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SEO is a hot topic for Online Marketing blog with the most recent posts, “Rushing Your SEO Doesn’t Mean Quicker Results” and “Should Companies Hire Multiple Search Marketing Firms?”. The next in what is becoming a series of insights into SEO is all about optimizing content for situations that really have little to do with why most SEO firms are hired.

There are various reasons for optimizing content to improve search engine placement of a company’s web site content: The most common and obvious reason directed towards increasing web site traffic and leads/sales. SEO is often used for improving online brand visibility as well.

Companies are increasingly sensitive to the public relations benefits of using search engine optimization to improve search visibility such as:

• Building credibility and thought leadership
• Optimizing news content for journalists conducting research
• Proactive online reputation management

Progressive corporate PR departments and agencies also use paid search for reputation management or crisis management to quickly provide counter measures to bad publicity or buzz.

An often overlooked content optimization opportunity concerns customer service related information. So much effort is put into optimizing content to “make the sale” or “capture the lead”, but not on making content that is useful to existing customers more easily available.

The on-site search functionality, if there is one, on so many company web sites is so bad that many consumers use the search box on their favorite search engine as a way of navigating websites of companies they do business with. In fact, many employees use search engines like Google to find information that is too difficult or inconvenient to find through on-site search or category navigation.

It’s pretty straight forward to look at a web site’s web analytics to see what kind of queries are driving traffic as well as most popular content to see whether this is the case.

Reducing customer service and support calls is a top priority for many companies looking to reduce costs. Optimizing frequently asked questions, archived customer service Q/A (anonymized), product data, specifications and user manuals can help customers find what they’re “Googling” for before they pick up the phone or send an email.

Few companies hire SEO firms to improve online customer service, but reducing customer support costs plus improving customer satisfaction just small percentage can justify the expense. Add the improved PR and lead/sales generation benefits on top of that and it’s easier to see why optimizing and promoting web site content should be a key component of any online marketing program.

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On occasion TopRank will get calls from prospective clients that ask about hiring multiple SEO agencies in an effort to get the “best of both worlds” in terms of best practices and performance through competition. On the surface, I suppose I could see how someone might think this might make sense but in practice, it really doesn’t.

The “two is better than one” philosophy might work when it comes to getting a second opinion from a doctor or a mechanic but with SEO, the last thing a company needs is two agencies stepping on each other to make on-page optimization recommendations. Even worse are the possibilities for confusion with link building.

Imagine hiring two PR firms for the same business and a journalist getting two different pitches for the same thing from two different agencies. Will that really generate better results or just create confusion?

Coordinating with another agency adds additional costs for each consulting firm as they now need to coordinate work with both the client and another agency.

If a company wants to get the best search engine optimization results possible, they should hire the best SEO agency for their organization, not hire two or more thinking it will turn out like some kind of “SEO apprentice”.

With many web sites, it’s enough of a challenge to get all the client side stakeholders on board with the changes in content processes and attention to keywords and links. Having two agencies coordinate which parts of the web site they would be responsible for would add to what is often already a challenging situation.

Most web sites run off of templates either from WYSIWYG editors like Dreamweaver or a content management system with a database. SEO edits to those templates can affect the entire site or large portions. In that situation you can’t always segment one part for one agency and one part to another.

The other consideration is that adding another outside agency adds to the client side cost for managing the engagement. Managing multiple vendors means more time from the client side and managing two or more vendors who do the same thing, competitors really, adds even more.

“What if we create microsites for each segment of our business and hire a different SEO agency for each?” This is a real question that I’ve been asked and you can imagine my answer. First, we don’t believe in creating microsites just for the purposes of SEO. You can get the visibility you want on different categories under the same domain name through the right mix of on page SEO, internal linking and unique inbound links from external sources. Creating multiple microsites will only dilute SEO efforts with each site treated as its own search engine optimization project.

Not many companies have the unlimited or large online marketing budgets that sit behind requests for multiple SEO/SEM vendors. But for those that do, I would strongly encourage the effort to be put into hiring a single, strategic agency that can provide both high level consulting and training of client side staff for ongoing SEO and link building. Then retain the SEO agency for continued strategic direction, training and implementation when needed. Avoid the additional overhead and headache of hiring two competing agencies willing to work on the same web site for what can be accomplished by hiring the right SEO firm from the start.

