05.12.2011
Search Engine Optimization
I knew this time would come – that I would have to give my own insight on this age-old comparison. This is not a 100% representation of what an in-house or agency SEO is but it’s a reflection and comparison of my experience.
It’s not a battle per se but it’s worth noticing what it looks like when you’re behind both fences.
In-House SEO Jedi
For 4 consecutive years, I’ve been working on the client side. I’ve built, trained, and led a couple of teams of junior SEO’s, link builders, copywriters and web designers in the ultimate goal of optimizing client sites. Being an in-house SEO seemed like nurturing a baby from birth to adulthood. The close familiarity with your projects in house definitely helps you in learning how it behaves in every aspect of digital marketing – performance in search results, gaining traffic from different channels, acquisition of goals, and seasonal lifecycles.
Planning and execution of campaigns were also quite flexible (well depending on how many steps up the ladder you need to climb for approvals) when you’re in-house because you’re directly connected with the stakeholders of the project. In terms of reporting, it is quite straightforward. Once you’ve established your KPI’s (and enhance them over the period of time), then building a monthly template would be fluid enough. This is where you can see the fruits of your effort (and mistakes) come to life. Being able to monitor KPI’s on a regular basis for a single client gives you that confidence in generating projections and action plans for the next proceeding months.If there’s one word that I can attribute to being an in-house SEO, it would be FOCUS. It’s that focus that gives an in-house SEO his core strength vs. an SEO agency. I was fortunate enough that my bosses were patient and generous enough to let me experiment, innovate, and develop my processes for their websites for their success. Yes, I made a lot of mistakes but I always made a point to correct them for twice the gain. An inevitable weakness which is inherited by in-house SEO jedi’s is the disease of being “nearsightedness”. They will become so immersed with the company and industry that sometimes he loses touch of what’s happening in the industry as a whole specially if they stick to process which works and never have the courage or the time to experiment and think out of the corporate box.
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11.10.2010
Web Analytics
When I started working with Nurture3, my previous role was that of a team leader which meant only executing the plan and strategies set by my manager or the client. Then I had the opportunity (and the challenge) of doing everything as an SEO manager.
When you’re heading an SEO department from the beginning, your major roles will include establishing procedures from keyword research, on-page optimization, link building, and analysis.
Building the benchmark, a.k.a. KPI’s, for your SEO campaign is a process you should not miss. You can’t improve what you can’t measure – that’s a constant reminder by the analytics experts in the industry. With the onset of personalized search and now Google Instant, search engine rankings alone are not effective KPI’s anymore.
There are a number of KPI’s you can establish to measure your SEO campaign. We’ll start with organic traffic and conversions.
Luckily Google Analytics allows you to create custom reports according to your data needs. Let’s go through creating one step by step.
Custom Reporting can be accessed through the left side panel once you log into Google Analytics.
You can create / edit custom reports in this interface. read more
04.10.2010
Conversion Optimization
Ever since I started working on conversion optimization last January 2010, I knew I found my new love. An increase of 20% in conversions after 2 months of optimizing message to landing page to registration flow, is a great figure to present to your boss.
For those who are not familiar yet with conversion optimization or conversion rate optimization (CRO), I would recommend reading one of my conversion superheroes, Bryan Eisenberg’s Blog.
An essential element of CRO is the landing page. It’s the customers’ entry point into your business and it’s your marketing pitch for them to purchase, register or whatever conversion you would like them to do.
I have been examining and evaluating landing pages for my clients’ projects and I have found that landing page holy grail at SEOMoz.Org. It’s neat, complete, and functional.
I would have written a top 10 strategy post for landing page structure but I think this demonstration will point out the important elements in landing page optimization.
Don’t take my word for it, let me who show you 7 reasons why SEOMoz has the perfect landing page:
1. Value Proposition (Enough Said!) – According to Bryan Eisenberg, there is one secret of top converting websites that is so simple, so obvious, yet so many people forget to use – Value Proposition. Tell your customers why they should buy your products, why they should choose you instead of your competitors.
What makes you stand out? What makes you better than the competitors? Answer that and deliver that message in a few seconds!For SEOMoz, there’s nothing simpler than “Get Started with SEOMoz Pro, risk free, now.” Apart from the brand that they have, they also give you that money back guarantee. Sweet! Right? read more
13.02.2010
Online Marketing
It’s a new year and I wasn’t able to greet you folks (better late than never). I’m hoping you’re having a great start for this new millenium.
It’s been more than 3 months since I’ve last posted in this blog. I’ve been focusing more on writing as guest writers in top SEO blogs in the community. It has been pretty exciting (and a drop dead challenge) to expand my portfolio, now I’m working on building strategies for Online Reputation Management for my clients and start on Conversion Optimization.
