But not really in the way I’d hope.

Exhibit A – An SEO power Player

What actually caught my eye and started me on this thread was a sponsored listing, phrase-matching SEO like so:

SEO paid search listing

Initially I scoffed and clicked through to see why, if they were so great at SEO, they’re bidding on it.  I saw that they’ve clearly done a lot (too much?) to make the structure and navigation focused on their keyterms but was surprised to see that the site actually looked nice, well organised etc.  And then of course there’s the vanity sell…

Ethical, white hat techniques?

Started digging deeper then and they do indeed rank very admirably in the natural listings for these terms…

Exhibit B – The ‘Feeder’ domain

Looking briefly at the yahoo site explorer links list I saw a few oddities amongst the 49k links.  A couple of clients were apparent and another domain, clickconsult.  Now have a look at the sheer amount of content in the source of this site, and tell me if you can find those reams of content on the actual site.

You got it – javascript stuffing.  Try clicking on one of these guys:

Now whilst that page truly is a ridiculous example of content stuffing, I was more surprised to see a couple of their client sites practising the same thing.

Exhibit C – The clients

So here’s a link to what i assume is a client website.  I’ll assume it’s a client as i’m not sure that flooring is an obvious diversification for an SEO.  It’s enjoying healthy positions for what appear to be their target phrases, but employing exactly the same technique to stuff content, now I’d say that was some pretty thin ice but am astonished that in 2009 this is clearly still working just fine.

Totally Busted

Obviously the link profile and strength of the client domain helps:

Links to homepage: 1,054

Total links: 2,013

But according to Linkscape, only a hundred or so of those have particularly relevant anchor text, add the relatively low strength of the other competitors in that SERP, and finally take into account my links/content experiment with James, the content really is the only obvious advantage.

But honestly, however we look at this.  Shouldn’t they be hosed for practices like this?

Image courtesy of Flickr - wwworks

I really enjoyed a post by Kate Morris on New Edge Media regarding the skillsets of PPC and SEO Managers, where they meet and where they differ.

I won’t go over that again but it did get me wistfully thinking about how much fun I’ve had acquiring these skills and sent me off on a jaunt along memory lane, reminiscing about the early days of search and being part (or sometimes all!) of a growing, learning search department.

Many of us’ll remember evolving from the small one-win-at-a-time initiatives, to the infusion of search into marketing mixes and strategic growth across an organisation.  Doorway pages certainly seem a long time ago.

This journey is often a personal one, differs vastly in speed dependent on industry and of course is never completed – so pooling experiences from a couple of jobs along the way as well as some great tidbits I’ve heard, here’s my take on the growing pains of a pre-pubescent search dept.

Stage 1: Selling search marketing into an organisation

Situation: ’90’s corp’ has decided that they need a handful of PPCs and 6 or so yards of essy-o so you interview, try to talk in depth about your experiences without dazzling anyone with such mystical fare as H1s or keyword density and it works – you’re in, get cracking!

Team: It’s just you; all other resource is begged, borrowed or stolen – it sinks in, seriously – just you. Oh snap.

Main objectives/focus: You’re doing it all, setting up and tactically managing the PPC, consulting and winning over technical teams to unravel the mess that is the company’s (usually 6 year-old) in-house CMS.  SEO at this point is almost exclusively the reconfiguration of sites to be visible, clear to navigate and as irridiculous as you can muster the energy to make it.

You get the opportunity to communicate the results of your hard work in rare, besuited presentations to the board.  They see trend lines going up, they nod.  They ask you why we aren’t number one for our obscure internal name for something irrelevant.  It’s frustrating, tiring and often all but invisible but by god is it rewarding when you see those sales creeping up and your vanity searches reaping more than a disappointed slump.

Most tested skills: tenacity, communication, prioritisation, forging relationships and organisation, curiosity.

Stage 2: Sophistication in SEO, Scale in PPC

Situation: Finally you think – you can start to move away from answering everything with ‘because that’s just how you should do it’ to ‘see these proven results? *tapping screen*’.

