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Search Engine Optimization (SEO) FAQs

Todd WoldQ: What types of results and/or improvements can professional SEO services provide?
A: The results and/or improvements from an SEO program can be very impressive, but a client’s bandwidth and budget usually dictate how much or how little improvement SEO services generate, as well as how fast improvements occur. However, even on a relatively low budget, it is not uncommon to see the percentage of search engine traffic (total site traffic / traffic from search engines) double or triple, even quadruple within the first six months of an SEO program. And, while it may be difficult to trace all those results directly back to the SEO program, doubling the amount of overall site visitors is a fair and obtainable goal for most newly optimized sites within the first six months. Note, however, that the ability of your site to then convert new and returning visitors into customers is what ultimately makes a SEO program successful.
Case study:
Captaris made our recommended site modifications to attract top tier search engines, directories and industry resource sites. In a twelve-month period, we generated the following results for Captaris:
  • Inbound links increased from 222 to 597
  • Google monthly visits increased from 6,439 to 11,001
  • Yahoo monthly visits increased from 1,378 to 3,034
  • Total monthly search engine visits increased from 13,800 to 21,214
Q: What are the typical costs for SEO services?
A: For most business-to-business (B2B) websites, a budget of $1,500 to $3000 per month for a full-service SEO campaign over six months is typical. However, each client requires a slightly different solution, and estimating can get even more complicated if SEO services are part of a more comprehensive redesign project.
The following is typically included in a full-service SEO program:
  • Benchmarking current site rankings across top-tier engines
  • Research and discovery (what are your competitors doing, is your site content deep enough, etc…)
  • Development of a master keyword list to focus the SEO effort
  • Recommendations for usability, design, and functionality improvements
  • Optimization of web pages – optimizing code and making content edit recommendations
  • Development of additional web pages, as needed
  • Submission to appropriate search engines and directories
  • Development and management of search engine advertising (pay-per-click) campaigns
  • Analyzing website log files and making recommendations on improvements
Depending upon a client’s needs, the following activities may also be recommended:
  • Design alterations
  • Documentation syndication (marketing white papers, articles, etc…)
  • Email marketing campaigns
  • Link development program
  • Banner advertising (on directories and other resource sites)
  • eNewsletter program development
Other factors may also impact a company’s Internet marketing budget, such as costs for search engine advertising programs (pay-per-click or PPC). Some clients spend $400 a month for PPC, others $2000 a month, while enterprise-level companies may easily spend $15,000 a month. Pay-per-click budgets are both flexible and highly measurable.
Other programs can impact budgeting as well. For instance, there are Internet companies that offer programs to syndicate whitepapers, datasheets, demos, and other downloadable content to over 100 different IT resource sites. A three-month program on one of these document syndication networks may cost up to $15,000 for promoting up to 10 “downloadables” across their partnering IT resource sites, but the number of potential a company receives usually makes this cost-effective.
Q: What is the time frame for noticeable SEO results?
A: Significant and measurable results can be seen within just a month (from search engine advertising campaigns – otherwise known as pay-per-click (PPC) advertising). Within three to six months, assuming a quick implementation schedule, SEO efforts will begin to push site visitor numbers steadily upward, as more and more newly optimized pages become indexed. Please note that to achieve these results some sites require web page structure alterations – not only to make the site user friendly, but also search engine friendly. Moderate to extensive restructuring will push out the timeframes for achieving noticeable results.
Q: Does SEO contribute more to short-term success or long-term success?
A: Both. In the short term, site optimization certainly can be measurably successful. Many companies have immediate problems, such as low last-month sales or a need to attract more traffic to a new product or service section of the site. In such instances, keyword campaigns can quickly be implemented to drive targeted traffic to the site immediately.
Long-term success is where most companies truly benefit. However, in addition to having a great SEO and Internet marketing program, long-term success also relies on designing and populating a site so that it captures visitors and gives them a reason to come back and, eventually, contact Sales. In other words, SEO can bring your site a lot of search engine traffic, but it is up to your site to convert that traffic to sales. For this reason, most SEO service offerings extend beyond SEO and Internet marketing to include site usability and conversion analysis.
SEO services should include ensuring that your site is user-friendly and user-centric, as well as search-engine friendly. In order to do this, an SEO professional needs to understand your goals and objectives for the site, your business, your competitors (both online and offline, as they are typically different) and your industry. At that point, an SEO professional can make recommendations and alterations to the site aimed at improving its usability and functionality. Only then can you be assured that an increased percentage of search engine traffic (as well as all other forms of Internet traffic) will turn into return visitors, and that an increased percentage of those return visitors will turn into paying customers.
Q: What is a competitive SEO assessment?
