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Learn the Secrets to Search Engine Optimization posted on Tuesday, 22 January 2008

When your company ranks highly on Google and Yahoo!, you not only drive business to your Web site, you drive customers to your off line location. This means more business for you and a better bottom line for your C-level executives.

Don’t let your Interactive agency keep secretes from you.

By Paul J. Bruemmer, Director of Search Marketing, Red Door Interactive

When you buy search engine optimization (SEO) services, some Interactive agencies or search marketing vendors will merely provide you with a general overview of their SEO methodology without revealing the details. They claim this relieves you minutiae, but in reality, they wish to keep their intellectual property under wraps.

On the other hand, agencies/vendors with experience in producing top marketing results will engage their clients in these details to enhance the business relationship. This kind of knowledge transfer can give companies an edge in today's competitive business environment.

The Reciprocal Benefits of Knowledge Transfer
First, search engine marketing tactics evolve on a daily basis; so companies will always need experts to help them create and implement successful programs. By engaging in knowledge-transfer, an Interactive agency articulates the need for its clients to embrace SEO as an ongoing discipline within their marketing department. Clients who adopt a knowledge-transfer mindset will profit from the insights afforded, enjoying the benefits of a long-term search marketing partnership.

What’s more, savvy agencies will continue to supplement their SEO knowledge as the knowledge-transfer process becomes reciprocal and they start learning from their clients. Active clients can provide additional eyes and ears to industry changes and trends, or from an end user’s point of view, to advance SEO tactics. In essence, clients provide validation to theories developed on the drawing board, giving agencies a leg up on competitor activities and other client-specific criteria affecting SEO.

SEO Success Begins With a Diagnostic Audit
Ideally, the experienced agency will develop the client partnership by explaining how to conduct and analyze an SEO Diagnostic Audit. While most firms don't document or disclose SEO tactics in a document, a forward-thinking agency does this to build the foundation for a strategic plan to improve the client's search rankings.

From the SEO Diagnostic Audit, clients can identify and remove any obstacles to driving traffic through natural search tactics by optimizing the technical and editorial elements that can hinder top search rankings. By using this document, the agency can show the client how its recommended solutions will lead to improved search visibility. The client, in turn, can more easily accept the recommended changes without doubt or hesitation.

Moreover, clients who understand the how’s and why's of search marketing will be more patient when an initiative doesn't show immediate results, as is often the case with natural search optimization. Instead of prematurely severing ties with a search agency, the client will actively work with its search partner to fine-tune the tactics within the documentation. The developing relationship will prove to be a business asset for both.

In sum, companies seeking better marketing results will discover that experts who consider it their mission to pass on knowledge to improve all facets of their client's marketing effort can make better partners and become valued business assets.

About the author: Paul J. Bruemmer is Director Search Marketing at Red Door Interactive, and chair of the company’s SearchMasters day-long, invitation-only seminar to be held in San Diego on February 7. More information is available at www.reddoor.biz/searchmasters.

Posted by John Lincoln