The answer depends on your business. In some cases, the smart decision for a business is to outsource SEO to a marketing services company. In other cases, it makes sense to bring it in-house which could mean hiring consultants, hiring full-time staff, or asking existing engineers, copy writers and marketers to incorporate SEO into their work. Every business is unique and determining the your business’ needs, objectives and resources is the first step to answering this question.

What follows is an outline of the questions every business should ask itself before bringing SEO in-house or shipping it off to an SEO firm.

How dependent upon SEO is your business? Is SEO a core part of your business plan? Or is it but one tactic to be balanced amongst many others? If SEO is core to your business, it may make sense to have specialists in-house. However, if your SEO needs outweigh your company’s current size and capabilities, you may want to bring in an agency or hire a specialist to help grow your own competencies.

Does the project require cross-functional, specialized skill sets? Does your business need skilled SEOs to developer and deliver strategies to existing teams of engineers, content editors and marketers to implement? Or does the project require resources for both strategy and implementation? Does your business require – and want to pay for – support at different levels of seniority (ie. Entry level + Supervisor + Executive levels)?

Does your business consider SEO an ongoing activity or a one-time project? Does your business need someone to train existing staff – engineers, marketers, etc. – or does it require a full-service staff. Can your business commit to open-ended tenure of a full-time employee? Or does it need to operate on a shorter-term basis? Can your business commit to a long-term contract with an agency?

What is the budget and what will it afford? How will the budget translate into work provided by a consultant, full-time and agency? If the budget is less than what a full-time employee costs, what could it afford in terms of consulting? How would an agency allocate that budget to work completed by subject matter experts vs. administration/supervision vs. overhead? Would those allocations be acceptable to you?

Who will manage the SEO resources? If an agency is hired, is there in-house staff available to manage, support and collaborate with the agency at all levels? If you hire in-house, who would manage the hires and is there an established career path for employees?

How will decisions about SEO be made? Does your business expect close collaboration with the SEOs in day to day decisions? Will your business require extensive research, analysis, recommendations and rationale in presentations prior to evaluate options prior to making decisions? Or do you want a hands-off approach?

There is not one answer to any of these questions. Every business is different. Evaluating these questions and determining how SEO will integrate into your business’ marketing practices and processes will help you determine whether to outsource, or bring SEO in-house – or some combination of the two.

Read more from Thrivepoint about Search Engine Optimization or contact us to discuss your business’ needs.

© 2009. Thrivepoint LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Have you ever been too hot and turned down your air-conditioner only to find that you are too cold later? And then you turn the AC back up only to find that you are too hot later? The difficulty getting it just right is, in effect, what happens with over-optimizing search: The user logs in, changes all the parameters (keywords, bids, creative, etc.) to improve results and then finds that they did too much. So they log back in and make a number of similar changes to correct the campaign; except the campaign quickly goes back the other way. This happens to too many search campaigns and the following is intended to provide a brief guide on how to avoid over-optimization:

Scientific Method: This holds true for Adwords as much as science: Before taking action, create a hypothesis and construct the campaign in a way that lets you know if your hypothesis was right or wrong.

Learning: Whether a test succeeds or fails, knowing what does not work is just as valuable as knowing what does. Ensure that variables are isolated so that results – positive or negative – are definitive.

Historical Data: Do not continue to rely on results and assumptions that are more than 3-6 months old. Continue to re-test former winners and losers to ensure that optimization takes into account changes in the landscape that may impact current results.

Limit Variables: Tests should not overlap with each other. All testing variables should be isolated to eliminate the chance of misreading results and to drive learning more quickly. For example, a change in bid strategy should not be executed at the same time as a creative test if at all possible because it will be difficult to attribute a change in performance to the correct cause.

Limit Risk: Do not run tests on all keywords or adgroups at the same time because results will be unpredictable and there is always a chance that tests will yield poor results. Segment a portion of the campaign to test and run winners on the remainder of the campaign. The level of testing is dependent upon the marketer’s threshold for risk, but should be somewhere between 10-40% of budget. For example, if there are 10 adgroups spending $1000/month each, then segment 1-4 adgroups to be eligible for tests and run winners on the remaining adgroups. Rotate the 1-4 adgroups every time a new test is started to ensure that no overtesting of any particular adgroup occurs.