A: This is not mission-critical in order to get an SEO campaign going, but it is simply smart business to be aware of what others are doing around you, direct competitors or others. An SEO professional will look at your competitors’ sites to see how they are treating their own content to determine what methods and hooks they use to drive traffic to their sites, how they get users through the sales process (such as ROI calculators, particular resource links, etc…), what keyphrases they are targeting, what online advertising channels they are using, and many other competitive elements. Understanding these data points allows an SEO professional to competitively position your website online to maximize search engine visibility.
Q: Which search engines do you focus on in optimizing clients’ websites?
A: No single search engine is the be-all-end-all, but Google sure seems like it sometimes. If you optimize for Google, you are likely to be set up to do well in all the other major engines as well. Google will likely be the search engine responsible for driving more than 60% of search engine traffic to your site. An SEO professional stays current on tactics, technology and all the engines that are sneaking up behind Google, like Yahoo!, MSN, Ask.com and Teoma.
Q: In your opinion, what are the most relevant search sites and why?
A: Google, because it first became popular among the IT crowd, and continues to be their engine of choice. Since then, the rest of the population has also discovered Google, so it is now the most popular search site in general. Simply having a well-optimized site will get you great exposure on Google even without paid listings.
Yahoo! comes in second in driving traffic to a given site. Yahoo! has recently made some big changes that will likely ensure the continuation of its long-standing competition with Google for being the best search site on the web.
MSN continues to consistently fall into the #3 slot for driving search engine traffic to our clients’ websites. MSN has typically used other search technology to drive results, however, and have recently launched their own search engine technology. Analysts are predicting it will eventually give both Yahoo! and Google a run for their money.
Other sites (Lycos, AOL, FAST, Alta Vista, Teoma, DogPile, MetaCrawler, etc…) are all pretty good as well. Not only will each bring in some targeted traffic, but by getting into all of these engines, you improve your rankings across the board. In other words, if one engine notices that your site is listed well in other engines, it will figure your site to be all the more relevant and increase your ranking accordingly. But then, the other engines note your site’s increased ranking in that one search engine, so they then increase your ranking… and so on… and so on.
Q: Do SEO companies that use “risky” techniques achieve better results for their clients?
A: To be honest, yes they can, but only in the short term. Risky techniques require constant monitoring and constant change (to try to outsmart search engine spiders), therefore SEO service fees to maintain risky techniques can easily become cost-prohibitive compared to results. Even worse, risky techniques are considered risky because they are unethical, putting your site at risk of being banned from the search engines. Short-term success is not worth potential long-term problems.
Q: Will modifications to our site’s content be required for optimization?
A: Almost always, the answer is yes – that is, if you want to truly do well, as creating keyword-rich content is critical to the entire SEO program. If your site currently lacks that, then you will need to alter and/or enhance your copy. However, these copy changes can be minor.
Q: Are there any guarantees to SEO services?
A: Sometimes guarantees are offered, but if you see one, it’s almost always a bad sign. This is not because SEO services cannot achieve great results; it is simply because there are numerous variables out of our control (i.e. the search engine algorithms). If you come across a firm that does offer one, we suggest you read the fine print before taking their guarantee seriously.
There are several good articles about SEO guarantees; here is one worth reading: http://websearch.about.com/library/weekly/aa120302a.htm.
That said, here is quick example of why SEO guarantees are scarce. It is possible that an SEO professional optimizes your site perfectly, but yet you still do not achieve rankings as high as you would like. One major reason this could happen is because of the lack of relevant industry links (such as listings in resource sites, published articles in online trade magazines, etc.) pointing to your site. In other words, your content and code might be better optimized than your competitor, but because they have many more times the amount of links pointing to their site than you have, they will beat you out in ranking results. At this point, you could certainly acquire links to your site and work towards beating them in ranking, but budget may not allow you to do it quickly or extensively.
But even with a few great links, plus industry standard optimization tactics, you can be confident that good results are obtainable. If rankings are suffering due to the lack of links, you could simply continue the link development program and work towards achieving #1 rankings. And don’t forget, link development has two benefits: it is great for improving your rankings, and is also an excellent way to drive additional traffic to your site from linked resource sites.
Q: Once our main SEO goals have been achieved, what do you recommend to ensure that the gains are not lost over time?
A: A common misperception with web projects is that they are like offline projects: once they’re delivered, they’re finished. This is not the case for web-based projects of any kind. When a site is launched, it is only the birth of something that continues to grow. The web is constantly changing. A few key agents of that change are:
  • New technology is always arising
  • Your company’s strategic direction may change over time, causing you to rethink how you’ll achieve your goals and objectives
  • Rankings will change as search engine algorithms (the math that makes up the engines’ ranking systems) change
  • New search engines will appear and existing search engines will die off
It never stops changing. The only cure is constantly keeping abreast of the changes and then changing with them. But, this effort should only be part of a larger ongoing effort to keep your site updated and fresh looking, well branded, positioned appropriately, user-friendly, etc. so that it functions as a powerful component of your marketing mix.