SEO: High speed or speed bumps to the Internet?

NOTE: Chaim Yudkowsky, CPA, CITP, is an MACPA member and president of Byte of Success Inc., a technology consulting company specializing in helping small and mid-size business grow using technology.

By Chaim Yudkowsky, CPA, CITP

The call went something like this: "Mr. Yudkowsky, I believe that we can help you get better response to your Web site."

After a short conversation, I asked the price and was told, "Five-thousand dollars, but if you sign today there is a $700 discount."

If you are listed as the webmaster or domain owner for a Web site, you undoubtedly will receive (despite registering with the Do-Not-Call Registry) a myriad of spam e-mail and unsolicited phone offers like this promoting a service called Search Engine Optimization, or SEO. The description of services and fees can vary. However, understanding the value of signing up and evaluating whether to do so can be confusing.

We know how we find things on the Web and expect others will find and buy from us on the Web the same way — by searching on the Web. According to Forrester, "73 percent of customers use search engines to find new Web sites."

For many of us, the quickest way to participate in attracting those visitors is using pay-per-click online advertising. This is advertising that is focused on searchers who are looking for what we are selling. If used properly, it increases the likelihood that this search will end in a sale for us. Pay-per-click grows expensive as more Web sites compete for popular search keywords with Google Adwords, Overture and the others. We are effectively buying every sale without, in many cases, building loyalty or encouraging familiarity. In fact, some customers habitually just frequent whoever comes up.

In contrast, the non-paid-for search results on prominent search engines yield lasting results — at least until the engine's owners change the algorithm used to find results of search engines. Consistency in top 10 placement is the ideal without a cost per click. Appearing early on a search engine is more important than even appearing on a search. Jupiter Media Matrix has found that "93 percent of customers do not look past the first two pages of a search engine's results." As Web site owners, the objective is to achieve the highest placement possible on at least the top 10 to 15 search engines.

The promise of SEO services is sold by companies and consultants who have (or at least claim to have) followed, analyzed and understand how each search engine slices and dices the text, images and hidden attributes of Web pages to present and order them in response to a search query. But whom can you trust? How do you choose the right SEO vendor for your Web site? When I search for the phrase "search engine optimization" on search engine Google.com, more than 2.7 million results appear, including hundreds for experts who know what to do. The choices are overwhelming!

This number is indicative of the hazards associated with engaging an SEO vendor. Google, the number one search engine, publishes a list of SEO-related points to consider for webmasters. "Unethical SEOs have given the industry a black eye through overly aggressive marketing efforts," it states, and Google reinforces this message with a testimonial of engine blacklisting that has occurred as a result of using the wrong vendor. Instead of helping you, some SEO experiences are confidence games.

The following observations about buying SEO are based on Google's recommendations and other research.

Active SEO is not cheap. The passive types of services like Microsoft's Submit-It.com provide some advice using automated tools to analyze your Web site and its pages, but they have limitations. They are cheap, costing as little as $49 per URL. Still, you may want to rely on expertise and perspective about how others with similar products and services have succeeded in pursuing high listings. Using active SEO — an SEO solution with live people — increases the likelihood of choosing the best key search words with which to identify. This type of service often includes Web site design consulting services and may easily exceed $5,000 for an initial consultation.
Buy the way you would buy any other product or service. Be wary of spam e-mails or phone calls promoting a service provider. Investigate looking for reputation in the marketplace by talking to other SEO vendors and customers. Also, talk to customer references. If part of the value of active SEO is "having done this successfully for others," find out the results and satisfaction others have had with a vendor's efforts.
Execute a good contract. Understand your legal recourses. This involves understanding the contract for services and term of services, as well as defining a satisfactory outcome. Even many of the good SEOs will not guarantee their work, so you must articulate what you are expecting of them. Also, since not all search engines work the same, you want to have a clear scope of work to be performed and the search engines that you want to target. Finally, your Web development environment may limit your staff's ability or control over the site to implement some of the suggestions made. Therefore, before you sign, you want a clear understanding of the mechanics to be used to decide whether the SEO under consideration matches your capabilities.
Know the cons. Some shady SEOs will use doorway pages or throwaway domains. While these will increase engine visibility, the intelligence of the engines includes flags for such behavior, and the Web sites are appropriately blacklisted. Others use link parties, a practice that Google famously slammed late year, to the dismay of many SEOs. Yet others have the sales pitch of exclusive word ownership in engines that require additional software or even unauthorized spyware to be installed in the searchers' browser. Despite assurances to the contrary by a commissioned salesperson, this is not the future of the Internet! Finally, if the SEO is creating and using shadow sites to work on increasing traffic to your Web site, beware. "If the relationship sours, the SEO may point the domain to a different site, or even to a competitor's domain."
Check the vendor's search engine ranking. Yes, some of the vendors phoning or e-mailing do not even register high with the search engines on which they are promising you success. One of the best ways to verify an SEO vendor's claims is to see its own success with its technique.

If you have not received an SEO call or e-mail yet, be assured you or your webmaster will likely receive one soon. This is the next frontier of the Wild West of the Internet. And if you get scammed, be sure to report it to your state's attorney general and to the Federal Trade Commission (www.FTC.gov).

If you've had an SEO success, please drop me a note to tell me about it.

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