Click to read more posts about paid search or marketing tests.

© 2009. Thrivepoint LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Quality links from quality sites are hard to come by without effort. They require extended efforts to build, and the approach to achieving a long-lasting quality link can be manual, tedious and very time intensive. At the very least, it is an ongoing effort; not a one time, quick-hit activity. For example, if you are a marketing agency, a link from top university marketing departments would be valuable. It would provide a credible link from a credible institution. It also will help you generate traffic directly from the link as students, faculty and business leaders will visit the university site and likely click through to the links presented on that site. As you can imagine it would take time and extensive relationship building to receive these types of link.

On the other hand, to speed things up, some SEOs build out a network of their own sites against different industry verticals and place links to their clients on those sites. When a client contracts with these SEOs, they will immediately receive some guaranteed number of links, properly optimized, pointing to their site. It always sounds like a good deal. And sometimes it can be. The challenge comes when the client evaluates the long-term implications. When the relationship with the SEO ends, the client’s links are usually taken down and rented to the client’s competitor. All your hard work and money spent goes out the window.

The bottom line is that these types of linking relationships are essentially paid sponsorships where the client is renting space on another website in hopes that they will receive more traffic via the search engines. While there will be some SEO benefit, as with many advertising deals, all clients should look to project the expected results of these paid sponsorships against other paid sponsorships. They could be effective for the client, but it is important for the clients to come to the table with a complete understanding of what is included and not included in any SEO deal.

Click to read more posts about hiring an agency or SEM scams

© 2009. Thrivepoint LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Every marketer wants the best toolset to be used for their campaigns, but search marketing software is developed by a wide range of companies. Knowing who is behind development and maintenance of the software is just as important as knowing what features it offers because the costs and effectiveness of software varies by developer and can significantly affect the outcome of a campaign. It is crucial that clients clearly understand the benefits, limitations and market readiness of the software its employees and agencies use and the developers who make them.

Search engine provided tools are available for most paid search and SEO functions. Google’s tools are the most popular but not the only game in town. Most firms use at least one tool from search engines whether it be webmaster diagnostic tools, paid search management or analytics. While these tools are usually free, some firms do not use them because:

• Multiple Interfaces: Some tools, like bid managers, only work with the search engine who provided the tool. The result is that users must use multiple tools for the same function;
• Quality: Effectiveness of the tools across the search engines can vary dramatically;
• Privacy and Security: Some firms believe sharing sensitive client data with search engines is a conflict of interest.

A 3rd party product is software licensed by the firm from another company that is dedicated to building and maintaining software products. 3rd party products have dedicated development, maintenance, sales and support teams to service clients. While many 3rd party products are run as independent businesses, in some cases, a services firm may offer its tools as a commercial product. Such proprietary products are used by the firm’s employees to service clients and are licensed to other firms for use with their clients.

Proprietary software is an application built by the services firm to be used only by its employees. Some firms maintain full-time in-house staff to develop and maintain the software while others outsource. One of the benefits of proprietary software is tight integration into the firm’s processes, but reliability and effectiveness of the tool depends on the firm’s development acumen and expenditure on development, maintenance and support of its proprietary tools.

Like proprietary software, proprietary tools are built by the service firm to be used only by its employees but instead of writing custom software, these tools are built using off the shelf software, such as Microsoft Excel or Microsoft Access. Proprietary tools often develop organically by the services teams and usually are not supported by dedicated developers. Proprietary tools may be as simple as standardized templates or very intricate and sophisticated tools to automate workflow and other functions. While typically considered inferior to custom software, proprietary tools do offer flexibility and, for some firms, a superior and cost-effective solution when combined with search engine provided tools.

To read more and download the whitepaper,Click here. Please contact us if you would like to discuss search marketing software solutions in depth or if you have any other questions.

© 2009. Thrivepoint LLC. All Rights Reserved.