There are many search marketing practitioners that read this blog and I am curious if other client side search marketers or other agencies have engaged in a successful and sustained program working with multiple SEO firms on the same web site?

Sponsored By: Start a Career in Search Marketing Announcing the best online SEM courses from SEMPO Institute.

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Should Companies Hire Multiple Search Marketing Firms?

Companies that take their search engine visibility for granted or that ride the technical SEO loophole/manipulation train often get a hard smack back to reality when their online sales disappear. Orders start to slip or fall off the map altogether and the IT team red alert phone rings off the hook with calls from the business owner, “What the hell happened to our rankings???”

You can imagine Google being brought up in a browser and searches for “search engine optimization firms” and similar queries are place to find a SEO consultant to “quick fix the problem”.

The real “problem” is that there is rarely a quick fix for the kinds of issues that result in a dramatic change downward in search visibility. The exception being the removal of an errant robots.txt file placed to disallow all engines from crawling a site during development.

“I know enough to be dangerous” is an interesting thing to hear from a web site developer looking for quick SEO services. In some cases, they really do know quite a bit about optimizing and marketing web sites online, they just don’t have the people resources to execute and need outside help. Others might know enough to be dangerous - to themselves. SEO information from 1999 isn’t going to cut it in 2008.

When a company generates a substantial portion of it’s business from the internet, the influences on that online visibility cannot be left to chance. Not staying on top of what’s working and what’s not can result in unexpected outcomes. Bad and outdated information can be very costly.

While I don’t think all company web site owners need to retain a full time in-house SEO consultant or agency in all cases, they do need to allocate resources either internally or externally to keeping company knowledge current. The best source for that information is through testing and measuring the performance of company online marketing campaigns. Conferences, blogs, forums, articles and newsletters can be helpful as well but also require time and money commitments.

I’ll admit to being biased as a consultant myself, but I would rank the periodic or ongoing consultation of an outside agency higher than many other sources since it’s their job to test and measure online campaigns for a multiple companies on an ongoing basis. The cumulative knowledge, experience and insight that comes from working with many different web sites and their associated challenges is of benefit to each web site client individually.

In situations where search visibility has dropped, web site owners and developers responsible for site management/marketing must realize there is rarely a quick fix. The quick drop in rankings does not mean there’s a quick solution to get back.

What is a web site owner to do? Diversification as is possible through strategies such as digital asset optimization are the best prevention. Otherwise, PPC campaigns can be run as well as social media promotions, blogger outreach, online public relations and press release marketing - all to drive traffic while the SEO issues are worked out.

With an industry that has the potential to change as much as search marketing, it makes sense to leverage expert knowledge and experience as well as a process for continuously harvesting new insight from direct observation. Bringing in full time web marketing staff is one option as is hiring an outside agency. Many companies are doing both by using the agency for strategic direction and in-house staff for implementation. Either way, the solution is smart and data based, not a rush for a quick fix.

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Today on this fine Friday ladies and gentlemen, we have a BIGLIST SEO blogs update for you slanting a bit toward agencies but not without some flavor from Germany and the Jungle. Read on:

• Seer Interactive Blog - Wil Reynolds and his team from Seer Interactive blog the gamut of Internet marketing topics ranging from SEO and PPC to branding and social media. Many posts are in-depth and very useful.

• Mediadonis - Germany based Marcus Tandler writes about his search engine industry and often hilarious personal experiences - mostly in English but sometimes in German.

• MediaVision Blog - This is an agency blog with numerous contributors writing about online marketing and search engine industry news, observations and malarkey.

• The Jungle Map - Charlotte, NC based Hippo Internet Marketing guy Corey Creed writes this agency blog with a fun design about SEO, PPC and business in Charlotte.

Of course it’s an impressive accomplishment to get on this list, so why not share the good news? Decorate that fancy blog with a BADGE. (link back optional)

Sponsored By: Reputation Management in a Google World PRSA Teleseminar

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BIGLIST SEO Blogs Update 06/20/08

With so many “Web 2.0″ technologies coming in to play with web design and online application development, the effect on the search engines’ ability to find, crawl and index content becomes an issue. As such, this session moderated by Kevin Ryan included deep dive advice from Chris “Silver” Smith, Lead Strategist from Netconcepts and Ambles Kwok, a Senior Engineering Manager from Yahoo Canada.

