SEO Consultant Ireland

How to handle the SEO jobs?

Irish companies are still not 100% sure if to have the SEO outsourced to the specialist SEO Company, or to hire SEO staff directly, and have them work onsite. The constant barrage from the SPAM email offers from mostly Far East SEO companies and their low pricing and the high contract rates of the local Irish SEO companies and professionals mate things even worse! To outsource to an unknown company on the other side of the world, or to hire a local provider – who will in most cases charge you twice more?

The reason it is so hard to hire a SEO staff or engage a SEO company is that there is relatively little understanding on what SEO really is. It is not uncommon to hear the completely opposite opinions and definitions on what the SEO is. Some people bring in the pay per click (PPC) in it, some talk about on site and off site SEO, some talk about link building (now, how do you build a link?). The social media, made things even more complex lately.

So how do you hire someone not knowing nothing neither on what the task on hand is, nor the results that are to be achieved? You are quite likely to fail. If you stick to it, you are quite likely to fail a few times as well.

The same is true if you hire internally or a external SEO vendor.

Do it yourself SEO jobs are the natural result of this situation. You either try to do it yourself if you are a small company, or you ask the existing staff you have to learn and do the SEO tasks for you. That is even more often a recipe for the disaster. You are asking of your staff to do a SEO job that they have not been trained for and have no experience in it. Jet somehow you expect them to succeed?

Hiring for SEO jobs is tough.

The best peace of the advice is to get a the best SEO professional you can get – to help you and do the job interviews for you. Regardless if you are hiring an external SEO company, or a onsite SEO vendor, or the person to do SEO inhouse on your payroll. You are far likely to get the right one to do your SEO jobs than trying to asses the candidates yourself (presuming you are not a SEO specialist yourself!).

Performance Related Search Engine Optimization Service is very, very interesting business model.

Let us compare it with the other forms of advertising.
Pay Per Click (PPC) is the first one that comes to mind straight away. In the PPC model, you place your advertisements for free, and pay only when someone clicks on your advertisement.
Pay Per Action is the next step, where the placement of the advertisement is free as well, and the payment is due when an action is created on your web site, like a product is sold, user have subscribed or in general – a conversion is made. Affiliate schemes work in the same way.

Both PPC and PPA are great advertising models to start with, since there is no setup cost. You only pay when the service is delivered successfully. You also pay only as much as many visitors or conversions you have made you your web site.

Applying the same way of thinking to the SEO – where it is 100% performance related SEO service has a few problems the need to be overcame for the service to work.

For SEO your site will need to be changed. Meaning SEO people will have to do it themselves or instruct you web development people on how to do it. If you have an interactive site, or an online shop, it will almost certain need to be your web developers who will need to make changes for the SEO on your site. This puts the SEO company completely at the mercy of the Web Development company. Yet the Web Developers get paid by the hour and SEO company is paid only by the performance of your web site in Google?

Would you go into the relay race (where you depend on all other guys in your team), where they are all paid for each race, and you are paid only if your team wins?

That is what a performance related search engine optimisation service really is (in most cases). And that is why performance related SEO projects fail so often.

Thanks again there is ‘The Dark Side’ of the SEO, where performance related SEO projects thrive. In most cases those are variants of the black hat SEO techniques involving hacking other web sites and placing large amounts of inbound links to your web site. The result is the instant top ranking of your web site, but in most cases fairly quick addition to the blacklist, and removal from the Google search results.

So without trying to use any scare tactics, you have to know your SEO Company very well, before accepting any kind of performance related SEO service deal.

As any other work, the Search Engine optimization has its Cost, that has to be part of you Online Marketing Plan, and your SEO Budget.

The Search Marketing is probably the most misused term in the marketing industry in general. At least 50% of the marketers use the term incorrectly! Why?

Half of marketing people would define Search Marketing as buying paid search listings. The other half would with the paid listings within the search marketing realm include the natural search results listing within the term of search marketing.

Half of them must be wrong – but which half?

The split is actually really down to the middle. While even the top online marketing institution: Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO) includes search engine optimization (SEO), most of the Marketing Agencies who are providing the service to the customers would do a very basic onsite SEO, and pour the clients budgets in the paid search advertising. Google AdWords Pay per Click (PPC) program, would in most cases take at least of 80% of the search marketing budget.

So although in theory the Search Marketing should include the SEO, the reality is that if the client doesn’t specify exactly what they are looking for – most of their money goes to PPC. This is excellent for any short term, once off publicity campaign. It is great for a rock concert ticket sales or political activists in a month before the election (and silent for the next 4 years). But for a site where you need a constant stream of new web site traffic, and you plan to run the site for more than a month or two – Google AdWords or any other PPC is probably your worst enemy. It is quick and seductive because it delivers within hours. But it will also drain your budgets if not planned properly, and leave no funds left for the SEO.

The Search Engine Optimization on the other hand is extremely slow (in Interment marketing time). Some search agencies will tell you that you have to wait for months for the results! It is not measurable up front, and a lot of SEO experience is required to properly plan the SEO budgets.