In a few weeks from now I will be featuring a few parts of Online Reputation (ORM) and Conversion Optimization. I have to admit, I’m learning as I master these new areas in my work but it will be interesting to see the developments and tests of what works and what doesn’t.
As for now, I’m going to leave you with a couple of my previous blog posts at SEODubai.Org and SearchEngineJournal.Com: read more
16.08.2009
Search Engine Optimization
Ever since Bing launched and when they finally closed the deal with Yahoo, I’ve been itching to do this review on Bing’s results and the implications it has on SEO’s.
Now that Binghoo has been in existence, optimizing for Google’s competition is growing significantly. If Binghoo will be capturing 1/3 of the search market it’s definitely worth your efforts of grabbing that pie of your traffic.
Let me give you a brief walk through of a few interesting features that Bing has.
Document/Site Preview – Aside from the ordinary SERP’s you have, Bing helps users by giving them a preview of the page/site. According to the Bing team, “it helps searchers find the content they want faster, without leaving the SERP until they are ready.” As a webmaster, you can also disable the document preview feature for your site in Bing. (By the way I’m not affiliated in anyway with the featured websites on the searches.)
Quick Tabs & Related Searches – Bing gives you a neat list of related topical searches at the left panel of every search. In our keyword “dubai business”, we have related search options of “online businesses”, “dubai business directory”, “business opportunities dubai”, and so on.
Another feature I like on Bing is the Quick Tabs section which gives you filtering options on a broad scope of search. For example, I was interested in finding out for “Nike Shoes”, it gave me options for Catalog, Coupons, and Jobs. The Bing team aims to let the searcher to “fully explore their subject without losing track of their initial query.
Best Match – If I remembered it correctly, Microsoft branded Bing as a “decision engine”. The best match feature has made this statement clear enough. Bing highlights huge brands and names in their best match feature. It isolates the search results if you’re looking for official websites and leading brands.
You can see that aside from the single listing for the Google site, it also features the site’s search box which you can use directly, a “Similar to this” section which listed other similar results which you might have in mind. And then there’s the usual quick tabs, related searches, and search history.
You can read the rest of Bing’s features on the New Features Relevant to Webmasters PDF they’ve released last June 2009. They’ve also mentioned a little bit on Search Engine Optimization (but I still think Google’s SEO Starter Guide was way way more interesting and informative).
Disclaimer: The two websites that I will be reviewing in a while were picked by the fact that they have ranked number 1 during the time of search on Google.Com and Bing.Com. I’m not in any way promoting any of the sites featured in this review.
Let’s get down to the face-off. I did a search for the term “dubai business” (don’t ask me why and how, it’s a random keyword I thought of) on Google and Bing. For everyone’s information “dubai business” has a search volume of 74,000 for the month of July from Google Keyword Tool (this means the keyword is worthy of traffic).
And let’s go tally the results: read more
24.07.2009
Interview Fridays
It’s always great to know people within your industry. It’s even more interesting to share experiences with work with people who understand what you’re going through. Last week I’ve met an eMarketing Manager from Maktoob, one of the largest internet portal and Arab online community in the Mimddle East.
Ladies and gentleman, please help me welcome Ms. Mais AbuSalah.
Thank you very much for giving me the privilege for this interview. Please tell us about yourself and your current profession?
My name is Mais AbuSalah; I graduated from the University of Jordan – Computer Science as a major. I am currently the eMarketing Manager in Maktoob.com – Jordan.
How’s the online media industry of Jordan in the last 3 years, particularly that of SEO/SEM?
I believe that the online media (especially SEO/SEM) is still not on the basic checklist for many websites, not only in Jordan, but also in the Arab World.
From time to time, I check local websites (radio stations, newspapers… etc.) and most of them lack the basics of online marketing (especially SEO).
And if we want to talk about websites and forums owned by individuals, we will find that unfortunately most of them use black hat SEO. They also focus more on what brings traffic (series, songs, rumors… etc.) more than what brings value to users and online browsers.
Some people in the industry started as web developers, some as designers, while others like me started as content developers, what was your main background that helped succeed in being an SEO?
I started with Maktoob.com as a junior product/channel officer, then a project coordinator (still handling channels and projects including content deals and content management), then I started with SEO. So I guess being a coordinator among different teams helps understanding what should be done by whom and whether or not it’s doable, and how the flow of work should be especially with large organizations.
You’re a graduate of Search Engine College, a highly regarded institution for SEO/SEM certification. What’s your stand on industry certification? Would you recommend it be mandatory or is the industry not ready for that yet?
