what is going on. During the meeting, some little tidbit is mentioned that makes the seo professional groan. The tidbit is inevitably internal business information regarding why prospects purchase from the business.