July 26, 2006

SEO Consulting – Outsourcing SEO Knowledge

SEO Consulting – Outsourcing SEO Knowledge
By Jim Hedger - March 30, 2006


A couple of days ago, I received a call from a west coast reader who works as a corporate recruiter. She had been asked to find an in-house SEO for one of her clients, a medium sized corporation. After recommending a number of SEO/SEM related forums and Ed Lewis’ SEO Consultants Directory, we started to talk about the cost/benefit of hiring an in-house SEO and outsourcing the work to a consultant. As our conversation moved from point to point, a number of issues surrounding hiring in-house SEO talent emerged.


Today the trend leans towards hiring in-house. A quick glance at employment websites such as Monster.com or Workopolis.ca shows a growing list of positions for SEOs who have two or more years of experience. The demand for experienced search marketers far outstrips the supply of really good practitioners, a situation evidenced by SEO salaries ranging from 30K at the low end to over 100K at the top.


As a measure of the success of the industry, entry level positions paying 30K and up show how valuable skill-sets held by SEOs are on the open market. Conversely, those figures might also indicate that the businesses hiring in-house SEOs are, by and large, ignorant of what exactly SEO means to their business.


Online businesses do know one thing with absolute certainty. The value of strong search engine placements is obvious. Websites or documents that enjoy prominent placement tend to make more money than sites lacking good rankings do. Sites that rank well on search engines have a much better chance of converting visitors to customers, simply because it is easier for those visitors to find those sites.


The value of hiring an in-house SEO shouldn’t be underestimated, even if that value appears to be inflated at this time. It all comes down to trust. The services offered by a good SEO might be simple to outline but are difficult to fully understand. The search marketing industry has, unfortunately, been put in a position of ill repute by a small number of unethical practitioners and a slightly larger number of uninformed mainstream journalists. There is also the growing legion of new practitioners hanging their virtual shingles without the requisite knowledge or background.


Given the perceptual environment, it is hard for business decision makers to know whom to trust, especially after reading about or having bad experiences with the SEO industry. Outsourcing search marketing, while successful for the vast majority, has been disastrous for some. Those are the stories we read about in the mainstream and tech media. Learning to trust someone is much easier when you have the power to suspend his or her pay, as most employers do.

Another good reason to hire in-house is the fact that all knowledge gained during the SEO process and through the evolution of search marketing remains under your roof. Hiring a SEO means buying their hard-earned knowledge for the duration of their employment.


Though businesses might gain a measure of control by adding a SEO to their staff, they are likely losing a number of less tangible resources, along with the equivalent of a full time salary, the biggest losses being objectivity and, ironically, honesty. Employees are often unable or unwilling to disagree with a new employer or supervisor, even when the realities of the search marketing arena are called into question. It is also a daunting experience to tell your new co-workers that the site they have been working on for months is less than useful for search marketing purposes. Most consultants have no problems telling the truth about issues facing a site they are working on. It is a consultant’s job to find fault. The more they find and correct, the better the relationship with their client.


This note shifted the conversation towards the benefits and dangers, of outsourcing over in-house hiring. The benefits continue to outweigh the dangers by a wide margin, assuming the organization contracted is reputable and communicative.


The primary benefit of outsourcing is that it is cost-effective. With most large scale SEO projects, the most intense work is done in the first six weeks. This is the time it takes to fully study a site, take it apart, and put it back together again in the most search friendly way possible. This is also the period most SEOs charge for. Though the expense might seem steep when seen on a service contract, it is often far lower than the cost of hiring and employing a dedicated staff person.


The next benefit of outsourcing to a SEO firm comes from harnessing the collective knowledge of that firm’s staff. The majority of search marketing shops have staff members who specialize in different areas of the search marketing environment. Some are great technicians while others write good site copy. Most established SEO firms have staff members who have experienced several different aspects of the field and can call on that experience to inform their advice and decisions.


Added to the benefit of collective knowledge comes the bonus of having a larger brain trust to call upon. The field and practice of SEO is rapidly evolving. Often, a technique that worked one year is not as useful the next. Being able to draw on a group dedicated to learning and fully understanding the environment is essential to staying ahead of the curve, and thus ahead of competitors.


A third benefit comes from the professionalism with which an established SEO shop conducts its business. Needing positive client testimonials and surviving on recommendations, most established SEO shops present their information in highly detailed, plain language reports. One of our internal sayings is that we present our SEO consultation clients with a roadmap they can follow, along with a live-guide to help them along.


The last benefit mentioned in the phone call was that of long-term relationships. Most of our consultation clients retain our firm into the future. While this retention is done by monthly fee, that fee is often much lower than the cost of a full time employee.


