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12 Ways to Butcher Your SEO Campaign
By Mike Murray | July 25, 2007
Want to avoid putting your SEO campaign on life support?
It might help to know what can result if you can’t keep up with the rapidly growing industry tools (free and expensive) or can’t stuff your ego somewhere dark – like a closet.
Here are 12 sure-fire ways to legally kill your strategy. The death watch will vary depending on how much you emphasize each:
1. Assume responsibilities you can’t handle
I’ve been working with online marketing since 1997. Believe me, it’s getting tougher to keep up with each facet.
Key team members at Fathom SEO keep my head above water so I can see what’s going on around me. If you’re new to this (or if you’ve been messing around awhile), take a long look in the mirror and decide if you’re really cut out for search engine optimization.
Do you know the tactics and the language of the field? SERPs aren’t drinks. They’re fun to look at, but don’t mean a whole lot until they’re united with more useful data.
Natural search engine optimization will fail (or at least fall incredibly short of its potential) if you’re also busy doing paid search, writing an annual report, working on media relations, keeping up with summer re-runs, evaluating web analytics, appeasing clients/co-workers and buying print ads.
2. Resist Holistic Thinking
Turf battles are kind of fun to watch, but being a player isn’t a joy. Web site marketers want link love, but they have to give love too. Need an image? If you’re old, think Hands Across America (circa 1986). Otherwise, crowd surfing will do (everyone’s a friend).
Share keyword research, traffic data, creative and other information with other folks on your team. You are on the same team, right?
3. Put ROI Improvements on the Back Burner
Rankings and traffic are just the start. Heck, even web analytics has limits. How sound is your company’s ROI strategy? Is someone really using page views as your KPI? Wow, that’s not exciting.
How well do your natural search engine optimization efforts correspond with your company’s ROI initiatives?
Ultimately, it’s about brand, lead generation and the bottom line. Do you have a compelling message? Is your phone number visible? What fonts are you using? How crowded is your page? How are you tracking leads with technology? Do human beings even ask how a caller found the web site?
4. Keep ego in clouds. Fail to lock in closet
Maybe you know how to do some things, but not others. Admit it and move on.
Where can you do the most damage? Keyword selection. If your web site is new, has few pages and no link bait, what do you expect? The results of keyword research can be captivating. It turns mature adults into toddlers with one-word vocabularies: “Gimme.”
Gimme?
Yep, I see it all of the time. When I show someone deep search data, they push for search terms people use the most. “Too competitive” aren’t words anyone wants to hear me say. I’m working on a professional way to say: “YOU DON’T DESERVE THAT KEYWORD.”
Go for less competitive keywords and see how they perform. If you earn a gold sticker for those, you can move to a higher grade.
Longer search terms get less traffic, but they improve the odds of higher conversions.
5. Misdiagnose Rankings
You got a #3 on MSN? Big deal. What was the search term? Show me the traffic and then tell me about conversions. If you’re easily excited by rankings, take some medicine to calm you down.
What if two pages rank for the same search term? Are you going to work on both the page ranking #8 and the other one ranking #18 on Google? Does the #8 page appeal to you more?
Three ABCs to mull over:
A. Which has a better chance to conversions?
B. Which one is easier to rank even higher?
C. Which one might better serve another search term?
6. Settle for Limited Content
I’m sorry if your web site wasn’t designed with search engine optimization in mind. Now it’s YOUR problem. Adding tons of content with all of the theme games takes time and sensitivity (to keyword relationships, web site content messages, usability, etc.).
Start somewhere – like your home page and some product/service pages. Turn graphics into text. It’s not that hard. CSS is your friend. If you’ve never met CSS, find someone who dates CSS.
7. Serve Brochure, Not Link Bait
Maybe your web site has more copy than your two-line boldfaced listing in the Yellow Pages. And that accomplishes what? Why would anyone in their right mind link to you? You had better line up some white papers, tools, studies, or downloads. And don’t buy the “buzz” about how great content generates links. Sure, it does if it’s REALY, REALLY hot (and it doesn’t have to be sexy either). Chances are, you’re going to need to do your part. It’s going to cost money.
8. Ignore Social Sites in Your Industry
While your lawyers haggle about what you can and can’t post in your still-on-the-drawing-board blog, spend time on your competitors’ and industry blogs. Are you an expert? How will anyone know if you don’t wave your insight now and then? Even if you don’t post, be a sponge, apply your own experience and do a better job than yesterday.
Social resources abound. Here’s one: Check out Serph.
9. Fail to Keep Up with the SEO World
How good will you be if you don’t at least read what the experts are talking about? If you survey the land, you can get a pretty good handle on what’s worth your energy. Try this on for size: SEOmoz Ranking Factors Version 2.
