Comments on: 3 Ways Companies Sabotage Their SEO Investment

By: Mandy

Mandy — Wed, 27 May 2009 14:00:54 +0000

Thank you for this very informative article. I really appreciated the comparison of website SEO to weightloss in people – that is a great way to explain it!

By: Raj

Raj — Tue, 19 May 2009 12:09:13 +0000

Hey Lee, Great article explaining the ways a company can pull the plug on their online marketing strategy unknowingly. It may be a good idea as suggested by a few readers already to make changes to the company website according to the keywords rather than the other way. This is a straighter and clearer route.

By: Lee Odden

Lee Odden — Thu, 14 May 2009 15:52:51 +0000

We appreciate your readership a great deal Nicole! I’m glad the info is useful.

The way to convince brand focused marketers to add more search friendly elements is through examples and data. Many marketers get caught up in the “cool” factor of interactive and creative marketing elements.

Bring it back to objectives and show examples of your own or others that demonstrate the added bottom line value from making marketing content search engine friendly.

If you don’t have examples, then it might be worth doing some A/B testing of sorts. Or compare two microsite performance in search – one that’s all Flash and no SEO and one that still includes Flash but contains content and inbound links that search engines can rank easily.

I’ll make sure you have my contact info and am happy to provide any additional insight you need.

By: Nicole Lee

Nicole Lee — Sat, 09 May 2009 00:11:50 +0000

I have recently made your blog required reading for myself, and I don’t know how you do it, but I very often feel like you are speaking to exactly the kinds of challenges we are working through. #1 is what keeps me thinking about work long after I’ve left the office, and #2 is what I spend most of my time at work discussing with colleagues. The question I have is: how can I convince marketers that while the flash banner that takes up three quarters of the page looks cool, having more static content and therefore a more search friendly site would actually be cooler because it would drive more of the right type of traffic to our site?

By: ziller

ziller — Fri, 08 May 2009 23:09:09 +0000

Great post. One of the main problems I find with clients, especially design orientated clients.

By: Lee Odden

Lee Odden — Fri, 08 May 2009 12:36:36 +0000

Great example David, thanks.

By: Derek | Hong Kong

Derek | Hong Kong — Fri, 08 May 2009 07:10:47 +0000

Working with the larger companies will always require you to be able to show how their bottom line will increase. Like Lee says above, use examples of other companies in their field to illustrate how revenue could be lost. Hopefully this will lead them to chuckle at their competitors, and give you the upper hand.

With big companies, offer to work directly with their ad agency if they use one (sometimes a headache, but can lead to more leads from the ad agency as well).

Derek

By: David Temple

David Temple — Fri, 08 May 2009 05:49:09 +0000

Another great post,Lee. Point 3 could be the other way around too, seeing it only as a marketing function and using a cms system that is seo unfriendly for example. As far as keyword research goes, you and Julie will love this. SEO savvy Company X sells thumb drives. Keyword research shows phrase ‘USB thumb drive’ has huge demand. Company X puts USB thumb drive on the packaging instead of just ‘thumb drive’ and sales soar. I’m sure there are hundreds more of these stories but the point is keyword research is like having thousands of people in a focus group. Why wouldn’t you use it first for any marketing research?

By: LesPaul777

LesPaul777 — Fri, 08 May 2009 05:08:04 +0000

The worst thing in Redesigning web sites is when the URLs changes and you don’t make a 301 redirect. You lost all the PR of internal pages.

By: Lee Odden

Lee Odden — Fri, 08 May 2009 02:06:10 +0000

yes indeed Marty. it’s my most productive writing time.

By: Lee Odden

Lee Odden — Fri, 08 May 2009 02:04:14 +0000

That’s a HUGE sabotage, thanks for pointing it out Thomas.

By: Thomas

Thomas — Fri, 08 May 2009 02:02:18 +0000

Don’t forget those that overwrite optimized pages because they didn’t think to download the new pages before making updates.

By: aimClear

aimClear — Fri, 08 May 2009 01:26:32 +0000

Writing on a plane half asleep probably accounts for a large percentage of time you get to spend blogging Lee

By: Lee Odden

Lee Odden — Thu, 07 May 2009 17:09:30 +0000

Thanks Travis, I’m glad it was helpful. Increasing such awareness can make SEO efforts MUCH more effective.

By: Lee Odden

Lee Odden — Thu, 07 May 2009 17:05:10 +0000

Thanks Brian. It’s not always the web developer/designer – it’s often the company that hires them or the client/agency side account manager. I agree that more web designers are familiar with SEO, but there’s a big difference between familiar and being on top of what’s current. It boils down to awareness, education and being able to demonstrate the effect of ignoring SEO in the design/re-design process. Lip service to SEO via title tags isn’t going to cut it (for example).

re: spell check, damn! That’s what I get for writing on a plane half asleep, yet inspired. All fixed now.

By: Brian Ratzker

Brian Ratzker — Thu, 07 May 2009 16:46:30 +0000

The points you make in this post are good but I certainly have run into this mindset much less these days. I think that web developers are more educated in SEO now and this post just brought back memories to the challenges we used to face all the time. I can’t imagine the types of web developers companies use that still think like this.

P.S. You might want to run a spell check.

By: Travis Campbell

Travis Campbell — Thu, 07 May 2009 15:44:03 +0000

Lee-

Thanks for putting this thoughtful post together. You make a solid point when it comes to finding out how the client intends to get traffic to the “new” site. This can be an internal mindset challenge.

A ‘products driven’ organization (focused on what they offer the marketplace) may not be as open to some of your ideas as a ‘marketing focused’ organization (emphasis on marketing first, products second). It seems to me that a company that is sold on marketing (central strategy) is more open to outside expertise guiding or even leading website efforts that are traditionally left to the IT Department.

Post like this, taken to heart, can save a lot of heartache, and money, thanks for sharing your expertise!

By: Lee Odden

Lee Odden — Thu, 07 May 2009 15:13:43 +0000

Lola, you’re describing a typical design scenario that simply doesn’t count on organic search as a traffic driver.

It’s like sending out a print catalog with a padlock on it.

You bring up a very good point and touch on the topic of another post I have under wraps which follows a similar theme, but is focused on social media.

Not only should new site designs and redesigns consider SEO factors but social media friendliness as well.

By: Lee Odden

Lee Odden — Thu, 07 May 2009 15:10:08 +0000

Jim, I think one of the important questions to ask the web team and site owner is, “how do you plan on driving traffic to the web site?”. If attracting visitors from organic search is an expectation, then it’s a no brainer to create a business case for getting the design team to incorporate SEO tactics – if not completely, at least some kind of compromise.

I agree with you in that you can have a visually appealing and search engine friendly web site.

It all boils down to a properly thought out web strategy. If companies are buying web design services without thinking through the marketing of the website, then they may as well put a kick me sign on their back.

By: Lee Odden

Lee Odden — Thu, 07 May 2009 15:06:27 +0000

Streen, the point of #2 is that companies focus on SEO keyword generation from their marketing rather than what consumers actually search on.

You also make a good point as Julie did, that keyword research could be incorporated into offline marketing.