Fragen Sie den SEO-Guru

Boy, you name a blog “Ask the SEO Guru” and people start asking for SEO help. Crazy world huh?

I’d like to tell you a little story. 

If you’ve become an avid reader of the the Guru in this past two weeks you already know that  I’m in India for a few months setting up a BPO (business process outsourcing), company and my wife had to remain in Oklahoma. It’s summer there and this past couple of weeks the temperature got up into the triple digits and Murphy’s law being applicable in all things, the air conditioner went out.

We have a service that we’ve used for years for our building heat and air but this past year the owner passed away and left the business to his nephew and son. One of them, my wife remarked on how cute he was. One is very business minded and the other ------ not so much.

My wife called to request service and was told they were really behind and couldn’t get there until the next day. She waited and no one showed. She called and got the one who’s not so good on the phone and complained by telling him how hot she was and what good customers we have been and how she was worried her plants would die and so forth only to be told some cock-n-bull story about having to service people first who’s life might be in danger due to the heat and he didn’t know when he could get to hers.

When I spoke to my wife on skype that evening she relayed her tale of woe. I told her to call back the next morning and ask for the other one, which she did. I told her what to tell him, which she did.

After getting the other one on the phone, she said she was glad it was him and if that if he couldn’t make it that day she understood but she hoped it would be him to make the call because even though she was old enough to be his mother, she enjoyed watching him bend over to get his tools much more than his cousin.    

The air conditioning was working fine within the hour. :)

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I bet you’re a little frustrated sometimes from reading blogs and forums until your eyes glaze over and yet you’re still not in the top. You’ve listened carefully to one SEO after another and the ones who SOUNDED like they knew what they were talking about, you followed their advice to the letter only to feel like more of a failure when their advice didn’t pay off in top slots for your website. It leaves you feeling like there’s just a little more they’re not telling you and if you just knew the secrets they had, if you just knew the rest of the story, the last little piece, then untold riches would be yours for the taking.

So how are you going to get those secrets? Hey, why not just ask? The worst that could happen is they say no and maybe they won’t say no. Maybe they’ll tell you, I mean they seem like they want to help. They seem nice enough on their blog.

So you roll up your sleeves and invest the whole two or three minutes to send them an email with your sad story of failure and disappointment only to get no reply or at best just a form letter with a link to their sales page. SHOOT, we didn’t want to pay for anything we just wanted the secret.

What went wrong? We told the seo all about how our dog was in the hospital and how we can’t afford a computer and how we have to walk through the snow to the local library 8 miles away to build our website and it’s uphill all the way, BOTH ways. Is that SEO that heartless?

The Guru has been getting these kinds of emails for years. In fact, that’s one of the reasons he stopped moderating at seo forums and writing newsletters, (for all you newbies that’s been on the net for less than a decade, that’s what they had before there were blogs). The Guru likes to help and it’s hard having to say no. Sometimes it’s hard saying no. Sometimes  ------ not so much.

 

Dear Bob I was referred by XXXXXXXXXX.

 

I know the answer will be NO, but I still wanted to ask anyway. Back in the early 90s I was able to get my little credit card applications on Page 1 of Alta Vista and several others, and as The Guru you know thats ancient history, the past.  Now days it takes thousands of dollars to achieve a page 1 ranking, or even page 2.

 

Heres my story.... I am a legally 100% DISABLED VIETNAM VET, with few resources (the govt dont care much about helping vets...ask any veteran)....I NEED WEBSITE TRAFFIC for my site, 

The Credit Shoppe  online since 1994  www.xxxxxxxxxtcardshoppe.com   I was hoping you might be a Guru hat has the attitude of helping the less fortunate, or perhaps "giving something back to the NET" ?

 

I know that credit cards terminologies for key search words and phrases is Highly Competitive! 

David vs Goliath.  But I was wondering if you might consider optimizing my site. I do not have access to the website, via FTP. Its template, server side. I could get them to change the key words and heading.

 

If this site is un-workable, here is one that gets zero traffic I started, as a novice, to which I have FTP full  access.....  www.XXXXXXXtcardstore.com  I am an affiliate marketer for credit cards, fyi.

 

Any help would be most sincerely appreciated.

 

Respectfully submitted:

XXXXXXX XXXXXX

xxxxxxxx877@earthlink.net

While I have nothing but the utmost respect for those who have fought for our country, there is nothing I can do to bring this person up, (I believe there’s a little more to the story but that’s for another post another time), he could only bring me down. (Unless he sells me his 10 year old credit card siteJ)

If you last help request resembled this letter, you likely got the same response. None. Because you are not asking the right way.

If you want anybody to do anything for you, stop before you ask and ask yourself one question. What is in it for them?

