First Page Of Google Costs More Than $100

As a company that works with local businesses on bringing them online and helping them with online advertising and local SEO we spend quite a bit of our effort on educating the customers.

This is quite rewarding and our team enjoys showing customers how taking advantage of how the customer uses the web everyday actually helps them bring customers to their door that use the web in the same way they do.

We like to talk to our customers about more than their website and when building the website we like to start with some level of basic SEO. With most of our customers being local businesses and local search on the rise, most of our customers understand right away how important it is to show up when people search for local services.

Although many customers are still learning how to understand that just because they are found online does not mean people are buying from them online, they are understanding that they need to be there.

We have another set of customers that start to see the benefits of SEO and see that they can increase their market presence and expand their product reach nationally, if not globally. It is great once this realization sets in. But there is one issue.

Many customers have a look of disbelief once it is explained that it takes more than $100 in extra services to make the first page of Google for a one word term. One way that it is easy to explain this is by showing the number of results shown for a search term and the companies that are on the first page and showing some simple results of why they are there.

Another way of showing the value is equating it to something that customers are familiar with, things like paying more for higher eyeball having TV shows, larger reach radio stations, etc. If a term has 500 searches a month it is likely to be much less competitive than a term that has hundreds of thousands of searches a month.

If organic SEO cost is a concern it is typically a good plan to offer PPC help up front but as we all know it makes much more sense over the long term to have a solid organic SEO plan in place.

Large companies understand this and as time progresses smaller businesses will start to understand this as well. It is great when a prospective customer starts to see the potential, they start to think about how they use the internet. For those customers that realize that but do not have the budget in place for a larger marketing plan it is important to start them from a base they can build from in the future for a larger reach SEO plan. Sooner or later they will want, or NEED it.

Measuring Incremental SEO Changes

One of the things that many people get frustrated with is measuring the progress of their search engine optimization changes. As we know it can take days, weeks, or even months to see results of the changes made to the site being worked on.

And to make matters even worse, it will also depend on how "important" the search engines see the site as well since a site that is visited by the search bots more frequently will be more likely have the results of the changes show up faster.

Recently I decided to test some incremental changes one by one, the site I was testing on is a site that has been established for some time, has a Pagerank of 4, but does not necessarily get updated daily or even weekly.

Since I am a big believer that the title tag is the most important single item you can do for on-site SEO (feel free to argue that one....) I wanted to modify one pages title tag from something that was less competitive to something that was more competitive but when the site was first launched the site would not of had the link juice to rank for.

The term is still directly related to the site content but is the higher searched version of the product term it focuses on.

One thing I like to look at before measuring anything like this is the number of Google search results for the term based on how a typical user would search for the term and not a techie  (without quotes in other words).

In the case of this term there are around 5 million or so results that show up with a solid range of companies on the first 3 pages. Overtime my goal is page one but for now I want to see what one little tweak can do, can that one tweak take the site from not showing up to showing up for the search (at least in the first few pages) and how fast will that happen, or even will it happen.

After I measure the initial tweaks results then I will do one more change, all "white hat".

Results? Well after just two days the site now shows up on page 3 of the Google SERP's for the term and that is before any further optimization is done and without waiting for any real aging on the term.

It would be completely expected, from past experience, that over time that ranking would do even better without any further optimization, since I have the benefit of time for what I am testing I am scheduling to check the results after one month then two months before making any further changes.

After that I will start to make further optimizations to the site, at times we tend to ignore the fact that we need to measure SEO results over time. We expect fast results and with competitive terms it may take time before you see those results.

Sometimes we get spoiled with long tail search terms ranking fast, but when working with more competitive terms it is best to measure over time and not get frustrated.

The Art Of SEO

I finally found an SEO book that I like.

Although I do the majority of my research on topics online I do still like to read real hard copy books, I know hard to believe, I know how to read.

One thing I believe most people get themselves in trouble doing is thinking they know everything about a subject, that is usually the first step to failure. Even though I have had some luck and success with various SEO methods I know there is still much to learn, and I would expect a lot of so called experts would say the same, search optimization methods are always changing so keeping up to date is something anyone involved with site development should always be doing. Most do not though....

All that said, most books on search engine optimization that I have read or browsed through were a re-hash of tips you could find online in a quick search or something that worked in 2002 but really is not relevant now. Or the book focused so much on the technical aspects that you could not read past the first 10 pages without falling asleep.

Well, while at the Affiliate Convention a member of an SEO panel (cannot remember if he was a white, grey or blackhat SEO) said the one book on SEO that was of value was The Art Of SEO.

I decided to give it a read and see if he was telling the truth (he was not one of the authors, although another panel member was referenced in the book a few times).

I can say that this book is different, truly the first book on this very complex subject that I can say I truly enjoy. Within the first 2 chapters I had already sent an email to my team members recommending this book. There are not many books I recommend  but as of late there have been three (on 3 different topics):

The Art of SEO (Theory in Practice)

Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School

Viral Loop: From Facebook to Twitter, How Today's Smartest Businesses Grow Themselves

(Yes those are affiliate links but I have bought and read everyone and recommend them).

The book does a great job going over market statistics, even if you are a pure techie you should pay attention to the marketing statistics to make sure you focus your  search marketing in the right direction.

If you have not read this book yet or have been frustrated by other SEO books, give this one a try. It is different, and the way it is written pulls it all together much better than any I have found.