10. Play One-Shot Games with Page Titles
If you fail to put keywords in your page titles, you will suffer if you never change them after the first time. Bigger web sites can get around this rule because they have other things going for them (age, size, links, content). Most sites need them. Should the company name appear first or last? I don’t care. Try both ways on strategic pages and see what happens. I hope it’s a short company name.
11. View SEO as a Shopping Spree
Yep, your analysis is sure to have holes if your SEO “strategy” means stuffing web site pages like a giant turkey. Don’t try everything at once. Just because you get a notion or read something at a forum doesn’t mean you should poking your SEO project like it’s a lab animal.
Staggering is a better bet. Get the site architecture ready. Evaluate. Beef up the titles and meta data. Evaluate. Build that content. Evaluate. Work on the internal linking within the content. Evaluate. Watch the incoming links, etc.
12. Work Around Graphic Headers
Work around? Are you kidding? So you’ll end up creating some extra text high on the page and impede the usabiulity just because someone won’t let you change graphic page headers to text? Put your foot down.
From that list, is there anything you can improve? Be honest. Look in the mirror. What can you pull off? It’s time to get started.
Visit our search engine marketing forum.
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July 26th, 2007 at 8:41 am
Nice, concise list.
My favorite was No. 5, especially the “If you’re easily excited by rankings, take some medicine to calm you down.”
July 26th, 2007 at 11:41 am
I’d like to comment on #8: Ignore Social Sites in Your Industry. A lot of people won’t bother to do even the simplest browsing of a few of the leading industry blogs and social communities in their market. As you suggested, they should be commenting in these spaces and building their reputation, and then commenting on their own blog, or at least contribute regularly to someone else’s. The explanation I usually get is something like Killer #1: “I just don’t have time.” Why can’t these people delegate or scale back on something else? Ignoring social sites is like trying to win an election without catering to your biggest and most influential audience: “I’ll just ignore Ohio and Florida and hope my strong contingent in Rhode Island can carry me.” Thanks, Mike, for urging people to wake up and think rationally.
July 26th, 2007 at 11:52 am
I appreciate the perspectives that have been shared. The whole point is to do an inventory - what can someone do better on their own or as a team? Where are the weaknesses that should be corrected?
–Mike Murray
July 26th, 2007 at 11:26 pm
Nicely put Mike.
July 30th, 2007 at 10:19 am
I thought that all the tips were great! However, my favorite was number 8. You have to be involved in you industry, including your industry that is on the internet.
July 31st, 2007 at 2:03 pm
I think the other big mistake people make is only targeting individual keyphrases, and landing pages. Instead of targeting the keyphrases but optimizing the entire site for random internal search landings.
August 1st, 2007 at 8:56 am
Number 5 is very true, when nobody else has a search term you use then of course you rank high, but nobody would probably search using that. I am new to all this so I am trying to find automated methods like molten amrketing, any ideas.
August 1st, 2007 at 8:25 pm
What if you are a nonprofit with an unreal long name, such “Goodwill/Easter Seals Minnesota”? Do I have to put that in the meta-tag for every page and then what if someone types in goodwill or just Easter Seals or Goodwill minnesota or Easter Seals minnesota? I’ve read so much on this, but am in a quandary. Four key words right there in our name.
Excellent, informative article with really useful info.
August 2nd, 2007 at 5:23 am
Great list! Being a marketing manager, new to seo, I’ve still got a lot to learn. What I do find difficult is impressing on the rest of the management team that high rankings for competitive keywords are just not going to happen anytime soon - the thought-process seems to be - ‘well you’re now ‘doing’ seo, why aren’t we seeing results?!?’
August 5th, 2007 at 1:26 am
Fabulous post! I really enjoyed this, and I will pass it on to friends and coworkers.
August 6th, 2007 at 9:55 am
http://www.fathomseo.com/blog/wp-admin/post.php?action=edit&post=187 You inserted a wrong link. :)
August 8th, 2007 at 6:22 pm
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August 10th, 2007 at 9:19 pm
[...] 12 Ways t0 Butcher Your SEO Campaign [...]
December 8th, 2007 at 5:07 pm
Nice Post - 12 very good points!
December 27th, 2007 at 4:04 pm
Very entertaining yet insightful blog post Mr. Murray. I think there is a lot to be said for optimizers getting lazy once they think its all figured out. Then the SEO world passes them by
Very entertaining yet insightful blog post Mr. Murray. I think there is a lot to be said for optimizers getting lazy once they think its all figured out. Then the SEO world passes them by
July 16th, 2008 at 6:27 pm
[...] 12 Ways to Butcher Your SEO Campaign Fathom SEO [...]