Making information work

Half of this day went to a seminar/workshop focusing on the editorial aspects of search engine visibility, and visibility quality. I had been preparing for this day for e-v-e-r.

And it worked.

The audience had worked little to nothing with hands on SEO, or at least that was their thought going into the meeting. After a while, I feel that it dawned upon them that this is not magic, this is not rocket science - this is simple, and this is fun. And the modifications made in the process of creating content for the web is really not at all focused solely on search engines, but improving the quality for the website visitors.

It was a long time ago that I saw a group of people get so excited about the Adwords Keyword Tool, and the dramatic truths it sometimes told. Luckily, this company is not enslaved by corporate jargon restrictions, so the move from outside-in to inside-out thinking was simple, and resulted in the active optimization of several pages.

I learned a lesson here as well: I will from now on always spend the extra time necessary to prepare a presentation together with the buyer, and ensure that she or he is fully aware, and fully satisfied, before the live presentation starts. The two meetings I had prior to today with the client were likely the primary factor in today’s success.

And on another note - when I have been tense and charged up for this long, I always seem to crash completely after successful delivery. So, I went home. Slept for two hours. Then played Guitar Hero for 2 hours. Then played with my daughter until she went to bed.

The life of a sole proprietor might on occasion be stressful and demanding beyond belief. But for me, it is worth it by far. You will not find me on a corporate payroll for a long time. (With the one standing exception, of course. If Thomas Downey gives me the opportunity to take charge of the social media presence of the worlds best company, I will. For free. And it would be awesome.)

David seminar, SEO, workshop

I am preparing a half day seminar for a bunch of great editors in the art of “writing for search engines”. I have spent significantly more time than I am paid to spend, but with good cause: I have been racking my brain over the challenge of communicating this monster that SEO is to people who, in essence, are journalists.

Not that journalists are mentally challenged or anything, just that I need to consider the wording I use - naturally, talking about H1-tags and XML-sitemaps will not make me any friends. I have found that buzzword bingo:ing will alienate a crowd quicker than almost anything.

So, I have been working on making SEO simple. Really, really simple. And just now, just a minute ago, I fell for it! I actually had an epiphany - I saw my presentation and realized that is actually IS simple.

First, this made me happy. Now, I am sad. I am starting to realize the horridness of the SEO sales peoples advantage taking of a knowledge gap compared to the average buyer.

I wish that, from now on, each and every SEO pitch will begin with the magic words “SEO is not rocket science. It is not magic. It is technology and content in harmony, and it is hard work.”

I tried this, pre-epiphany, with this great client of mine, and I beat out all big agencies, practically because of this statement. I really hope that the days of SEO sales being of a pushy snake oil are over.

And I will do my part. I am meeting with a colleague in the field tomorrow (much bigger than my little agency), to have some resource sharing discussions. I am glad that this opportunity has risen, but not primarily for the obvious business benefits but rather for the fact that this might be the first sign that the Swedish SEO market is turning into the warm, sharing and caring SEO market I left back in San Diego.

When competitors share, everyone wins.

David seminar, SEO

Another amusing twist in the Swedish SEO industry which again proves (to me, at least) that it is so young and immature that it is basically not yet born.

A (by me, until today) respected member of the SEO community is offering organic search and only charging for deals closed by natural search traffic. Read all about it here.

I can think of tens of flaws. The biggest perhaps circulating around the motivation of the buyer and seller of the product: an organic SEO campaign should, in my humble opinion, be a focused transfer of knowledge from a consultant to technicians and editors. With a sound technical architecture and good content, the natural search presence will appear - we all know this. So why is that service so difficult to sell?

My easy (and somewhat mean) answer: because cowboys armed with knowledge and a slick sales pitch promise short term, ethically suspicious solutions as this (or worse - see the link scheme offered by another Swedish SEO firm described by me earlier)  and thereby set the whole industry back years.

Only today I had a great meeting with arguably one of the largest e-commerce websites in the Nordics, and I can not blame their business development manager for having the general attitude of “being suspicious of all SEO companies”. He had simply been burned too many times. It would be a good idea for some of the leading minds of the industry to create an organization which looked after the “good guys”, and who became a spokesperson for the people who do it right. I was in a discussion with one of the sharpest minds in Swedish SEO about such an organization once - but, as could be expected, she is too busy optimizing Sweden …

David SEO