I believe SEO/SEM should start to be mandatory and by trusted institutes. You might find many people aware of bits and pieces of SEO, but many of them use black hat ways (especially in the Arab region). Online marketing in general is a rare specialty here. It’s very hard for example to find online marketers in Jordan with hands-on experience. It’s either that they have more than 7 years and very fresh and never had hands-on experience in online marketing.
The certification or training shouldn’t only be theoretical, but should also include actual implementation (and that was the case with Search Engine College).
read more
17.07.2009
Interview Fridays
I’m proud to announce that today is the official launch of Click-Dubai’s Interview Fridays and we have a very very special guest to kick things off with the program. So let’s forget about Jacko’s conspiracy or Sotomayor’s drama and let’s give our attention to one of the well respective names in the search marketing industry. Ladies and gents, let’s give it up for Mr. Kevin Gibbons of SEOptimise.
For those who are new to the SEO scene, would you be kind enough to introduce SEOptimise and a little background about you and your company?
Hey Dave, thanks for asking me to do this interview.
Well firstly, I’ve been involved in the search marketing industry (SEO in particular) since 2002. During this time I was working for a web design agency whilst still on a placement year from University and I began getting more and more involved in the SEO side of projects.
I then went back to Uni with my free .ac.uk webspace and quickly realised it wasn’t too difficult to dominate for competitive terms in Google! I actually had an assignment to create a website for a made-up driving school and within a few days the site was number one in Google for “Oxford driving school” and I was receiving several daily enquiries to take people out on driving lessons! I even managed to make some cash out of it by putting some AdSense ads up, shame they took the webspace away ?
Anyway, I graduated from Uni, built up a few of my own website’s (which I would thoroughly recommend as a fast-track to learning SEO) and shortly after decided to spend a year in Australia. Rather than getting a job out there, I found that my interest and ability in SEO allowed me to win a few clients and work as a freelance SEO consultant. I decided it would look more professional to set myself up as a company, which is how the early days of SEOptimise were formed.
You’ve been into search engine marketing since 2002, how did the industry evolve over these years? What were the notable changes in history?
In terms of search marketing 2002 seems so far away now it’s unreal. We’re obviously used to seeing the daily algorithm changes or clever new tactics on blogs and Sphinn almost on a daily basis.
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14.07.2009
Interview Fridays
I think I just committed one of the mortal sins in blogging – being on a “dry spell” for quite a long time. Apologies folks! Client projects have been crazy lately and getting a single post up was just impossible. But don’t worry, I’ve come up with a couple of interesting ideas to keep you updated of the search marketing industry.
Yup you read it right, I’ll be starting on Interview Fridays. I’ve started inviting SEO/SEM professionals, online marketing gurus, branding experts, and top CEO’s of search marketing companies to give us a piece of their thoughts, experiences, and most importantly success stories.
Although I have asked a couple of people already for the upcoming Interview Fridays, I will be needing more to keep program alive in the next couple of months. So if you would like to recommend someone or would like yourself to be featured, please don’t hesitate to drop me a message on the contact page or send me an email at dave [at] saktoseo [dot] com.
What sort of professionals are we looking for? Well here’s a list of industries that would be relevant to the program: read more
16.06.2009
Online Marketing
“If you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it.” – Lord Kelvin
In my previous years of doing SEO with clients, I was always the #2 guy, the person leading the team of junior SEO’s and implementing the necessary strategies whether it be on my concept or by mandates of clients. I thought I got used to being #2 until last week.
I realized that I’ll be leading a team of SEO’s and will be heading a brand new department for my company for organic optimization in partnership with our established SEM team. WTF am I doing? Although I’ve been thankful for the opportunities, part of me still questions whether I can do this or not.
Before I could further plan for core campaigns, I had to map out my mission and vision for the department, a thing which I have not done before. Thankfully, I’m part of a great team with excellent bosses to look up to.
Here are a few points which I’ve learned and may be helpful to those of you starting out on online marketing and social media strategies in-house or for clients: read more
24.04.2009
Search Engine Optimization
A couple of days ago it’s as if a request out my mind just got granted. Seth Godin, America’s Greatest Marketer (according to American Way Magazine) and author of bestselling marketing books, including Permission Marketing, just wrote a post titled “How to Make Money with SEO“.
Even that alone just got me hyped up. Surprisingly, Rand Fishkin just pimped out a post of his own in addition to Seth’s article – “There’s Way More Than 2 Ways to Make Money with SEO“
I wish I could add some more intelligent factors but these 2 gentlemen just laid out the best principles in milking the Benjamins out of the profession.
Here are some points which struck the home run for me: read more
