Is it just me, or is quiet the new black?
Have you ever noticed how many junk emails you get about digital marketing, SEO, website design, and other related services?
I always found it to be quite ironic how loud and aggressive some of these agencies are with their spammertising, and wondered if others saw the irony too? Or is it working? Are people buying into what they're selling because they happened catch them on a good day?
I hope not. There's something peculiar about marketing services that don't practice what they preach. Heck, there's something peculiar about any business that doesn't practice what they preach. Can you imagine if Google issued Macbooks to their employees or if Michael Jordan was ever caught wearing Reeboks?
The world as we know it may come unglued... So why is it that digital marketing services, particularly, SEO services, continue to tout their experitise in organic this or that, but can only seem to reach you via purchased lists and spam? Ah... that's the million dollar question, isn't it? Or... the $99 question according to some of these services.
Maybe it's time we draw a line in the sand and help you delineate the good from the bad and ugly.
Why the Best SEO Services are the Quiet Ones:
What does SEO mean?
It's so funny, because I was building my list of blog topics to carry Orange Pegs Media through the months of July and August, when I started playing around with keywords and came across a few gems that made me smile.
But let me take a step back, so we can ease ourselves into it. SEO comes with many connotations that it doesn't deserve, and it usually stems from a complete lack of interest... mostly because it seems really technical to those who are unfamiliar with the concept. And while, yes, there are technical components to it, it's actually quite a bit more interesting than most realize.
Back to the keywords and what made me smile... (learn about them in THIS blog post or THIS free content download). So, as you may or may not know, blogging around keywords is one of the best ways to boost your SEO rankings, and I was playing around with my Hubspot Keywords tool, looking for alternatives around SEO terms I found awhile ago, when "what is a search engine" popped up in front of me.
Can you guess why that one made me smile? I was hoping that after typing it into a search query that Google would have responded with "You're Lookin' at it!" But apparently they aren't as snarky as I.
But with several thousand searches every month, it illustrated a widespread lack of understanding of what SEO is today, and how identify services that make sense. Spoiler alert! It's not the ones filling up your junk box.
1. Keywords are Keys, not Crutches
Here's a little crashcourse in one of the main drivers of your SEO strategy - Keywords.
These are the strings of words people type into Google, Yahoo, or Bing to find answers to the problems they have. "What is a search engine," is actually somewhat descriptive of the type of folks who may be looking for professional SEO services, or at least, in that self-diagnosis phase of the buyer's journey. It's a keyword, and if we determine it's something we want to rank for, we're going to use it throughout our website, and even blog around it.
The more it finds its way into our text, the more Google and friends are likely to recognize our site and position us higher in the query results when people look for it. Simple, right?
There are other areas we'll put it to make sure the search engines realize we're serious about it, such as meta tags, headers, and anchor links, but it's important that it is naturally integrated into the conversation, not stuffed into every crack and crevace our website has to offer.
Why? Because user experience is important too! The search engines want to see that your visitors aren't just bouncing when they arrive, but rather, spending time on the articles where they find it, clicking around, and even returning to your site at a later time.
When you stuff keywords to drive that traffic, as many of these cut-rate services will do, you won't gain much favor because of the lack of vision.
2. Anonymity is for the birds
About 95% of the emails I get from these noisy services are from gmail accounts. I'm sure it's the same for you too.
Do you ever wonder why that is?
Simple... when you get spam and decide to block a sender, you'll be asked if you want to block the entire domain, because the servers are trying to protect you from receiving more spam in the future. Many of these companies operate outside of the laws that prevent this behavior, and one of the ways they avoid losing favor with their company's domain name is by using gmail instead. Nobody is blocking all of gmail, after all.
But tell me... do YOU click on links embedded in anonymous gmail emails? I sure as heck don't, regardless of how compelling the text in the email actually is. (which is rare)
In fact, I won't click on any links unless I've heard of the company before, and I know I've given them permission to email me. It's how I avoid viruses and malware.
3. How Did they Find Me?
This is one of the biggest concerns I have with the noisy SEO service providers... How did they find me to begin with?
Simple - again - they bought my contact information or somehow scraped it from my site, LinkedIn, or some other forum where my email address is publicly listed. Maybe they downloaded content from me, so I would send them a follow-up email, and pulled it off of that.
But that's not SEO. That's spam. That's .... disruptive, cold, and annoying as heck. If they were so good, why did they find me without utilizing their status as "SEO experts?"
SEO should draw me to you... not the other way around. That's what it means to optimize for search engines. By putting in keywords into my queries, I should be able to find websites that help me solve my problems. If you're bombarding me with unsolicited emails because you purchased my contact information from a company that has no right to give it to you, then you are failing BIG time.
I'm sure you feel the same way, so don't think for one second that YOUR clients won't share in this.
4. Programmable BOTS & SEO Don't Mix
When those anonymous emails arrive, they usually try to use personalization tokens to make me feel like we know each other, but this is such an absurd failure, because they never know who I am! I will often get emails that start with "Dear," or "Hi Orange Pegs Media."
Where is my name? If you're using this email outreach to connect with me and act like we know each other (they'll use subject lines like, "are you still interested in connecting?"), you should at least know my name. Personalization tokens that miss the mark make me feel dirty.
And again... this is not SEO. It's far from it, actually, and further proof that the noisier somebody is, the less they actually know about me. They're calling cold, and they're looking to short-cut my permission and go straight for the kill.
No, I need to be courted. I need to be woo'd. I need to know that you're real, and it doesn't happen by spamming me out of the blue with horrible grammar, misaligned personalization tokens, from an anonymous gmail account. If I can't google you, I'm blocking you.
~ LIKE THIS: BOTS: the New Four Letter Word In Social Media Management ~
5. Self-proclaimed Expertise is Terrifying
When somebody fails at something and uses words to cover their tracks, I get a little agitated. Your clients and prospects do too.
You should never have to tell people that you're the best at something. That's what insecure people do.
Anybody can jot down a bunch of statistics or say words that paint them in a certain light, but doesn't make them true.
Now, you may be asking, "how do I apply this to my business?" You're not running a marketing agency, after all, but rather, a SAAS, staffing agency, accounting firm, non-profit, start-up, or some other super awesome business that needs more customers - Why can't you tell people you're great using these short-cuts?
Because although you're not in the marketing biz, your marketing is a reflection of your brand. If you disrupt and spam your way into your target audience's lives, you're telling them that you don't respect their space, and they're going to do whatever they can to block you out.
6. A Bot Will Never Buy
I know that we've all been focusing on getting more website visits, and these $99 services will often make outrageous claims about how many visits you'll actually get, but let's think about this for a second... If they're side-stepping all sorts of quality control mechanisms just to get to you, and not actually drawing you in using the service they claim to be experts in, why are they going to be successful in getting quality visits for you?
Why, indeed.
Luckily for them, "visits" is an arbitrary term that can be easily manipulated using bots. That's right... bots. How many of those clicks do think are real?
Have you ever purchased followers on Twitter or Instagram? Sure, you get a nice little surge in your follower-base, but none of them can actually buy from you... they can't promote you... and they can't really do anything for you except dilute the results.
You should be able to convert at least 2-3% of the people who visit your website into leads. It's that simple. Chances are that with your bots, you're hovering around less than .2%... or the ones that ARE converting to leads are actually bots, and they'll never return to your site.
Quiet SEO will strike without you ever knowing it:
It's supposed to draw your visitors in, engage them, educate, and connect them. It's supposed to lead them down a path of client conversion, and make them feel like arriving there was their idea.
The noisy stuff... well, it's just that - noise.
Interested in learning more about our integrated professional SEO services? Click HERE.
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