I know there are specialists in the industry who focus on one specific area of Search Marketing such as Paid Search or Link Building, and they do very well for themselves. I think it’s important to know a lot about your niche in the industry and the experience you gain from focusing on one area is great, but is it going to ultimately be helpful to your career as an Internet Marketer?
Maybe it’s just me, but I like a more well rounded approach to things. I’m interested in all of the facets of Internet Marketing and my hands are plenty bloody with the websites I have worked with through my career. Because I focus on more than one or two specialties, I think I can bring a greater strategy to the table, and it usually ends up working out well for my clients. But there are definitely times I wish I had known more to address a particular, specific problem. If only we could be an authority in everything, right?
My most recent project was for a client I had worked with a year ago during a website relaunch. I had laid out a long-term strategy that he could implement on his own to build a steady reputation, but it required things like Blogging and Link Building which they apparently did not have the time or desire to carry out. My content creation and on-page SEO alone were enough to raise the now useless but entertaining Page Rank 2 points to 3 and bring in enough new customers to actually hire another employee in these difficult economic times. I was pleased with the success we found, but wished more had been done.
A year later, the same client recently contacted me to take on a Paid Search project consisting of re-aligning AdWords campaigns for greater efficiency. I created a campaign just for Broad Match Types, a campaign just for the Content Network and then another campaign for Phrase & Exact Match Types. This is going to give the client greater control, especially if they choose to maintain the account after I leave because it is easier for SE-no’s to make sense of.
One big problem we’re experiencing is very low Quality Score’s, we’re talking 2-3. The problem with 2 is that it just isn’t good enough to even get in the game on most searches. The Ad Copy looks great, bid amounts look good, everything is good and relevant. It’s unfortunate in a lot of ways that these Quality Scores are only going to be increased through landing page optimization. Lots of the terms we’re bidding on aren’t in the content because it wasn’t created at time of launch (by me) but the existing content was optimized. The project is complete but I won’t see the great results I’m looking for unless the content on those pages are tweaked, extended, and new pages created to focus on these groups of search terms. It’s important information and pages the website could use, so what’s the problem?
The problem is that small businesses aren’t always trusting, to say the least. Many small business owners made it to where they are for working hard and taking what they want. I’m not saying business owners are bad people by any means, just that they possess a certain hard-to-satisfy hunger in terms of determination and work ethic. This is great for them but not so good for Search Marketers because as a new technology, people still don’t know that much about what we do or why we do it. When people don’t know about something, they tend to not trust it. There you go! We are difficult, as an industry, to trust.
My point here, if I still have one, is that all parts of Internet Marketing are connected. Paid Search ads lead to Landing Pages which should be relevant to the Paid Search ads, which means the Landing Pages should be SEO’d (?) for greater relevancy. Good SEO pages have excellent inbound links which requires link building, link accrual, blogging, Social Media, so on and so forth. It’s a vicious circle, isn’t it?
My other point here is that I look forward to the day when a good SEO doesn’t have to lower wages to gain the trust of a potential client. Money is always a struggle and it would be great if people understood exactly how important a good SEO is, and exactly what they could bring to your bottom line with total control.
