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Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has been defined by some as the art of manipulating the search engines. That is false. SEO does not manipulate search engines. If you set out to place a web page on the first page of results for a target keyword or phrase thinking you are manipulating the search engine, you are doomed to fail.

Thinking you are forcing the search engine to do anything is a mistake. Thinking you are hiding anything from a search engine is a mistake. The only answer to top placement is recognizing what a search engine does, assessing the potential rewards and risks and working within those confines.

The only ones who can manipulate a search engine, are the people with access to the admin panel, and/or source code, of that specific search engine. If you can't get to the admin panel, you can have no effect whatsoever on what that search engine does. All you can do is construct data that you feel is most likely to fall within the parameters of the algorithm.

That is not manipulating a search engine, that is learning how search engines work and then manipulating your page. No matter how vehemently some may disagree, that is a fact! No one can "help" a search engine find what it's looking for anymore than anyone can "make" a search engine do what they want. Search engines just do what they do. They are only machines.

SEO's do not optimize search engines. This is the fallacy of SEO.

All rightee then, so we can accept the concept but how does that make us more money? Is the Guru suggesting we tell potential customers that we don’t actually provide the service we claim on our websites because of a branding problem? 

No. The Guru is telling you we have a problem if we intend to provide what the client REALLY wants compared to what they think they want due to the media and the industry promoting an inaccurate, simplistic term for a complicated process.

By telling prospects that we don’t do SEO or that we do more than SEO giving the impression of increased cost, how do we compete with the people who just say, OK, pay me for SEO?

Remember that my purpose here is to show you can make money online WITHOUT having to be an SEO expert and not really about talking about, or teaching the secrets of SEO. SEO could be a metaphor, or even a metaphive, for just about any kind of business where the branding for that type of business is vague.

I have disliked the term SEO for describing online business development from the first day I heard it for the simple fact that it is a misnomer. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/misnomer { We don’t use that word much where I come from so I had to look it up to make sure it meant what I thought it meant. If anyone else from Oklahoma is reading this, I thought I’d save you the time.}

Since no one in the so-called SEO industry actually optimizes a search engine, with the possible exception of those people who actually work for a search engine, the acronym SEO has become an umbrella term to describe a lot of things that the majority of the public does not understand.

This is a classic example of bad branding and while there are thousands of people generating revenue as a direct result of capitalizing and promoting that term, what the seo industry generates now is a drop in the bucket compared to what the online business development industry could, and should, be generating. In other words by allowing such a value driven service industry to be lumped into being branded as SEO, we are all grabbing the easy nickels and passing up the dollars. Branding can be just as much a problem as it is an asset.

There is no question that generating traffic from search engines is one aspect of online marketing. You can’t preach to empty pews. If you want a full collection plate, you need to get butts in the pews! But filling pews is not, and should not be, the objective. The objective is a full collection plate.

Let me dispel any notion that I am taking some kind of holier-than-thou high road. I am just as guilty of letting it slide as anyone else. I struggled for a long time back in the 90's and early 00's to try to force the term search engine placement for the direct action of placing my client's site above their competitors in search engines results as a starting point for an online marketing campaign. But to no avail.

I finally accepted that I could either spend my time servicing clients or trying to explain the difference between the two terms. SEO won.

It is painfully, slowly getting a little better. As business minded people become more acclimated to the realities of the actual depth of processes required to make an online business successful, I find myself more and more discussing techniques that will actually generate sales and not just traffic.

 But the problem remains that far too many clients come to me asking to be #1 laboring under the misconception that if they just get in the top of search engines that their financial problems will be over. A misconception that SEO’s, (including myself), help to foster. I hope you don’t let yourself be swayed by that misconception.

When I try to point out that in addition to traffic they need a plan, an objective and executable strategy that we can monitor and manage, I invariably do little more than lose the sale and make the prospect feel embarrassed. I don’t like losing sales, (I didn’t get into this business to NOT make sales), but I hate making the prospect feel bad and give up their dream much worse than just losing the sale.

