Yesterday, Goldstein Media creative director Seth Goldstein was fortunate enough to speak on a panel about SEO and Paid Search at the SCORE eBusinessNow conference. Along with moderator Neal Wiser, of Neal Wiser Consulting, Glenn Gabe, of G Squared Interactive, and Lance Bachman of 1SEO, the discussion focused on how small businesses can get the most of optimizing their content for the search engines.

The eBusinessNow conference is put on by the SCORE Association, which is an organization that helps counsel America’s small business owners on how to get the most out of their business. It was a free  event and more than 300 small business owners were in attendance.

To learn more about the eBusinessNow conference and when it will be coming to your town check out their Website.

As a Philadelphia area Search Engine and Interactive Media firm, we have clients constantly concerned about the price of organic search. One of the biggest complaints is that even though ranking organically is free, it really isn’t. Unless you have an internal team that knows the ins and outs of SEO, businesses must hiring outside consultants to advise and tweak their business’ site to be best optimized for the targeted keywords.

In his article, Stein further addresses the need to not ignore SEO:

It has always been hard for SEO people to get across the importance of ranking high for a keyword and all the good it does for a business. Many people don’t realize that a large part of SEO is optimizing the site, not only to rank well, but also to achieve the best chance of converting those visits into paying customers. Nor do they understand that the core of SEO is understanding your customer base so that you can advertise on the keywords they are using.

Ok time for an example:

Let’s invent a site for this, let’s pretend you own “http://www.anniversarygifts.com/” and as the name suggests it specialises in gifts for anniversaries. Last month (August 2010), there were 201,000 searches for “anniversary gifts” in the US, (data from Google Keyword research tool).

It is generally agreed in the industry that ranking first on a search will get you somewhere between 35-45% of people looking for that keyword. This number is usually half for 2nd place and continues to drop from there. The second page sites are lucky to receive 5-10% collectively and likely receive many repeat customers, which would inflate the percentage.

If your site ranked first for “Anniversary Gifts” even at the conservatively low estimate of 35% that is 70,350 visitors a month. Before we even get into purchasing that is 70,350 people viewing your site, reading about your products, finding out about your brand and acknowledging your existence. If your site is designed to be user friendly (which is part of the SEO) then the users are likely to have a pleasant experience, share that experience with friends, and return to your site when they need another anniversary gift.

That is only 1 keyword out of dozens you are likely to have, though it is the best one. A well-optimized site can usually get around 10% of their keyword potential and around 5% of those would go so far as to purchase. We’re going to take another conservative low and say 1% become leads, we should therefore expect 704 (rounded up) people purchasing from your online shop A Month. (I don’t know about you but I kind of want to create this site now).

The best part of all this is the fact that everyone who is looking for your keywords is also looking for your type of business, people who type “anniversary gift” in Google are, more likely then not, looking to buy your hypothetical product(s).

Stein shares a great chart showing what would happen if the site didn’t rank first:

I completely agree with Stein’s view of SEO. It’s something that needs to be integrated into every Web project. If not, why even bother building a site? The chances of it getting found on its own for the appropriate keywords are slim to none. Be sure to click over to Search Engine Journal to read more of Stein’s great post.

What do you think? What are your thoughts on SEO and it’s place on the Internet? Post your thoughts in the comments below.

Leo, really doesn’t have to worry about SEO, like us non-tech celebrities do. He has such a loyal and large following (myself included) that he is making millions in advertising dollars. But Leo, those small mom & pop shops who have tons of competition do need SEO. They need to be competitive in their space both online and in life in general. Take it from someone who is in a very saturated marketing. I’m a Web designer in Philadelphia and I rank really well for some topics and not so well for other topics. The latter are improving because of my efforts in SEO.

Many of my clients ask me to explain what SEO is. I tell them that it isn’t some type of voodoo or anything dishonest (though some tactics if used the wrong way can get you in trouble. SEO is, when you boil right down to it, simply helping the search engines, whether it be Google, Yahoo, Bing or any others, index and rank your site better.

Leo mentioned that all most people need to do is a few things and they will rank well. It’s not that easy. And what bothers me most is that Leo, who had a big following is spreading this wrong information.

When you learn SEO, however long it takes (after all it’s constantly evolving), you’ll learn it’s more about marketing than spamming the system. And in marketing you sometimes have to take creative approaches to find a solution and this is a big part of SEO. It’s not just changing meta tags and file names. Heck, I wish it were that easy, but it’s not.

Yes there are bad people in the industry that take advantage of the less knowledgeable, but the majority of SEOs are honest hard working people.

I wouldn’t blindly take sides in this debate especially when you carry so much clout.

Danny Sullivan says this in response to Derek’s attack:

Let me be clear. I totally agree with your core advice. Build a site for visitors. Have great content. These are the keys to success, not just with SEO but with anything you want to do. In fact, we just had an article on our site here reinforcing this.

Still, sometimes people have problems. And the stuff that you think isn’t rocket science — that anyone knows — is indeed a mystery to others. They want help, and sometimes they can’t find that web developer who also understands SEO issues. In the same way, you sometimes don’t find web developers who are also designers. Or designers who understand conversion issues. Or conversion experts who understand web development.

With my company, Goldstein Media, I am lucky to work with some really intelligent people in the SEO space and in the Design space and I can tell you right now, that they aren’t dishonest, snake-oil salesmen that you and Derek have made them out to be.

Now I’m sure Leo’s gotten a fair amount of response to what you said. And like I said before  I’m a huge fan of his and will continue to be, but he really shouldn’t belittle a whole industry just because you don’t need it or one person makes a damning case against it.

