SEO at TFM&A

So, I’m not the kind to plagarise anothers analogy (Cleraly I’m lying,  I’m in marketing after all!), but  just yesterday I read a rather neat one from Tanya Goodwin (Chief Exec at Tamar.com).  She compared PPC and SEO to the difference between a Volvo and a Bugatti Veyron.  One being fast, results driven, and expensive, the other being a slower, but more reliable long term investment.

Now, in a time of economic crisis – which would you rather invest in?

If you answered “Bugatti”, then I’d recomend you flip straight through to my Pay Per Click page.  But if you’re thinking in the same way as most of the other businesses I met at last weeks TFM&A show, you’re thinking that the smart money’s heading down to your local Volvo dealer.

So what is it about SEO that is so appealing to budget marketers?

Well, obviously, it can be a lot cheaper, but this isn’t a golden rule.  If your business serves a niche market, or has a reasonably unique product, you can sponsor relevant key terms at a relatively low cost.  However, the moment you stop paying the piper, the music dies, and you’re left wondering what the long term effects are (hopefully you’ve capitalised on your investment to build on a regular customer base though, so it might not all be bad).

SEO doesn’t work like that.  Initial investment in a well optimised website will pay dividends well beyond the pipers final notes play out.  Admittedly, Google changes it’s algorithms regularly, and a well optimised website is a regularly updated website – but, in the SME world where competition generally isn’t that high, your initial 2k – 5k investment (I give this figure as an example of what you might expect to pay a medium sized agency, not as an example of what I charge for the service) in a considered, content rich and well structured website should see you through a good couple of years.

Also, and this is where I find the anaology starts to run dry, SEO is fun.  No, seriously, this isn’t just my inner geek speaking.  I’m going to talk about quite a few tips for SEO in this blog, and I’m going to suggest as many as possible that can be done either on a low budget, or for free.  And oddly enough, this isn’t just extremely satisfying.  it really can be quite enjoyable too!

For those really looking to capitalise on SEO within a tight budget, one of the most effective ways to achieve a high page ranking is to create yourself a profile within those SEO holy of holys – A social network.

Wow – “what’s a social network?”

I hear you say  (If you did really say that then at this point I’m afraid I’m going to have to politely ask you to leave through the back door).  Seriously though, a more sensible question might be “How can I use a social network to leverage my SEO?”.  This would be a good question!

Social networks such as Facebook or Myspace have very high page rankings due to their enormous popularity.  However, you can’t levarage that popularity until you build yourself a profile, and populate it with relevant and interesting content that will appeal to your customers.  Now, this is easy to do if you’re selling an exciting product with lots of advocates (think Nike or the Olympics), but how do you drum up interest if you’re selling car parts, or soap?

Here’s the cincher – be interesting.  And be yourself.  People don’t go onto a social network to build relationships with products, they want to build relationships with other people.  Be a person, update your profile regularly with interesting stories, articles and opinions, and make sure you sign up all your friends.  The more relationships you build, the more people you’ll have linking into your profile sending you valuable link equity.  And so long as you have plenty of outgoing links to your own website built into your profile, this equity is only heading to one place – your product!

Oh, and did I mention that you can do all this for free?

There’s going to be plenty more top credit crunching SEO tips from me in the next few weeks – so stay tuned.

Andrew