I know that many of you are considering offering seo services because it is so easy to sell for the very reason it is misbranded and therefore vague. That’s fine. I WANT you to be able to identify opportunities and capitalize on them. But the dilemma comes when a prospect tells you he wants to pay you to make him #1 for some term. You know there is nothing wrong with doing what you were hired to do BUT you also know that what this prospect REALLY wants is for his website to make him money and that usually has very little to do with being #1 for a keyword search.

For a website to make money it needs a few things above and beyond just search engine traffic but –

#1. you may not have the resources to be able to develop a strategy to manage the manpower to execute the strategy, have the developers available to create unique scripts and  code to make the site “work” and designers to create an effective layout that leads visitors to a specific action. Whew!

#2. you know that if you explain this to the prospect they will realize you are right and they were wrong in thinking they could get rich quick just by using the mystical, (and cheap), secrets of an SEO    

So, should you compromise your ethics and just take the money knowing you can justify it or do you risk losing the client by attempting to educate him? Or do you try to find a creative solution?

Well, first of all, if you can’t choose one of those three options, I urge you to consider choosing a different path for your online venture. There are a LOT of ways to make money online and most of them easier than any aspect of SEO.

I can’t tell you what to do or even what I “think” you should do. Those questions have to be answered by you and you shouldn’t even consider letting someone else make a decision like this for you. All I can do is tell you what I have done in the hope of offering only one possible solution.

Luckily, I’ve been doing this long enough and have enough of a reputation that I do get the kind of jobs that I don’t have to educate anybody. The prospect is well aware of what is needed, they hire my company to perform specific tasks such as custom script development or specific types of link acquisition and everybody is happy. EVERYTHING is so much better when the client knows what they want and you just perform the service.

But since moving here to India to set up an SEO outsourcing company, (see? there I go again), excuse me, I meant to say, set up an online business development service and Business Process Outsourcing company, ( so how many people who had been thinking of hiring me did I just lose?),  I have been getting a lot more emails from people telling me they want me to get them #1 for some broad, extremely competitive term.

Also, since my start-up fees are low they come to me with the mistaken impression that getting those top terms is pretty easy and not very expensive. Maybe it’s my fault but there’s that misconception thing again.

 Over this past two years I have been able to take the core of traffic generation and online business development and create a basic process that has never failed to increase, not just the traffic but most importantly, the revenue of almost every project I have accepted.

{NOTE: The key phrase was just mentioned in case you failed to notice. EVERY PROJECT I ACCEPTED. The key to my strategy is in the ability to know which projects to accept and being able to walk away from the ones you don’t.}

Basically, I don’t tell them what they need, I show them. I assure them that I can indeed get them the placement they are asking for and after taking a look at the idea and the site, I develop an outline of an objective and strategy that starts to display the scope of how to turn the site into something that can actually generate revenue which is what ALL prospects really want. The strategy may include a better way to sell their product or service online, or maybe it includes a system for setting up affiliate programs or adsense but it  will always include a statement re-assuring them we will get the placements they are expecting.

I offer the outline and without dissuading them from the placement thing, they start to see how we set up the processes that we can monitor and manage and that they can verify.  Within that outline there is also mention of the fact that this particular strategy will require time and resources beyond the scope of the original agreement but that we will not increase the fees if they are willing to share the revenue only from what we generate. In other words, we only get paid from what we produce.

No one says no. If they did of course we would have to cancel the project and refund the money because we can’t do this level of work without getting paid. BUT the point is that I chose the third option of finding a creative solution and it has worked very well for me.

The main thing to remember is that the quickest way to lose a sale is to point out to the prospect that they are wrong or that they have made a mistake. Find a creative way to show the client how smart they are in choosing you to help them and you will get far more sales and a lot more happy customers than trying to “teach them” the error of their ways.

Recommended reading

http://www.amazon.com/22-Immutable-Laws-Branding-World-Class/dp/0887309372

Review
http://www.v7n.com/22_immutable_laws_of_branding.php

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The SEO Guru

you kids quit pesterin that dog and get outside and play!