You do all kinds of keyword research trying to find the highest-volume terms around your niche. You work and work to move one place at a time up the rankings for those competitive terms, and you still don’t see the traffic increase you’re hoping for. Why?

You’re ignoring the long tail! All of those strange and unique searches people do when looking for your specific products or content! While each of these terms may only have 1-10 searches per month, add them all together and they could represent up to 75% of your search traffic. Watch this video and learn why the long tail deserves your attention and can make a huge impact in your traffic.

Search Engine Land quotes three Google employees, one being Matt Cutts, they all downplay the effect of registration length on ranks but none of them definitively say that it doesn’t affect the rankings.

Google employee John Mueller suggesting in a Google Webmaster Help forum thread that Google doesn’t look at the length of a domain registration:

A bunch of TLDs do not publish expiration dates — how could we compare domains with expiration dates to domains without that information? It seems that would be pretty hard, and likely not worth the trouble. Even when we do have that data, what would it tell us when comparing sites that are otherwise equivalent? A year (the minimum duration, as far as I know) is pretty long in internet-time .

But let’s look at some more evidence. Earlier this year, Danny spoke with Google’s Matt Cutts about a variety of domain/link/SEO issues. In light of the claims from domain registrars that longer domain registrations are good for SEO, Danny specifically asked “Does Domain Registration Length Matter?” Matt’s reply:

To the best of my knowledge, no search engine has ever confirmed that they use length-of-registration as a factor in scoring. If a company is asserting that as a fact, that would be troubling.

/…/

So we have, essentially, three recent Google statements about the length of a domain registration and its impact on search rankings. None of them specifically say, “No, it doesn’t matter at all.”

Ultimately, the full SEO power given to the registration length of a domain probably doesn’t affect the rankings that much. But does it hurt to register a domain for longer? I don’t think so. Regardless of the SEO juice, I feel that it is important to have your domain registered for multiple years, especially if it’s your main domain.

Goldstein Media owns quite a few domains, some we’re using for testing landing micro-sites,. other domains were bought for an idea that went by the wayside. For the domains that we’re experimenting with, we usually register for only 1 year. The more important domains, ones dealing with our brand and such, we have them registered for 4-5 years. The main reasoning behind the longer registration is less for SEO than for the fact that we don’t want to risk losing our identity online.

Below is the video done by Matt Cutts for the Webmaster Center channel on Youtube:

I’d love to hear what your thoughts are on the news hyper update to Google. Post your thoughts below in the comments.

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This pie chart shows where SEOs spend most of their time. I wasn’t surprised to see the results.

A big part of any interactive venture falls into what I like to call “The Pitch.” Convincing people to part with their money is hard to do even if what they’ll spend it on will actually make them more money.

Many people who I talk to think SEO is a dark art and they don’t understand it. I always spend a good length of time explaining to them what goes into optimizing a site and why it costs what it does.

It’s really sad when people look at the price quoted and immediately shut down. It’s obvious they weren’t expecting the price tag to be so high, but SEO isn’t something that just anyone can do. Many people claim to know how to SEO a site and many will have some success at it, but when it’s your bottom line at risk do you want to risk it with a fly-by-night operation or do you want to quality.

Beware of the “Snake Oil Salesmen”

There are plenty of companies claiming to know how to get you to the top of Google. Many even say they can get you there in a short amount of time and you’ll stay there. Like in all industries there are the “snake oil salesmen.” These “experts” will tell you anything to get your money.

If one of these “SEO” gurus says that they can get you to the top of Google in a competitive keyword slot in less than 2 or 3 months (or even more) they aren’t legit. Also if they claim that SEO is a one time deal, walk away or hang up the phone, because If the keywords you’re after are in a competitive market there will always be another company in that space vying for your spot. If you’re not constantly tweaking your site and monitoring its position on the search results then you’re going to drop. Often times hard and fast.

Finding the right search engine optimization company is like finding the perfect contractor. There are tons out there but only a few gems. Do the proper leg-work and research the firm prior to doing business with them.

• Read their blog(s)
• Google them and see where they come up in the standings
• Check Twitter and see if anything is being said about them
• Ask other business owners at events who they use
• Search review engines like Local Pages and RateitAll

If you follow these steps (and come up with your own as well) and you’ll be less likely to fall prey.

Outsourcing to save money and why not to fall for the trap

One of the biggest arguments  I hear when I pitch SEO to a client is, “I can go abroad and get this for three-quarters of what you’re charging.” This really gets my blood boiling. Yes you can go to India or some other place in Asia and get it done, but you are dealing with a number of factors that are going against your project. Here are just two big ones:

• The language barrier
  You might not think that this is a big issue, but it really is. It’s not so much the language as the customs and the idiosyncrasies of a different culture. When you deal state-side there is always a chance for miscommunication but it’s significantly lowe
• You might not be legally protected while dealing with a company abroad
  Now I’m not a lawyer, but I’ve heard horror stories from people who thought they’d save a buck and get their Website designed or optimized abroad. They would sign an agreement that looked okay, but in the end for whatever reason, the foreign company didn’t follow through with what they said they’d do and there was little  recourse for the American business owner. This can happen in America, but the legal structure that is in places gives you much more recourse than you would if you dealt internationally.

Now, I understand that money doesn’t grow on trees, but “you have to spend money to make money.” I know, I know it’s a cliche, but it really is true. Dealing with a company in the same country that you’re in makes communication easier and makes resolving disputes less painful. In the end isn’t it worth it to spend a little bit more but have the piece of mind that you’re going to get what you want? I think so.

If the SEOs spent less time having to justify their existence, maybe they’d be able to get their job done more effectively and the price might just go down a bit.

Post your thoughts below in the comments. I’d like to hear what you have to say about this.