The approach that a search marketing firm employs in its strategy and tactics for achieving results is born from its search marketing philosophy. A firm’s philosophy is taught from day one to new employees and re-enforced to existing employees through process, training, compensation and other aspects of the firm’s culture. While every firm has a unique approach and competitive positioning, in the search marketing field, there are two general philosophies firms tend to segment themselves into.

A BlackHat firm is concerned with immediate success regardless of the rules established by the search engines in its terms of use and guidelines. BlackHat firms bend and break the rules established by the search engines and opportunistically identify competitive gaps where its clients can maximize results. While results may be achieved quickly, they may be short-lived and the firm’s clients may face consequences from the search engines if the techniques are discovered.

While BlackHat is a term used most often in reference to SEO, it can just as easily be applied to paid search. With commercial contracts and direct API access, paid search offers many opportunities for BlackHat firms to exploit advantages in paid search campaigns.

A WhiteHat firm focuses on delivering results while ensuring that the client’s marketing does not violate the terms of use and guidelines of the search engines. WhiteHat firms work within the confines of the rules to establish practices that will maximize client results without the risk of penalties from the search engines. While the risk of penalties from the engine is greatly reduced and results generally last longer, results may take longer to develop.

It should be noted that a BlackHat firm will include a layer of WhiteHat practices in its offering as a matter of best practice. Balancing the combination of the two provides more stability for the BlackHat program. And on the other hand, there are times when a WhiteHat firm inadvertently employs BlackHat techniques on its client’s business. This can happen when a firm’s training programs are out of date or if inexperienced staff is assigned to a client’s account.

To read more and download the whitepaper,Click here. Please contact us if you would like to discuss your upcoming agency search with a Thrivepoint advisor.

© 2009. Thrivepoint LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Ensuring success and limiting risk starts with the implementation of a robust regimen of upfront planning before any SEM meetings take place. The upfront planning process is designed to ensure that clients are making objective and well-informed decisions that lead to long-term, successful partnerships with their SEM.

Here are five steps that clients should take before meetings with the SEMs:

Current Situation: Write an evaluation of the current situation. Key questions to answer are: What is the current budget? What is the current approach? What are the current resources and tools? What is working? What is not working? Why are we considering hiring a new agency? What will change from the current situation when the new agency takes over?

Objectives: Outline the objectives of the engagement and expected results. Create a business case which outlines the expense, projected quantitative and qualitative results and costs for not making any change.

Requirements: Outline requirements for the agency’s capabilities, resources, tools, staff, client experience, case history, proximity, scope of work, etc. Prioritize requirements as need to have and nice to have. Need to have requirements are the minimal requirements the SEM needs to meet to be considered. Nice to have requirements will provide flexibility for the SEMs to differentiate their offering from the competition.

Constituents: Identify who in the client organization will be involved with the research, evaluation, negotiation and decision making. Ensure that there is buy-in from each consituent on their role in the process and the time commitment that is expected.

Decision Criteria: Review the objectives and requirements with constituents and determine each constituents decision criteria. Ensure that there are not any conflicts between different constituents criteria. Ensure each constituents criteria matches the role that they will play in the evaluation.

By implementing a planning process that involves these five steps, clients will maximize their odds of finding the right long-term partner and realizing the gains that a business can achieve with the right SEM partner.

If you would like additional information on this topic or to meet with an advisor to discuss your upcoming agency search, please contact a Thrivepoint Advisor.

© 2009. Thrivepoint LLC. All Rights Reserved.

What is the current stage of the buy process? Disclosing the current stage of the buy process enables the agency to tailor the information they provide to the buyer’s needs at the time. Receiving a full-blown proposal during the information gathering stage is overkill, because at this stage, the buyer might be interested in reading whitepapers, case studies and other industry research published by the agency. On the other hand, receiving research instead of a proposal when the buyer is at the decision making stage is a clear miss for both buyer and agency.

What is the current solution in place? Whether the buyer uses consultants, in-house employees, another agency or nothing, the agency should know the details of the current situation. With this information, the agency can provide case studies and references that most closely match the buyers existing situation so that the buyer will be armed with most relevant information about the agency’s track record.