You need to shoulder off the day-to-day campaign management and creative link-building.  With more resource you know how quickly your avg. ROI would be 30% up and your already pretty vast keyword portfolio an order of magnitude vaster.

You start hunting.  First to fall prey to your charm is that friendly sales analyst who ‘looks after’ the web stats, they help you show the true value and conversions all your sweat is contributing; then that bored print copywriter who wants to hone their calls to action, they get your ad text popping.

You get some much bigger cheques signed for messrs Google and Overture.  Hey, this search business might not be such a fad after all, although this is probably also the point where you realise that everybody is an SEO expert. Heated discussion ensues. You think, “If he calls another meeting because a company sent him a we-can-get-you-to-#1-in-Google-for-£200-quid email I’m taking up floristry.”

Team: You’ve managed to make a case for, and hire support, whether your main focus is natural or paid search, this is a god send and you can look up from the now and start to think about sustainable traffic growth.

Main objectives/focus: Now is the time for big hits.  Site structure guidelines are being adhered to, 5-figure PPC budgets are rolling your way, you’ve got a seat at the project board table and new products are ready for googlebot lovin’ straight off the bat.  Remedial SEO is a thing of the past (except for the odd ‘microsite’ that pops up now and again).

Things are still very hands-on but you’ve got the respect of the tech teams through results, the writers and product teams are loving the sales they’re seeing from prospective keyword targeting.  You are buzzing, the heart and soul.

Most tested skills: Influencing, motivating, analysis and commitment to building a team, creativity in link-building, proposing and budget-securing. Ego ;o)

Stage 3: Looking forward to strategic, enterprise-level search programmes

Situation: Up until now, you’ve been relatively inward-looking.  What are our traffic levels?  Which keywords convert best for us?  Now that the ship’s on an even keel it’s time to dust off the sextant and take a look around, further than your immediate competitors.  You know you’re getting traffic but is it a lot?  How much is out there and are you getting your share?  Ranks are topping out and keyword portfolios bulging but growth is slowing; there must be more demand out there, surely?

Team: By now, you’ve likely got your very own analyst on board, and a couple of execs.  They’re either called the SEO guy and the PPC guy, or the fluffy one and the geeky one, dependent on who you’ve found and how best your creative/scientific work is divided up.
Your training programmes have created a legion of supporters at ground level and it turns out you took the right path, getting the whole company into SEO rather than guarding the knowledge and telling them to back off when pockets of the company started pushing ahead alone.  We’ve all felt that warm rush of rage up our cheeks when someone undermines you with their (usually wrong) insta-SEO knowledge gained from ‘a friend in IT’.

Main objectives/focus: finding more growth is tough but you’re so used to optimising your tiny team’s time that it’s just another challenge and you start getting creative in response to market movements.  Whole product launches are created from an idle poke through Hitwise or Google (with SEO for Firefox of course!).  You are creating website structures and taxonomies that are profoundly relevant to their target searcher from the get-go.  Who’d have thought it would still be this rewarding, this far along?

Most tested skills: inspiration, resource optimisation, drive.

Discuss:

I’ve tried to intentionally keep this post light and top line.  Anyone got any juicy horror stories?

I’ve managed to build self indulgent blogs, wannabe comments, flickr profiles, facebook profiles, lame profiles, web design businesses, rubbish affiliate sites and hilarious attempts at pushing the boundaries of xml (in 2004! and funnier when you read the XSL).  Watch out, half of them only work in ie.

Now it’s just me.

Just this blog, and crikey things have really moved on. The flourishes and fandango of the .com boom are long gone. 2.0 is boring. Finally content, clarity of purpose and dare i say it, cynicism have taken over.

The web wants the sausage rather than the sizzle, the revenue rather than the traffic. Crumbs, at least the bandwidth costs’ll come down. This blog’s here to talk about my experiences over the past few years working on the web, trying to make sense of insoluble business models, hilarious decrees and the ridiculous amount of ground we’ve all covered in these short years.

So there’s my first post, i guess at least it beats Hello World