Fostering and maintaining a long-term relationship between SEO consultant and client benefits both. For the client, the relationship plants an outside expert they can call on for an objective opinion firmly in their realm. For the SEO consultant, the relationship builds business and helps hone their constantly developing skills.


By the end of the conversation, we had settled on a compromise position for her to take when recruiting an in-house SEO for her client, which has a pre-existing IT department. The client is adamant about wanting to hire in-house. She has, by now, likely placed an ad for a SEO with three or more years of experience. When that person is hired, a professional outsourced SEO consultant will also be contracted to monitor and advise for the first year.


If the internal position works out, the client will have a well-trained staff member capable of performing SEO services for the business site. The business owner will have the knowledge that an objective (and honest) outsider is watching over things and reporting to the site ownership. While it might cost a bit more, the plan offers peace of mind for the owner.


If the internal position does not work out, a relationship with an outside firm will have been established, and a sense of continuity in the site promotion can be maintained without worry about starting back at square one.


This is the first year that in-house hiring of SEOs has been a big trend. Taking a long-view of the situation, businesses thinking about employing a skilled search marketer on staff might want to sit back and crunch their numbers to see if the cost of hiring is dramatically lower than the cost of outsourcing.


By the end of the first year, the business owner will know if hiring in house was worth the expense or not. If, as we suspect, it was not worth the expense, that outside agency will pick up a good contract. If, on the other hand, the business owner finds the expense worth his or her money, they know they have a better-trained staff member.


Discuss this article in the Small Business Ideas forum.


Looking for a down-to-earth, easy to understand guide to all things search marketing? Check out the Small Business Guide to Search Engine Marketing. It's the first search marketing e-book specifically written for folks that know almost nothing about search marketing. It even includes access to a private support forum where you can ask the author questions.



