While it's only been a few weeks since Gunn Aramwit, our new Search Marketing Manager, started we wanted to give you a little update on where we're headed the next few months.

Search is a highly debated, and often misunderstood subject, supported by an industry of consultants, many charging hundreds of dollars an hour. Some are undoubted worth it, others apparently not if I listen to the stories of companies that have paid and not seen results. We're trying to do our homework, look at the data and stay on a path of continual learning and improvement. Our, and your, situation is unique - we're not looking for shortcuts, black-hat tricks or easy answers.

There are some inherent challenges to SEO;

• Black Box - The core logic or algorithms of Google and other search engines are not known. They publish some information but to a large extent search optimization is about analysis of results and inferring the rules that drove that result.
• Complex - There are thousands of factors that go into ranking - the combinations that might produce results are highly variable - especially for a low authority site (few in-bound links, smaller size, etc.). It's clear what needs to be done if you want to be #1 on a competitive search term for non-local results. It's just very hard to do. How within the context of local search and a low authority site how your work your way to the top could vary.
  
• Dynamic - SERPs (Search Engine Results Page) are highly dynamic because the web is so dynamic. In a never ending process websites are updated, end-user behaviors are inconsistent and changing, search engine algorithms are being updated and search engines are indexing. What worked today may not work tomorrow. The order of words or other seeming small changes in a search phrase could deliver very different results.

Focus where we can win for you

There are many situations in search where the effort to get a top rank site would be out of reach - at least for the time and resources it would take. Here's how we look at it;

Can You Win?

• Let's take for example the search "disaster recovery plan" - as one might expect Wikipedia is the top ranked and the next ones we find sites like http://www.disaster-recovery-plan.com/ and http://www.disaster-recovery-guide.com/ that are highly optimized for this search phrase. In fact no vendors were on the first page.
• If we add the local search term "Chicago" to the phrase then we start to see some local businesses on the first page - but still mostly dominated content sites, if I use "Boise" I get a Google 10 Pack local listing and more local IT service provides.
• If one of our clients wanted to be first page for "disaster recovery plan" given some time and effort in most markets we could get there.
• There would be some markets that were tougher than others, and for sure there are some highly competitive search phrases in big metro markets that could be a lot tougher to win.
• This is also true in local terms. The smaller the city in general the easier to win. A big city will be easier than a state.

Do You Want to Win?

• In the example it above may be realistic to have a 2-3 month, "get to page 1" plan but if your clients and prospects aren't searching for "disaster recovery plan YOURTOWN" it's not going to do you any good - other than feeling good when you search on the phase and see your site.

Pronto Next Steps

• Our objective over the next few months is to focus our efforts in the sweet spot of important and winnable keyword phrases.
• We are going to focus on a smaller number of search phrases per client and make sure we have the site, and specific pages, optimized for each of these search phrases. In all cases local terms will be part of the phrase. This is not to say your site isn't going to come up with any number of other phrases; your company and principals names for example, but we're going to have a tight focus.
• You may notice from time to time that we've made small text changes to your site as we tune pages based on the results we're seeing. We're stepping on the monitoring tools so that we can be tuning the results.

Your Action Items

• If you want to have any general discussion you're welcome to post there. Your also welcome to send us an email with questions or ideas.
• For most clients we have a good idea of the local search terms, if we're not sure we'll contact you but do feel free to give us additional guidance. In particular think about local usage that we just wouldn't know and couldn't from looking at a map. "Eastside" would be a good example in the Seattle metro, or "Triad" in central North Carolina.
• In terms of service and product search phases we could use more intelligence. There's a limit to what we can learn from "reverse engineering" results to understand what small business managers might be searching on. Your insight would be very valuable for us. For instance;
  • One page we want to work on is in the area of disaster recovery or business continuity planning but I'm not sure these are the most important words - perhaps it's "backup".
  • Even tougher might be "managed services" but as many of you have told me that's not necessarily what small businesses call it. It maybe something much more basic like "computer repair" or "computer support" that have the volume of searches.