I N T R O D U C T I O N
WHY LISTEN TO ME?
My client paid us thousands of dollars in consulting fees to take a deep dive into the marketing program of their existing search firm and assess whether or not their high monthly bill was justified.
The reality was that my client didn’t know
what the search firm was doing, or if what
they were doing was working.
Not only were the tactics outdated, AND
they were grossly overcharging for the
service they were providing, but we
learned how difficult it was to leave, and
the thousands of dollars of hidden costs a
business would incur by leaving.
We can save you thousands of dollars in
costs. My client already paid for this
work -- you don’t have to make the
same mistakes.
There’s a high chance you’ve been burned by an SEO
company or Internet marketing company in the past. If you haven’t, chances are, you will — unless you read this
document FIRST. Want to know
the biggest reason why the market is jam-packed full of snake oil salesman?
That means anyone with a computer and a Gmail account can set up shop and start selling themselves as Internet marketing experts. It doesn’t cost anything to get started in this business. There’s no capital expenses and no infrastructure needed. Any technology you need can be “rented” and “white labeled” for just a few hundred
bucks a month.
We would say that the
#1 complaint
frombusinesses who have had an unpleasant experience with an SEO company or Internet marketing firm recently is:
THERE IS A
LOW BARRIER
TO ENTRY.
Have you heard things like:
“We can get you to the top of
Google in just a couple of months”
“We have a special relationship
with Google to help you succeed”
OR
These high-pressure sales tactics
don’t work.
Real search marketing takes time.
It’s like maintaining a garden. You have
to constantly water it and prevent the
weeds from taking over.
There are no 'silver bullets'-- just lots
of testing and hard work.
I N T R O D U C T I O N
WHY IS THERE SO MUCH DISTRUST IN THIS INDUSTRY?
YOU DON’T OWN THE SYSTEMS
J A W - D R O P P I N G F A C T # 1
T O P C O M P L A I N T
WHAT THEY’RE DOING
Many Internet marketing firms, especially the large ones, are using proprietary content management systems to run your website.
WHY IT'S WRONG
The big guys make it easy and turn-key for them to set up your website, buy your domain, set up your chat — it’s all included!
SOUNDS GREAT, RIGHT?
But what happens when you want to leave? They said you could keep the site design, the content and everything else — but they aren’t going to help you take it out of their proprietary systems and put it into a new, easier-to-manage WordPress site.
OUR ADVICE
If you learn just ONE thing from this manifesto, if you take away just one piece of advice, let it be this: own all of your technology. What we mean by this is that it is crucial that YOU own and control the content system (like WordPress), the domain name, the chat software — all of it.
THE EXPENSIVE LESSON
IT WILL COST
YOU THOUSANDS
TO MOVE IT UNDER
YOUR CONTROL LATER
DOWN THE ROAD.
J A W D R O P P I N G F A C T # 2
WHAT THEY’RE DOING
We’re still seeing a lot of what’s called “exact-match domains,” or domains loaded with keywords, like “personalinjurysanantonio. com” instead of the brand name or business name.
WHY IT'S WRONG
Data shows that the majority of searchers don’t trust these types of domains, and they detract from the brand.
The reality is that Google is
over-compensating for a filter they have in place for certain types of brand-name searches. Type the word“southwest” into the search bar, and Google assumes you’re looking for southwest.com. Type in “nytimes” and they assume nytimes.com.
The same filter has been giving searches like “personal injury attorney new york” an edge by showing the domains which have those keywords.
But this is changing - read how.
OUR ADVICE
Build your SEO strategy on a domain name that supports your brand name, and use the same domain in other marketing to avoid confusion with consumers.
THE EXPENSIVE LESSON
YOU’LL BE SPENDING
THOUSANDS MOVING
AWAY FROM THESE IN
THE COMING MONTHS
AND YEARS AS THEY
BEGIN TO LOSE
VALUE.
