27 replies to this topic

[Jill]

This thread has been split off from this thread. Please read the prior thread for the comments Jill is responding to.

There is one SEO that I know of that won't review your site for under $2,000.00. And if it passes muster, the minimum price to start is something like
$6,500.00.

If you're talking about me, the minimum to start is $7500 if it passes the muster.

And far as "Top Secret" information goes, there is a lot of truth to that. It takes a long time to become relatively good at ones trade. Once he / she utters a word of advice the "secret" is gone. The intellectual information we hold is proprietary and you need to pay for it if you want it.

This I totally disagree with. I have always told all my secrets and will continue to always do so. I know I've made some other SEOs mad by doing this over the years, but that's too bad for them.

SEO is not proprietary. It's not rocket science, and yes, anyone can learn to do it themselves if they learn from the right sources who will give them good information.

Posting a review here is a great start if you're willing to make the changes that people outline. Reading my newsletter and articles, is generally helpful to most just learning also. And attending my seminar is another way to learn the basics.

But I must stress that there really are NO top secrets. If someone tells you they're working on your site through some proprietary SEO method, personally, I'd run like the wind, because god knows what they'll be doing to your site. Make sure you know exactly what any SEO is doing with your site before you let them do it. It's those proprietary techniques that are the ones that can often get you in trouble. Because if the SEO was just fixing up your site to be the best it could be for the search engines and your users, they would be able to tell you this!

Jill

Edited by scottiecl, 20 September 2003 - 10:46 AM.

[Scottie]

I agree- the information is out there. But some people will never understand how to use it and still need a professional. Some people don't have time and need a professional.

Just because you can learn something doesn't mean you can do it effectively.

I agree with Jill- if someone won't tell you what they plan to do with your site, you have to wonder what's up. I would suspect they are either doing so little that they are afraid you wouldn't pay them if you knew it or they are doing something sneaky.

If SEO were a straitforward science, then software could do the job. But it's not- every site has different needs and different ways to be optimized both for SE's and converting visitors.

[garyhall]

Actually, Jill I agree with you fully, 100%. I was eluding to the customers that like to pick your brains and generally waste your time. I tend to spend an extraordinary long time with customers helping them get started and at times they leave me hanging.

This part is important; I don’t have the reputation you do where I can ask for an up front $$$ to look. I still have to sell my way into my potential customer’s heart and that can take many hours
time.

A far as the “Top Secrets” I would agree that there are none, but to the beginner customer who wants to use our services, they become some sort of mystical information that can make them rich. I don’t like being used as a freebee teacher, so there is a cut-off point somewhere in the conversations. As you can tell, I have been burned. When I grow up I want to be just like you.

“The intellectual information I hold is proprietary and you need to pay for it if you want it.” I hate to re explain myself, but yes, I do have information for sale and I don’t appreciate being used. It is a fine line between what I tell you for “free” and what I will actually do for hire. Why do you charge $$$ just look at a site? Same concept. I will only go so far without payment for my services. When you start to go fishing, then my knowledge becomes “top secret”, so to speak. I am a wealth of information to potential customers. I give them URL’s from your site and others to help them get going and understand the process, but somewhere along the line it stops. It has too! This forum itself is a means to further your own business. When it becomes apparent that it doesn’t help the bottom line it will cease to function.

I know we don’t want to diverge too far from the purpose of this thread here, but my thoughts and methods are proprietary. They are my intellectual property that is for sale, so we are probably talking about semantics here and not SEO standards, which are not secret that you eloquently pointed out. There are a dozen ways to paint the little red wagon. Some will start from the side and other will start from the front. It is the results that are important and I think we all agree on that point.

My feeling was that Josh was fishing and the people he talked to said something in the order of, “Sure we can help you, but we need to discuss payment” type of thing before we go any further. It could also be that he can’t afford professional help of any kind and needs to deal with what he has.

It is very difficult to explain EVERY word in discussions like this and have to defend every sentence written because of word management practices. If I were trying to SEO my comments, I guarantee that they would only be 12 to 14 words. I will try to be more careful in the future how I form my comments, but that also means I won’t elaborate on some areas too. I hope you don’t take this as a personal attack, but a discussion concerning “methodology”.

Best regards,

Gary

[Matt B]

I tend to agree with fully educating customers about what you know - knowledge isn't proprietary. Especially in this business. It's mainly common sense and gut instinct.
Funny thing is - I find the more info I give away, the more business I get.

“Give a man a fish; you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish; and you can sell him fishing equipment.”—Author unknown

Edited by Matt B, 20 September 2003 - 12:01 PM.