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July 20, 2006

SEO Ethics and Practices A Guide

SEO Ethics And Practices: A Guide


Wayne HurlbertExpert Author Published: 2006-07-17


Search engine optimization (SEO) ethics are often discussed, but rarely defined in any meaningful ways. Website owners often hear about the so-called "white hat" and "black hat" SEO professionals. A few webmasters are even aware of some undefined "grey hat" SEO techniques, and their practitioners as well. There are no hard and fast rules for what these regularly utilized terms mean, if anything, in the world of high search engine rankings. It's time to consider whether the categories retain any real meaning, or if ethics even has any role in the practice of SEO. Before we begin our discussion of SEO ethics, I want to make my position very clear. I support 100% "white hat" SEO techniques and use them exclusively in my own practice. Absolutely no "black hat" or even "grey hat" methods are used on any of my clients' sites. They are all aware of that stance and support it completely as ethically is how they want to conduct their own business. Now that yu know my biases and stance, we can begin our discussion of search engine optimization ethics and practices. From the very beginning, we must understand that the issues involved are very complicated, and highly subjective for different people. What is good "ethical" SEO to one person, might be stooping to the deepestdepths of evil to another. Defining "good", "bad" and "best" practices is at best, aiming at an undefined moving target. At worst, it is an impossibility due to the lack of complete knowledge of the search engines and their respective algorithms. Any discussion of search engine ethics requires a definition of the various "hats" so everyone knows what the writer considers ethical, grey area, and entirely unethical in SEO practice. Lacking some sort of definitions, no matter how loosely described, provides a framework for further discussion and debate. Some SEO practitioners don't believe there are any ethical distinctions at all. Any discussion of SEO ethics must include the goals of the various website owners. One consideration is the willingness to assume risk of search engine penalty or even outright website banning. Another is the relative competitiveness of the keywords and keyword phrases being contested. A third and important consideration is whether or not the website owner would rather compete without bending, let alone breaking, any ethical rules or guidelines at all. The goal of any search engine optimization effort, for any website owner regardless of ethics, is to achieve high rankings. That coveted number one spot, on the first page of all major search engines, is an alluring bauble. Like any treasure, everyone with varying degrees of desire, wants to have it in their grasp. Whether for increased traffic, sales and revenue, or purely for ego gratification, webmasters employ widely varying methods to reach those lofty heights. Some of those techniques might be frowned upon by others. As a result, an examination of ethics and whether or not they are important in search engine optimization, is very important. Which hat do you wear? Search engine optimization practitioners are divided into roughly three camps. There are the "white hats", their polar opposite "black hats", and the more loosely defined "grey hats" who use a mixture of ideas, some of which fall under the umbrella of both main camps. What is referred to as white hat SEO is really means using generally accepted optimization techniques, and scrupulously avoiding even a hint of practices that are listed as problems in Google's Webmaster Guidelines. For the white hat SEO professional, and I am proud to confess to being one of them, any hint of a lack of ethics is to avoided at all costs. White hat SEO involves standard best practices including adding more theme relevant content pages, updating regularly, adding incoming links thathave properly utilization of keywords in the link anchor text, and keeping the title tags up to date. Along with those standard procedures are the addition of a blogging component, working toward hub site and authority site status, and placing a strong emphasis on writing sound on page copy, with well placed keywords. Black hat SEO usually means employing ranking techniques that are clearly outside of Google's stated Webmaster Guidelines. The same is true of the published guidelines for the other major search engines as well. Methods used to achieve higher search rankings include cloaking, hidden text, link farms, and intensively cross linked sites. Grey hat SEO falls somewhere in the middle. While that simple label doesn't fully explain grery hat SEO, the concept is much more difficult to define. The techniques employed by a grey hat SEO are occasionally white hat, and just as often less oriented toward best practices. The use of some linking tools and content generating software have often been placedin this category. Regardless of how the various SEO hats are defined, there will always be disagreements as to where the boundaries are drawn, if there are even borders at all. The definitions are not intended to be firm and final. Instead, they are merely used so we understand the general terms for purposes of a discussion of SEO ethics. Are ethics important in SEO? Are ethics and ethical discussions even of value in the discussion of SEO, or in any other profession or business for that matter? Some would say the obvious and unarguable answer is yes. Other people are not so sure, while some SEO practitioners would say that ethics are not all that important, provided the client receives strong search engine rankings. As we can see, there are no hard and fast answers. Since an SEO professional has in effect, two clients, there is really more than one set of ethics involved. First, there is the ethics in relationship to the website owner client. Secondly, and also very much a part of the ethical question, are the search engines themselves. Since the needs and requirements of the two clients are often diametrically opposed to one another, an SEO is often placed in a dilemma. The SEO practitioner has a responsibility to the website owner to attempt to achieve the highest possible search engine rankings. Consideration must also be given to the search engine webmaster guidelines, as they are part of the condition of their use. Where the search engine optimization professional draws the boundaries between website and search engines, and how those boundaries are explained to the website owner, is very important. Also needing serious discussion are the real goals for the website owner, and what level of penalty and banning risk that person is willing to assume. Not very SEO professional will go as far as the webmaster wants to travel into grey and black hat territory. Different experts have different interpretations of where the boundaries between the search engine guidelines end and where the needs of the website owner begin. Personally, I do not use any search engine optimization techniques that could be classified as black or even grey hat. My ethics allow for only purely white hat SEO methods. Not all SEO professionals, or even potential paying clients, agree with that ethical stance. In fact, many SEOs disagree completely with my position on ethics. Webmaster goals and SEO practices Every website owner has different goals for the site and for its future. Some webmasters are in the business for the long term, with the intention of building search engine rankings that will have staying power. The desire to build a reputable site, using only best practices optimization techniques is one such long term plan. Other webmasters want to remain the search placements for the longer term, but are far less concerned about the techniques used to achieve those rankings. Thinking that most sites slide through the various spam filters anyway, there is little concern about penalties or outright bans from the search engines. In fact, many webmasters are blissfully unaware that some optimization techniques are not acceptable to the search engine guidelines. Still