E X A CT M ATC H
DOMAINS
T O P C O M P L A I N T KEYWORD-LOADED DOMAINS WILL SOON LOSE VALUE
J A W D R O P P I N G F A C T # 3
LONG-TERM CONTRACTS HAVE HIDDEN FEES
WHAT THEY’RE DOING
That long-term contract you signed was designed (and sold to you) in a way where you were able to get a fully-functioning website with all of the search marketing bells and whistles for a low monthly cost - for 12 or 24 months. What happens if it’s not working? What if you’re
not happy?
WHY IT'S WRONG
Long-term contracts hold you hostage to the company. While it may be cheap and cost-effective now, it CAN turn into thousands of dollars of expenses later when you want to move.
OUR ADVICE
Pay for your website in cash — possibly even from a separate provider. Ask your search marketing provider for a month-to-month arrangement where you can always back out if you need to.
ANSWER: YOU'RE STUCK
THE EXPENSIVE LESSON
AVOID LONG-TERM
CONTRACTS THAT
HANDCUFF YOU
TO PROPRIETARY
SYSTEMS.
YOU´LL SAVE
THOUSANDS
DOWN THE ROAD
BY PAYING MORE
• UP FRONT •
IN EXCHANGE FOR
OWNERSHIP AND
FLEXIBILITY.
T O P C O M P L A I N TJ A W D R O P P I N G F A C T # 4
LEAVING & STARTING FRESH
THEY USE A
PROPRIETARY
CONTENT SYSTEM,
AND THEY SET
UP & OWN YOUR
ANALYTICS &
ADWORDS ACCOUNT.
NOW WHAT?
You’ll need to set up a new website (in WordPress) and manually port every single page from the old site into the new infrastructure. There is no automatic way to do this; trust us, we tried. Plan on about $50-$100 per page of your website.
If your search marketing firm set up your Google Analytics to begin with, they will likely be the Master Admin and you cannot remove them -- and from our experience, you’ll practically have to beg to get your own Admin access.
If your search marketing firm set up your Google AdWords account, they will generally not release all of the information to you. You will probably need to set up a new Google AdWords account and start all over again.
Even if you got an export of all of the ads and keywords, you still need to set up a new account and port all of that information in. This could cost you another $1500 or more, and could have been avoided if you owned the account from the beginning.
METRICS & ANALYTICS
J A W - D R O P P I N G F A C T S # 5 # 6 & # 7
OVER-USE OF
VANITY METRICS.
The fact is most of the “big” search firms are using
watered-down vanity metrics with their own version of an analytics software. The problem is that they don’t actuallylet you drill down into anything meaningful, AND the datadoesn’t correlate with Google Analytics very well.
Demand that they use Google Analytics or some other
analytics software that you are familiar with and have full access to.
NO INTERNAL
TRAFFIC FILTERS
WERE INSTALLED.
When we dug into the search metrics a little deeper, we discovered something alarming.
Almost 30% of the “traffic” to the website that the search
firm was claiming in their monthly report progress - was from internal office traffic!
My client had a payment feature on his site that internal
employees were using to process customer payments.
This was inflating their numbers drastically.
Excluding internal office traffic is easy and takes about 2
minutes if you have access to your Google Analytics account.
OVEREMPHASIS
ON “VISITS” AND
“PAGEVIEWS”, AND
NOT THINGS LIKE
BRANDED VS.
NON-BRANDED TRAFFIC.
If your rep is praising last month’s results based on more visits and pageviews, you need to dig a little deeper.
Metrics like visits and pageviews are what we call “vanity metrics”. It sounds nice when they increase, but for the most part, they are meaningless. If you want to know if your SEO strategy is really working or not, look at the top 20 keywords that drive traffic to your website. You should be able to find it easily in your monthly report, or even Google Analytics. “Branded” traffic are visits that come in from searches that include your company's name.