[qwerty]

I agree with Matt. If I felt this stuff were secret, I wouldn't be giving people advice in an open forum. And often, having me answer a few questions about the kind of help a site needs is a potential client's way of checking to see if they want to hire me.

BTW, I like the "None more black" quote. I had to look it up, but I recognized it as soon as I saw where it appears

Edited by qwerty, 20 September 2003 - 12:29 PM.

[SearchRank]

I agree that anyone can learn SEO - there are no " secret methods" just alot of common sense. The reason people hire an SEO like myself or Jill is because "they don't have the time" to learn it or do it themselves. And there will always be people like that. It's even more cost effective for a company to outsource SEO rather than to have someone on staff, paying them a salary, benefits, etc. I wrote an article about this last yar.

I could learn to be a programmer but you know what - I don't want to learn. I have programmers that work for me that specialize in that. I could have learned to build the barbeque/fireplace edition I just added to my backyard but I don't have the time to learn or do it so I hired someone that had the experience and the time.

I always laugh when I hear of SEO's saying we have "secret methods" that no one else does. There are no secret methods, only some SEOs that will work harder to gain top visibility than others in my opinion.

[Jill]

“The intellectual information I hold is proprietary and you need to pay for it if you want it.”

I understand where you're coming from on that, and I also agree. I won't give potential clients any specific information about their site unless they pay for it. I feel justified in that because I do give out so much free info in my newsletter, etc. In fact, many SEOs in your position simply tell the people looking for freebies to sign up for my newsletter.

I don't mind giving out general info to general questions by email, and in fact, encourage it, but it can be extremely time consuming it's not something every SEO should, would, or could do. I find that it actually works to bring more clients on board, however. Or more sales of my report. I have found that I tend to make more sales from people who's questions I answered for free, one way or another.

But I do have a problem with telling people that SEO is extremely difficult and that they should never bother to try to learn it themselves. If they have more time than money, learning it themselves is a great option. If they have more money than time, then they'd be smart to hire someone who is already experienced. They can still learn about it as they go along, and that is generally my goal with my clients. To educate them as to what I'm doing so that they can eventually do it themselves.

Very often that $2k review I do for my clients is all they need to figure out exactly what they need to do with their site to get high rankings. In fact, a good portion of the clients who receive my review, do just that. A few phone consultations thrown in to make sure they're on the right track, and they're generally good to go. Sometimes they may want some in-house training of their staff to go along with it, to make sure everyone is on the same page. To me, that's the way to go.

I agree with Matt's teach a man to fish philosophy completely.

Jill

[SearchRank]

They can still learn about it as they go along - Jill

What's funny about this is that we work with quite a few clients in which we have no control over their sites so each time we perform what I call "SEO maintenance" on their sites and provide instructions on things they should modify like title and meta description tags, alt tags and body content, I think in the back of my mind that they are going to learn how to do this themselves and dump us.

But you know what, it doesn't work that way. Rather I think they realize all the work that goes into that maintenance and realize that they don't have the time to perform it so your job is secure.

In trying to secure a new client I have a many times gone through the process we take, how search engines work, how we submit to directories, squash search engine myths, etc. and although this stuff is easy for us SEOs, by the time your done with them, their minds are overwhelmed and they realize the need for a professional. If you do a great job for them, even though they come to understand SEO which is good, they retain your services because they realize the benefits your provide them. Pretty neat stuff

[Jill]

That's so true, David! And I don't blame the client for wanting to make sure the work is done correctly. When I hire an expert, I really don't want them to give me instructions, I just want them to do it. And I'm willing to pay for that.

There will always be those that want the knowledge and want to give it a shot themselves, and there will always be those that just want someone to do it for them and not have to think about it.

Either way is fine with me!

Jill

[Ron Carnell]

Want a slightly different perspective? From one of those do-it-yourselfers?

When I put up my first serious site (actually, my third site, but the first two were for captured audiences), I could count the number of people making a living from SEO on one hand and still have enough fingers left over to hold a cigarette. I didn't have much choice except to learn what worked on my own, and honestly expected to stick around just long enough to discover what truly stupid mistakes I knew I had made with my earlier sites. Then I fell in with Jim Wilson, becoming first a moderator at his site, then later an admin, and Jim's enthusiasm for this stuff turned out to be contagious. I discovered I was actually having fun.

Not enough fun, however, to be willing to do it for anyone else's site. My background is software, and I spent 14 years dealing intimately with clients. Been there, done that, and when I sold my business seven years ago, it was with the intention of retiring, not starting a whole new business venture. Especially one revolving around (ugh!) clients.