other website owners have no concern at all about the long term implications of their website. To those webmasters, any technique that raises their rankings is fine with them. If the black hat methods get the site penalized or banned, then a new domain name is acquired and the process started all over again. In many cases, the abandonment of the banned site iseven part of the planning involved. Many SEOs believe their first responsibility is to their webmaster client. What the client wants is what gets done, in the way of optimization techniques. This theory is based on what the customer wants, the customer gets. In such cases, however, it's also important for the SEO to provide complete information, as to the potential consequences, of using methods counter the published search engine guidelines. Failure to inform the client, of the potential negatives of agrey or black hat practice, is not acting in anyone's best interests. In fact, a lack of full disclosure of possible filters, penalties, and outright banning as a result of proscribed actions, is not acting in the interest of the client. Many website owners are completely new to optimization, and some are entirely unaware that SEO even exists as a profession. To not fully inform newcomers to SEO of every side of the issue, is not giving the client complete information, on which to base a reasoned decisionas to the potential risks involved. Considering the search engine factor How the search engines are viewed by the SEO is another important factor. Some SEOs consider the search engines to be their friends, while others view them as the mortal enemy. Still other optimization specialists consider the search engines to be either a necessary evil, or simply just another tool in an overall internet marketing program. It's fairly easy to understand the reasons for each of these points of view. For those people who see the search engines as friends, the SERPs are usually thought of as delivering what amounts to free customers. For minimal financial outlay, compared to most other internet marketing efforts, a white hat optimized site can send paying customersdirectly from the free organic search results. These SEOs believe the search engines are, in fact, providing a largely free to the public service. For that reason, search engines are considered friends to be helped, by providing them with the best possible sites, optimized within the search engine terms of service. Other SEOs take a harder line on the search engines, who instead of thinking of them as good guys, consider them as almost an enemy. Instead of providing what are thought to be relevant search results, heavily spam and black hat sites are rewarded with high rankings. Highly relevant sites, in direct terms of the search phrase, are pushed deep into the organic results. These SEOs argue that the search engine terms of service are merely a guideline that are not uniformly or fairly applied. As a result of inadequate and spam filled SERPs, these SEOs believe the search engines are not fulfilling their stated goals and terms of service. Because of that failure on the part of the search algorithms, to provide relevant spam free results, there is no legal or moral obligation on the part of the SEO or the website owner to follow them either. In their opinion, if the search results reward bad sites, and by extension punish sites that follow the terms ofservice, the webmaster guidelines can be safely and honestly ignored. Finally, in a third SEO practitioner opinion, the search engines are businesses like any other, and as such shouldn't be thought of as entirely benevolent. The search algorithm is neither good nor bad, but is merely a computer program. The algorithm owes the website nothing, except to attempt to place the pages correctly in terms of search relevance. Like any other business, these SEOs argue, use of their business and products requires the user to follow the business's rules. In this case, the webmaster guidelines and terms of service are the business rules. In the same way that a restaurant can refuse service to patrons not wearing shirts or shoes, the search engines can deny listingat any time, for violation of their rules of use. Because of the wide range of opinions on the ethical aspects of search engines and their algorithms, the best policy is to consider the search engines as a business, with their terms of use, like any other business. They set out their webmaster guidelines, as well as their rules for use in their published terms of service. Violation of those business rules entitles the search engine to legally and morally remove an offending site. A search engine is underno legal or ethical obligation to index every web page or even site on the internet. Failure to comply with their rules gives them every right to penalize or remove an offending site. In the same way that an unruly customer or shoplifter can be removed from the premises, or even charged with a crime, the search engines can do the same thing. As such, it is important for the website owner to follow the rules as prescribed by the search engine as a business. If for no other reason than as insurance againstpenalties or banning, following the webmaster guidelines will keep a site from any problems with the search engine. While it can be argued that the search engines don't always police their search results very well, they do provide for a feedback option from webmasters. Reporting a spam laden site will often result in its removal. Unfortunately, those removals are often slow, and occasionally don't happen, leaving the spam site high in the SERPs for weeks, or even months. There is little doubt that all of the major search engines have room for improvement in the area of spam site detection, penalties, and removal from the SERPs. That problem on their part doesn't automatically translate to meaning a webmaster or SEO can violate the stated terms of service with impunity, however. Noticing an unpunished spam site doesn't mean it can be duplicated freely, but simply that the search engine has not found and penalized it yet. Conclusion Search engine ethical practice is a complicated, and difficult to resolve issue. Along with concerns for the desires of the customer to achieve high search engine rankings, and search engine optimization professionals to provide them, are issues of ethics in relation to the search engine themselves. It's not as simple as saying the website owner is the only concern. Other legitimate websites are part of the equation as well. The search engine terms of service state that the SERPs don't have to include any or all web pages or sites. The search engines are entitled to removeany sites that violate those terms of use. On the other hand, the search engines are slow, and often highly erratic in their levying of penalties and bans. Because of that weakness, many SEOs believe the guidelines aren't even followed by the search engines themselves. My opinion is the search engine is a business, like any other. As such, it has its terms of service, and also has the right to refuse service, if violations occur. Because of that right on the part of the search engines, it's important forwebsite owners and search engine optimization professionals to follow those guidelines. While it's a bit idealistic to believe that all websites will follow the published guidelines, keeping one's own house in order will prevent any penalties or banninglanding at one's own doorstep. Taking care to use only generally agreed upon best practices, in effect using only "white hat" techniques, will win out in the end. While white hat methods might appear slower at first, they provide long term staying power, that can survive any shifts in the search engine algorithms. White hat techniques also let a person rest easily, knowing the site is safe from penalties and banning, while providing useful information and products to the site visitors. Instead of worrying about other sites, take care of your own site, and you will do well in the search engines. You can then safely ignore any shade of hats. Add to Del.icio.us | DiggThis | Yahoo! My Web | FurlView All Articles by Wayne Hurlbert