Chris Silver Smith was first up and gave examples of Web 2.0 technologies including the idea of folksonomy and tagging by showing a tag cloud from Delicious. It’s an alternative method of navigation based on user defined keywords assigned to a piece of content.

If you cannot implement the capability of tagging into your content, you can create a similar effect for SEO benefit by mining your log files for search engine referral keywords and generating a tag cloud from that data. Shows Cabella’s tag cloud as an example implementation:

Another tip is to enable your photos to be indexed by search engines. Many companies hide images from crawlers. There’s high usage of images by vertical search engines. It also creates the possibility of additional rankings in Universal search results.

Share images through Flickr and other image sharing sites. Link your profiles back to your site. Don’t be spammy. Don’t mass upload.

User Tagging: Google’s image labeler program. Enable Google’s users to tag pictures for search. You can opt in your site’s images within Google Webmaster tools.

Have a repetitive task? Use Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, which is a platform where people who want to make a little money (micropayments) for doing small tasks can be sourced. An example application would be to get people to tag media or content for you such as: unspun.amazon.com

Google Friend Connect: Free API for building site communities.

JavaScript and Form based Navigation:
Many sites still have links embedded in JavaScript. Search engines have problems with following these kinds of links but are getting better. Always include a static link with JavaScript navigation.

Google’s crawler is starting to crawl some form based navigation, such as drop down menus.

Use widgets/gadgets for distribution such as Yahoo Widgerts, Google Gadgets

Yahoo Search Monkey is a great tool for customizing your listings in Yahoo search results. Below is an example of a WebMD listing. More examples are available at the Yahoo! Search Gallery.

Flash and splash pages: Search engines are getting better at reaching content with Flash, but they still have problems.

Ajax, Flash, JavaScript - all need alternative navigation routes. Create two: one for rich media enabled users and one for search bots and users with rich media disabled.

For flash content use the <swfobject> and present altnerative content to what’s shown in the Flash movie.

Redirects: Many sites use Java Script or meta refresh redirects and should use server side redirects instead.

It’s also helpful to provide text transcripts of rich media so search engines can crawl the text content.

Chris’s last tip is to make sure you optimize your blog with plugins and using keywords in titles, categories and within posts.

During the transition from Chris to Ambles, Kevin Ryan asks: “Tag clouds are like the Paris Hilton of the internet. Looks good, but what do they actually DO?” Chris Smith offers an explanation of tags as an alternative navigation method.

Next up was Ambles Kwok, Senior Engineering Manager with Yahoo Canada who talks mostly about the semantic web and using markup to give meaning or context to content. Without context, web pages have no meaning to search engine bots.

One example of a Microformat is the nofollow attribute for links. Another example is the Upcoming.com site that uses Microformats such as: hCard, Hevent, hReview and rel-tag.

Yahoo’s SearchMonkey leverages the Semantic web. SearchMonkey + POSH = SEO 2.0. When you give context to content, it gives meaning to bots. SearchMonkey also leverages the semantic web to enable blended search.

A question for webmasters: How does the semantic web affect my search engine strategy? Here are a few practical examples:

• You perform a search for a persons name and see their family tree, business acquaintances, friends and significant others, along with the ability to download their vcard.

• You search for a keyword such as “ford mustang” and receive a list of sites, photos, and documents that people have decided are related to the word “ford mustang” through tagging on their website.

• You search for a product and receive a list of reviews related to that product which people all over the net have posted on their website.

• You search for a specific date and receive a list of categorized events occurring on that date that people have posted on their website.

Microformats “give meaning to the machine”. Content is king, but content without context is meaningless.

Keywords, URL and links are SEO 1.0. Structured pages are SEO 2.0 - giving context to the data.

Kevin Ryan asks, “Why is SearchMonkey opt in, why is it not the default?”

Kwon: It’s in beta and making it the default could disrupt search results. However some results are “on” by default.

Kwon continued saying that giving more structure to data to search engines makes it easier for them to understand the information and more accurately sort it in search results. Using semantic markup and microformats is a trend.

Kevin Ryan asks, “Define graceful degradation”

Smith: Can your web site be used by people on a variety of browser versions? Graceful degradation means your web site can be viewed on the latest and greatest to text only browsers.

Sponsored By: TopRank Online Marketing Holistic Marketing: SEO, PPC, PR, Social, Email

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SES Toronto: Web 2.0 and Search Engines