So next time you think of ordering the search marketing services, think about what your goal is (long term or short gain), and ask your search marketing company where in the SEM will they spend your money in – Is it PPC or SEO?

Here is a short checklist for creating your online marketing budget. Print it and try to set a figure next to each of the activity listed below:

Copywriting

• Web site copy
• Blog
• Press Releases
• Whitepaper
• Newsletter

Link Building

• Related Industry Directory
• Geographical Directory (your Local, or your  target market’s Local)
• Link exchange with related sites
• Blog commenting
• Forum participation

Branding

• Social Networking activity
• Company blog comments maintenance

Paid Advertising

• PPC
• Banners
• Link Purchases
• Blog or blog post sponsoring

As a general rule the best results are achieved if the budget is evenly spread between the marketing activity groups above. The tasks should be performed more or less in the sequence as listed above.

Each online marketing plan is specific to the companies activity on the web. It will contain clear goals and targets to be achieved. Make sure your online marketing budget is adequate to achieve your online marketing goals.

First there was Marketing.

Then they invented the Internet, Google, and the search engine optimization was born!

Marketing people felt under the threat. Is SEO going to replace the need for marketing in general? Where we are today in the evolution of the online marketing is that the SEO is the key ingredient of most of marketing campaigns online.

Why SEO Marketing?

Why would I bother with SEO, when I can just purchase the traffic via Google AdWords? Both SEO an d PPC have their advantages. PPC is instant, and that’s why people love it! SEO is long term investment, and is far less transparent.

SEO Marketing is unavoidable if your PPC campaign cost is getting higher and higher. Historically almost every search keyword is getting more and more expensive. There is a point where a cost per click (CPC) becomes so big that it eats up all your profit of an online sale.

When SEO Marketing?

When CPC costs overflow! Your cost of sale should be (far) below your margin, so that there is some profit at the end. Your margin is not likely to increase, but with the cost per click rising – any business gets to the stage where the cost of the visitors is simply greater than the margin – in it becomes unprofitable business model. PPC is a short sighted marketing planning. SEO Marketing is what builds sustainable long term online businesses.

If your online business is depending on the constant flow of fresh web site traffic, your best choice is the SEO marketing. If you have a once off event, like opening of a new cinema, and you need to fill it for the opening night – PPC is your best friend.

Any Business Plan has to include a Marketing Plan of some sort. For the Internet based businesses our Marketing Plan will most likely be one of the main sections. When it comes to writing the Online Marketing Budget, the whole list of problems start. Why is that?

Pay Per Click Budget

Online Marketing people will like budgeting for the PPC. Why? Simply because the cost of the PPC is predictable. And the whole PPC business is accountable (if you build in the Click Fraud in your formula somewhere). There is a cost per click, and volumes, and targets and markets… lots of figures you can work with – something an accountant will love.

SEO Budget

Where is where serious question marks are raised under the accountants head! What is the budget required for the search engine optimisation? What is the units, deliverables, and values of each? With SEO it’s all far less specified and defined than with the PPC. And SEO also consists of so many areas that it might be defined very differently by various vendors. The needs for the SEO are very different by every client.

I want to be #1 in Google!

In most cases marketing people with little online experience will have serious issues when defining the Budget for the SEO in their Marketing Plan. They will ask the SEO Experts, and base their SEO Budget on the quotes from the SEO Vendors. Most likely their definition of their SEO Marketing Goals will be – We want to be #1 in Google for …! In other words, they will tell the SEO Companies nothing really relevant that is needed to create a plan of actions and analyze the market and keywords in question to be able to establish the real amount of the work required – hence the cost of it. Ballpark figures and even figures completely imagined are therefore quite common in SEO. People ordering SEO Service do not understand what part of their Marketing Plan do they HAVE to disclose for the SEO Company to give back the realistic estimate.

What’s the cost of SEO?

Marketing people with no online marketing experience usually call the SEO Companies and simply ask – What’s the cost of SEO? The tendency is to disclose as little as possible of their real needs. With a bit of shopping around – hey choose the Best SEO Offer. Not asking themselves much why do the SEO offers differ so much and why does one vendor charge sometimes 100 times more than the other. Not 100% more, 100 times more!

The reason is that the one ordering the SEO service needs to understand the exact deliverables of the SEO web site optimisation. Understanding the tasks involved in the web site optimization work also greatly helps. Understanding the whole process and timelines – well that defines the Perfect Client for SEO!

Unfortunately that is almost never the case.

Those who understand SEO tend to find time to do it all themselves.

The PPC Market in Ireland is as the most industries hit hard in the last months. The bit price (CPC) for the huge range of keywords is just gone wild. The clicks are either

Extremely expensive (CPC)
That is a sign of many advertisers biding for the keyword they think is important for their business. In some cases it might be just the two advertisers having their private price war.

Unexpected big drops (in CPC)
Some keywords show huge cost per click drops, and become cheep. That is mostly the result of the big player (the big AdWords spender or a number of them) leaving the marketplace, usually with their marketing budget all spend for the period, and the keywords CPC price drops drastically.