Enough background. Take it for a given that I'm a do-it-yourselfer, and let's go from there.

I could be your client, and frankly, if I didn't enjoy this stuff as much as I do, I probably would be. It's not so much that SEO/SEM is too hard for a businessman to understand as it is it's just too damn volatile. I tend to come and go from forums like this one, getting involved in other projects, and inevitably after I return from a two- or three-month hiatus, I find everything changed. Sometimes drastically so. If I cared a little more about the ranking of my sites, I honestly couldn't afford those hiatuses. And if I cared a little less about SEO, I couldn't afford the time it take to play catch up. To be really good at this stuff, it IS a full-time job.

I've managed to overcome my first point only because I really enjoy staying on top of SEO. My second point is one that I have yet to overcome. I suspect I never will.

If I was a doctor, I could probably give your two-year-old child a shot, despite their kicking, screaming, and crying. I could NEVER inflict that same terror on my own daughter, however. My web sites are my babies, my visitors are often my extended family, and it is not always easy to remain objective about the best way to market them to the search engines. I can look at other sites, any other site, and pick apart all the deficiencies. My sites, on the other hand, are pretty much perfect.

In short, y'all have nothing to worry about as long as you really know your stuff. I'm sure Ian will stop by soon and remind us of that adage from the legal profession. A lawyer who represents himself has a fool for a client.

Color me the fool.

[garyhall]

- knowledge isn't proprietary. 

Hi Matt,

I understand fully what you are trying to say, however my thoughts are indeed intellectual property and by virtue of the fact that they are mine and not yours. I am the owner, hence they are proprietary. Me thinks we digress, deviate, or go off on a tangent! Semantics can be fun.

And yes, I too get more business by helping out a lot, however my previous comments still hold true for the few SOB's out there for a free ride. I would love to live where you do, evidently you don't run into this problem.

Gotta run for the weekend, everyone have a good one and be safe.

Warm regards,

Gary

[BrianR]

SEO, like many other marketing-related disciplines, is mostly common sense.

What surprises me is just how uncommon 'common sense' is!

Why? Because it turns out that 'common sense' takes a lot of hard work, discipline and experience.

And long may that be so!

(Anyway, I'm getting way too philosophical now - time to go to bed!)

BrianR

[Matt B]

however my thoughts are indeed intellectual property and by virtue of the fact that they are mine and not yours. I am the owner, hence they are proprietary.  I am the owner, hence they are proprietary. Me thinks we digress, deviate, or go off on a tangent!

I think we disagree, not "deviate, digress or go off on a tangent." Semantics ARE fun when they are applied properly.

If SEO is your proprietary property, then patent it. You'll get no arguement from me. But if anyone really wants to know how to do this business, they'll find out, whether you choose keep it a secret or not.

The only issue I find is - who wants to know it and keep up with it? When clients find out the overwhelming amount "small" stuff that SEO requires, they don't want to deal with it, and they are more than happy to pay someone who really enjoys it. The more knowledgeable they know you to be, the more they'll trust you.

“Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. Unless he doesn't like sushi—then you also have to teach him to cook.”—Auren Hoffman, Herald Philosopher

BTW, thanks Bob - I was racking my brain for some type of elusive quote and Spinal Tap came through my playlist.

[Scottie]

I think -to Jill's point- you can give away the general how-to's everyday. People who can and want to can apply that knowledge to their own site. There are many people who simply cannot or don't have the confidence to do it themselves.

I am amazed at the people who are regular newsletter readers who do things that Jill has specifically said don't do this over and over and there it is, on their site. But they didn't think she meant it the way they do it, or they just didn't believe her on that point.

When you get to specific advice about a specific site- well, that's where my advice may be different from Jill or Matt or Qwerty. You are paying for my problem-solving abilities and my unique outlook on improving your site. That can't be learned.

And it's not as much about learning as it is about experience and testing and gut instinct. You can learn how to write titles and great copy and optimize links easily. But many people can't see the why behind those things.

It's not "We need 10 more pages to build strong keyphrase pages for 10 terms" as much as it is "We need to create a resource section explaining how to maintain and do minor repairs on our products- and we'll focus a different page on each product". That's brainstorming and creative-problem solving, as well as marketing. That's what I sell- not optimized title tags.

[Jill]

The distinction I make is simple.

I will give you all the free general advice that you want by email, my newsletter, this forum (not by phone). But if you want me to look at your actual Web page and give you advice, you have to pay me.

Jill