What parameters will drive the decision? Communicating needs and requirements to the agency ensures that the buyer’s decision making process is objective and that the agency has a fair opportunity to demonstrate its historical track record in meeting the requirements. Distinguishing between need to have and nice to have requirements is also important because it lets the agency know the minimal requirements for contention (need to haves) and how to differentiate from the pack (nice to haves).

Who will be involved in the decision making? No matter who is making the final decision, it is important to disclose the other people who will be involved in the evaluation process whether it is the finance department, executive staff or others. The information the finance department needs will be different than what the CEO or VP of Marketing need and outlining these information requirements will help the agency to deliver the most relevant information.

When is the buyer making a decision? All agencies are glad for the opportunity to share its capabilities, case studies and research with interested marketers. The exception to this rule is if the buyer does not correctly disclose the decision making deadline. In this case, the agency may put in more work than necessary to design materials to try to close the business and they will likely tire out the buyer with followup calls and meeting requests. Setting expectations upfront for whether the decision is happening imminently, never or somewhere in between helps the agency share the right information with the buyer and to ensure that its communications are timely and productive for the buyer.

If you would like additional information on this topic or to meet with an advisor to discuss your upcoming agency search, please contact a Thrivepoint Advisor.

© 2009. Thrivepoint LLC. All Rights Reserved.

With Americans conducting more than 12.6 Billion searches in October according to Comscore, search engines are on track to give away almost 100 Billion clicks for free per year. As you would expect, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has become the must-do activity for online marketing success as businesses compete to get as many free clicks as possible from Google and other search engines.

Are the clicks really free?
While the search engines do not charge for clicks on organic listings, the links are anything but ‘free’. There is a hyper-competitive world of SEO services intended to help businesses compete for those clicks. Over the past few years, SEO has gone from cottage industry to big business. And you can be sure that many of the websites ranking in the top 10 for your targeted keywords have invested marketing budget into SEO.

How to Compete
The answer is simple. Whether you do-it-yourself or hire an expert, the best way to compete is to follow this simple formula:

Content + Links = Traffic

Of course, the devil is in the details of the type, frequency and other factors driving the content and the links…

Content Optimization
People use search engines to ‘query’ the web; inherent in that query is a question that must be answered. The search engine’s job is to find the most authoritative answer to that query. Your job is to position your content to answer these questions. Here is a simple formula to follow for your content:

Popular Topic + Succinct Answers = Good Content

Link Acquisition
The search engine’s goal is to publish the authoritative sites on topics at the top of the listings. Links are how a search engine determines if your website is authoritative or not. The theory goes that if your business is about widgets and a lof of sites about widgets link into your site, then the search engine will know that your site is popular and authoritative about widgets.

Not all links are the same so the priority should be links from websites relevant to your business and authoritative on the topic. A site about race cars is not relevant to a company selling lawnmowers and as a result, a link from them would not be useful. On the other hand, links from professional gardeners to a company selling lawnmowers would be very relevant. With that in mind, here is a great list of 101 things you can do to build links for your site.

If you would like additional information on this topic or a free needs assessment, please contact a Thrivepoint Advisor.

© 2008. Thrivepoint LLC. All Rights Reserved.

The key challenge is that unless you pay for an advertisement or sponsored link, you can not control where or when your listings appear. The search engine maintains sole authority and editorial judgement of what sites to list. In an earlier post, we discussed six ways to achieve free traffic from Google and other search engines, but one of the most important additional aspects to achieving website rankings in Google and other search engines is your meta-title.

What is the meta-title? The ‘meta-title’ or more simply, ‘title’ is a reference to the HTML code of your website. This code on your website provides any browser or search engine the title of your web page. You can often see the page title displayed on the top left of your browser or as the title displayed on the search engine results page.

Why is the title important? The title is important because it lets the search engine know what the content of the page is about. The search engine uses this context to help determine the overall relevancy of the content of the page in relation to a user’s search query. The title should be closely tied to the specific topic and content on the page. Also, because the title is displayed in the search results, think of it as a headline to call a user’s attention to your listing.