This is an indication that the searcher was already aware of you when they searched. “Non-branded” traffic are visits that do not include your company's name. These are folks who did not know you before, and now have your firm as part of their consideration set.
The goal of your SEO campaign is to have your non-branded traffic exceed branded traffic figures. In the case of my client, his branded traffic comprised 98% of the traffic he was getting.Would you say his SEO was working?
J A W D R O P P I N G F A C T # 8
PROPRIETARY SYSTEMS
THEIR CONTENT
MANAGEMENT
SYSTEM (CMS) IS TOO
BASIC AND LOCKED
DOWN.
Sure, for most business owners, this makes sense. Give the client a tool to manage basic elements, but lock most of it down so they don’t break it. However, Internet marketing involves the use of a lot of tools and 3rd party scripts in
order to identify opportunities, or turn your visitors into
leads more effectively.
There is likely no visible place to install scripts for things
like heat maps, call tracking or other analytics tools without going through your rep. And it could take days or weeks to get what you want installed.
T H I S
— IS —
INSANITY
IT IS YOUR WEBSITE, AND YOU PAID FOR IT!
GET FULL ACCESS TO YOUR SITE TODAY, AND GET
THE ABILITY TO INSTALL OTHER TOOLS TO HELP
YOU SUCCEED!
CONTENT
J A W D R O P P I N G F A C T S # 9 & 1 0
A LOT OF THE
CONTENT YOU’RE
PAYING FOR IS
SYNDICATED ON
SOMEONE ELSE’S
WEBSITE.
BOTTOM LINE:If you’re paying for content — most if not ALL of that content should reside on your website. Content syndication is one way to build external links to the website. However, most of the sites being syndicated are not bringing in referral traffic, and have been penalized by Google’s 2011 Panda update.
This is an example of an out-dated tactic that the "big" Internet marketing firms have not been able to change and update their processes - and you are suffering.
THE BLOG AND THE
BLOG CONTENT ARE
ON A DIFFERENT
DOMAIN NAME.
The purpose of the blog and blog content is to provide
keyword-rich content on your website around the areas of practice that you offer. With enough content targeting the right keywords, you should be able to a) increase traffic to
the website; and b) increase the domain authority and trust of your primary domain.
In the case of my client, their search firm set up separate domain for the blog and did not post the content to the
primary domain, providing little SEO benefit to the primary domain (with the exception of a few backlinks).
This is not an optimal SEO solution,
and is clearly a sales strategy for the search firm to
coerce their clients into setting up more websites
(that they control), diluting the overall effectiveness
of any SEO campaign.
HOW TO UN-HANDCUFF YOURSELF
W H A T ' S N E X T ?
FOLLOW THESE 11 STEPS TO FREE
YOURSELF FROM THE BIG FIRM AND TAKE
CONTROL OF YOUR WEBSITE AGAIN
GET YOUR IT GUY IN THE
ROOM
FIND A GRAPHIC
DESIGNER
FIND A WORDPRESS
DEVELOPER
SEE WHO CONTROLS
THE DOMAIN NAME
TAKE INVENTORY OF
YOUR WEBSITE
GET YOUR DESIGNER
GOING
START SETTING UP A
HOST ENVIRONMENT
BEGIN TRANSFERRING
YOUR REGISTRAR
BEGIN SLICING AND
BUILDING WORDPRESS
CUSTOM THEME & POST
TYPES.
BEGIN PORTING OVER
YOUR CONTENT
CHANGE THE DNS
301 REDIRECTS FOR OLD
SITE PAGES
STEP 1 STEP 4 STEP 6B STEP 9 STEP 2 STEP 5 STEP 7 STEP 10 STEP 3 STEP 6A STEP 8 STEP 11
CONTACT US FOR HELP WITH STEPS 2-11
1 . 8 8 8 . 4 2 7 . 2 1 7 8 • I N F O @ P E A R A N A L Y T I C S . C O M