The overall size of the Irish PPC market seems to be shrinking during early 2009. Both Google AdWords and Google AdSense publishers can see it clearly. Recession is here, and is here to stay with us for some time. It is having the impact on the online marketing and the PPC budgets are suffering in this volatile market.

The world of internet marketing is changing. Where are those banners from the ’90-ies? Google made a revolution with its AdWords pay per click programme that dominates the internet advertising market. No other competitor actually ever came close to the Google’s AdWords. The predictions for the future are further growth, in this booming industry.

One thing caught my eye, and that is the comparison of the search volume of the two abbreviations the pay per click – PPC and the search engine optimization – SEO. PPC was dominant but SEO was catching up in the last couple of years. In the last couple of months it is actually hard to separate the two keywords. It just shows the growing importance and awareness of the search engine optimization in the internet marketing world.

Search Engine Marketing in Ireland is in fact almost exclusively Google Search Marketing, simply because Irish usage of the search engines is dominated by the Google.ie. Yahoo in particular and MSN have a far biggest clients share in US than in Ireland. This makes Irish search marketing market much simpler, since the web users are using almost exclusively one search engine Google.ie.

Google has the Advertising program called Google AdWords. It is extremely easy to use and instantly starts delivering results – and therefore spending your advertising budget. Google enables you to publish your adverting on the right sidebar and above the search results on the relevant Google search results pages.

Google also have the program for the web publishers canned Google AdSense that enables them to resell advertising space on the number of other sites that are the part of the Google AdSense program. Google shares the generated revenue with the web site publishers that publish your ads.

Since with the Google AdWords program the advertiser is charged only when someone actually click on the ads, and a brought directly to the advertised web site, the program and the model is called Pay Per Click or simply PPC. Again since this is the only widely used service often is the Search Engine Marketing in Ireland reoffered to as just PPC.

If you had enough of reading about SEO, that is supposed to be so simple and easy, and jet somehow does not happen with YOUR site, here is an easy way out! The PPC World of Google AdWords. Here is the Table of Contents of the Whitepaper published earlier this year (see About section for the authors).

I only got the short sample but an interesting chart in it already about the Irish PPC market. It is the breakdown of the industries that people are using PPC most (Does it give you an idea what your next AdSense rich Blog should be about?). If you have the full copy of the whitepaper, I would not mind reading more about the PPC, so send it on!

Ireland Search Engine Marketing Report 2008
April, 2008

The research has been supported by the Irish Direct Marketing Association (IDMA) and the Irish Internet Association (IIA).

Table of Contents

1. About E-consultancy 4
2. About research sponsors 4
2.1 About ICAN 4
2.2 About Cybercom 5
2.3 About Interactive Return 5
2.4 About RingJohn 5
3. Executive Summary and Highlights 6
4. Introduction 8
4.1 Introduction by ICAN 8
4.2 Methodology and Sample 9
4.2.1 Methodology 9
4.2.2 Turnover 10
4.2.3 Business Sector 10
4.2.4 Is search done in-house or by an agency? 11
5. Survey Results 12
5.1 Budgets 12
5.1.1 Percentage of total marketing budget spent online 12
5.1.2 Breakdown of online marketing budget by digital channel 13
5.1.3 Search engine marketing budget split 14
5.1.4 Do you expect budgets to increase or decrease? 15
5.1.5 Search engine marketing spend 16
5.1.6 How much are search budgets going up? 17
5.1.7 Allocation of paid search spending 18
5.2 Objectives and effectiveness 19
5.2.1 Primary objectives from search engine marketing 19
5.2.2 Relative importance of paid search and SEO on brand 20
5.2.3 How digital channels rate for return on investment 21
5.2.4 Return on investment (ROI) from Search 22
5.2.5 Tracking return on investment from Search 23
5.2.6 Effectiveness of ROI tracking 24
5.2.7 Use of web analytics tools 24
5.2.8 Rising click costs (CPC) 25
5.3 Search Engines 26
5.3.1 Search engines used for PPC 26
5.3.2 Best search engines for ROI 27
5.3.3 Is dominance of Google a threat? 28
5.4 Search problems and issues 29
5.4.1 Paid Search problems 29
5.4.2 SEO problems 30
5.4.3 Availability of training 31
6. Market overview 32
6.1 Market valuation and growth 32
6.1.1 Key sectors 33
6.2 Market trends 34
6.2.1 Advertisers seize opportunities as market matures 34
6.2.2 Search advertisers get more savvy as competition increases 35
6.2.3 Polarisation between sophisticated and unsophisticated 37
6.2.4 Google dominates as other search engines fail to step up 38
6.3 Barriers to digital marketing growth 41
6.3.1 Slow uptake of broadband 41
6.3.2 Traditional mindset of marketers 41
6.3.3 Skills gap and lack of understanding 41
6.3.4 Lack of transparency in market 42
6.3.5 Other barriers 42