What are the best practices for writing a meta-title?

• Keep the title succinct (three to five words)
• Ensure the title is descriptive (eg. consider ‘Contact Search Marketing Sales’ vs. ‘Contact Page’)
• Incorporate focused keywords in your title
• Do not duplicate titles; each page should have a unique title and focus
• Use common language and do not just use a list of keywords (ie. write it as a phrase)
• Make the phrase catchy without losing the intent of describing the page content to the search engine
• Add your company name before or after the intial phrase (eg. ‘SEO Best Practices :: Thrivepoint’ or ‘Thrivepoint :: SEO Best Practices’)
• If possible, try to use your title as the page url also (eg. www.thrivepoint.com/seo-best-practices)

How can I update my titles? If you use a content management system, there typically will be a feature enabling you to change your page title and other meta-data. If your pages are static, then you can view and change the title by searching for ‘meta-title’ in the html of the page.

If you would like additional information on this topic or a free consultation on your marketing efforts, please contact a Thrivepoint advisor.

© 2008. Thrivepoint LLC. All Rights Reserved.

“Designed for 501(c)(3) non-profit organizations, Google Grants is a unique in-kind advertising program. It harnesses the power of our flagship advertising product, Google AdWords, to non-profits seeking to inform and engage their constituents online. Google Grants has awarded AdWords advertising to hundreds of non-profit groups whose missions range from animal welfare to literacy, from supporting homeless children to promoting HIV education. Google Grant recipients use their award of free AdWords advertising on Google.com to raise awareness and increase traffic. “

Google was recently shown to have more than 70% search engine market share and is routinely touted as marketer’s #1 performing advertising placement. The upside is the program is free, the downside is that there are some limitations and hurdles to getting it to work properly. Whether you have a Google Grant or want a Google Grant, here are three things to look out for with your Google Grant program:

Application: Google reviews applications each quarter and you will find out within 6-months if your application is approved. The first step is to create a well-crafted proposal that clearly outlines to Google how you will use the Google Grant and that you are an Adwords expert. To increase your likelihood of approval, key in on the specifics such as campaign objective, target audience, sample advertisements and a keyword list. Make sure to spend time reviewing the Adwords best practices documentation that Google provides so that you can submit your best application the first time.

Getting Live: Once approved, you need to design a campaign that will compete in Google’s open and competitive marketplace where your ads will compete against other Google Grant recipients and paid advertisers. Google utilizes the Quality Score to evaluate your campaign’s advertisements and keywords against the competitive set before allowing the campaign to go live. Google Grants puts constraints on your campaign – maximum cost per click, maximum budget, Google.com only distribution – that make it harder for your campaign to achieve a Quality Score high enough to have Google approve the ads and post the campaign ‘live’. To get your campaign competitive and live requires extremely tight Adgroup definition with explicit tie-ins between the creative and the keywords – the more specific the better.

Utilizing Budget: Google grants you a set budget per month (often set to a daily budget) which allows you to purchase clicks up to that limit without incurring any actual cost. If you do not use your daily budget, the budget does not roll over to future months. It is imperative to maximize your campaign’s performance so that you can utilize 100% of your Google Grant. Given the constraints on cost per click and distribution that Google Grant recipients have, utilizing the maximum budget often becomes a major hurdle. For example, if you receive a $10,000 per month Google Grant and spend $150 per day, you would be leaving $65,250 per year on the table. And if for every dollar spent, you generate $5 in donations, the total loss could be >$325,000 which is a significant sum for any organization. Ensuring that you use every dollar of the Google Grant should be a key goal of the program which requires ongoing attention paid to optimization, budget and bid management.

Thrivepoint offers a service, Thrivepoint for Google Grants, which helps you in each of these three stages of the campaign – application, setup and program optimization. The program is designed specifically for non-profits looking to maximize the utilization of their Google Grants budget.

If you would like additional information on this topic or a free consultation on your marketing efforts, please download the service fact sheet or contact a Thrivepoint advisor.

© 2008. Thrivepoint LLC. All Rights Reserved.