I mentioned in a recent post that I’m now receiving SEO coaching. I’ve had a few questions about it, so I thought I’d post an update.
First, I should point something out: I’ve always been an SEO failure. I’ve never really “gotten it”. Most of my attempts at SEO have failed and, on the occasions my sites have jumped up the rankings, I’ve had no idea why and I didn’t know how to replicate that success.
So, Rob (my coach) is taking me right back to step 1.
In the last week, he’s been going over the basics of the “silo” approach he uses and has been teaching me how to do keyword analysis.
And, I have to say, it’s unglamorous grunt work.
However, Rob’s way - which is a series of ingenious “how to look behind the curtain” techniques that help me see how Google evaluates content in my niche - makes a lot sense and I’m starting to realise how certain sites are able to outperform the competition without loads of links and without any “visible” on-page SEO.
Steve
Today I’m not going to talk about marketing. Instead, I’m going to talk about business in general.
What I’m going to say might be old hat to you, but read on, because I know there are a lot of people in business who don’t understand what I’m about to say – and it’s costing them a lot of pain, frustration and money!
You probably already know that most businesses fail. An American statistic I read said that:
- 80% of businesses fail within the first 5 years
- 80% of the businesses that survive the initial 5 years, fail in the next 5 years
This means only 4% of businesses last until year 10.
This means, when you start a business, you’ve got the odds stacked against you!
However, I’ve got some good news - you can change the odds so they’re in your favour.
(more…)
(1)Why Adwords Is So Special
Let’s compare Adwords to direct mail:
A customer acquisition mailing costs around £700 per 1,000 letters.
On average of 22% your letters will get binned without being opened and, if you’re writing to businesses, many letters will never be seen by the key decision maker.
But the biggest problem is that, even with a good mailing list, most of the recipients just aren’t interested in what you’re selling
Now, compare that with Google Adwords:
With Adwords, clicks can be as low as 2p (my Adwords clients, who are in a wide variety of industries, average around 75p a click) and you can target your ads so they’re only seen by hungry prospects at the very moment they’re actively seeking what you’re selling.
(more…)
From today, I’m receiving coaching from an SEO coach called Rob Schweitzer.
This may surprise some of you as I’ve made a number of scathing remarks about the SEO industry.
However, I’ve always made a point to say I think there are two groups of SEOs:
(1) Those who are exploiting short-term loopholes and weaknesses in the Google algorithm to boost sites by artificial and underhand means (usually link manipulation to make the site look “popular”).
(2) The white-hat guys who’ve figured out what content google wants and know how to make their content look “high quality”.
IMO, the first group of SEOs are headed for disaster (and taking their clients over the cliff with them), the second group are the ones whose work is going to ride the algo changes and stay around a long time.
In this group, I’d include people like Dan Thies and, from what I’ve seen so far, Rob Schweitzer.
I plan to write more about my progress and the results I get with the site I’m going to be optimising.
However, if you’d like to learn about Rob’s approach, feel free to visit his site. When you’re there, make a point of downloading Charles Heflin’s ‘The Master Plan Primer’. It’s a free PDF that describes the ethical approach to SEO that I’ll be learning over the next few months.
Steve