 This is actually not about getting free seo advice. This is about getting anything from anybody ESPECIALLY links to your site. When you tell someone how terrible your life is or how badly you need something, you are forgetting the 13^th law of power.

 When asking for something you want from someone else, appeal to their self-interest and never to their mercy or gratitude.

Maybe that sounds a little mercenary but the important thing is that when you tell people why YOU need help, you’re forgetting that maybe they can give you seo tips or maybe they can give you a link, but they can’t operate on your dog, they can’t fix your car, they can’t get you access to your ftp and all the other things you use to try to appeal to their merciful nature. So what you are doing is reminding them that the thing they have that you want has limitations. You are taking away the one thing that makes them want to help and share things in the first place. You’re invalidating the power they have built up due to their perceived success.

Aside from whining about needing help, the gratitude of telling them you already linked to them ain’t gonna cut it either. For the same basic reason. You’re saying 1 of two things and neither of them are any good to me if you want my help. Either you felt I needed the link, (invalidating me), or it is a thinly veiled ploy to make me feel indebted to you which is far worse. Instead of just not caring, now, I don’t really like you very much and think you are a person of low character.

So, you can get all the free SEO advice you want. You can get all the links you want from just about anybody IF, you remember to think of what you can do to validate them first. Tell them how helping you is going to increase their power and position, how it is going to bring them what they want and success will come to you much easier.

One little hitch. This is the reversal of the law. Be honest and sincere. People aren’t stupid and as much as anyone wants to be validated, the sting of insincerity is far worse than the promise of false accolades. If you can’t find something you honestly admire, respect or enjoy, (possibly even envy), then my advice to you is, don’t say it. Seek the favor you desire from another that you do respect. 

You want free seo advice?

 Tell them you like watching them bend over to get their tools.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Let me start by apologizing, (kinda), for the sensationalistic headline. I’ve said several times my purpose with this blog is to alter the  perception of what SEO is and what it takes to use it to generate money online within my own small circle of influence. But before I can preach I gotta put butts in the pews. That headline is a better pew filler than “How to Brand a Site”. 

Let’s read on.

For over a decade now, there has been a strange love/hate kind of thing among serp jockeys regarding the practice of securing multiple placements for one keyword on the first page of a search engine. 

On the one hand it has always been categorized as spam and the perp, (if known), chided for such a vulgar display of their algorithmic wizardry, while at the same time impressing the hell out of the wannabes for obviously having such a firm grip on the dark arts as to command free traffic at will. A kind of upside down feather-in-the-cap of the person who could now appear to be allowing search engines to survive only out of the goodness of their spammers heart.

 It’s that basic premise of thinking it’s unfair but boy, we sure wish we had it,  that allowed me to justify taking the editorial license to use that headline to describe how effective branding your site can be.

 I discussed the power of being  #1 going way back to one of my earliest posts from last week. There is little that can shake the searchers perception that if it’s #1 it MUST be relevant, so how powerful is that perception if you are #1 -2 -3-4 and 5? Makes me salivate like a 4 pound dog looking at a 10 pound roast, how about you?

 I must not be the only one so desirous because the Guru received this email from a crazed fan just the other day.

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I just learned about your website and a little about who you are. I was wondering if you could address a question for me, whether it be by email, or through your posts that I have been dying to know. If you search on Google for “SEO Book”, you will notice that the first result, www.seobook.com ranks #1 with a whole bunch of sublinks under him. How was he able to do that? Any thoughts or tips would be appreciated!

 Jeremy Morris

 Miracle Money Matters

www.miraclemoneymatters.com

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Google is not spamming their own results and Aaron Wall didn’t do anything to “make” Google do anything. Google WANTs to put those multiple listings there and they would want to do it for your site too and I’ll explain why.

In my opinion, Aaron Wall and the SEO book saga should be the classic case study of online branding. I believe any university that offers any kind of marketing studies and does not address SEO Book is doing their students a disservice.  He stayed on message, worked hard, played it smart and thus has built a virtual death grip on the SEO informational market. The SEO Book is the prerequisite SEO tutorial above all others. Good job !!

He had a couple of breaks with the traffic power fiasco http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/050830-152234 which gave Aaron the chance to look like the defender of truth and justice in the face of evil. What a break!

Then there was another minor scuffle with a guy named Daniel Brandt http://www.google-watch.org/gaming.html and http://www.seobook.com/archives/000415.shtml

Daniel Brandt had his 15 minutes in SEO circles by almost convincing us he was pretty smart with his whole Google is dying because of the y2k+3 theory. http://www.google-watch.org/broken.html But once the theory failed to produce fruit, we all pretty much realized that being smart doesn‘t mean you can’t be a little crazy too. I mean serial killers are pretty smart but you probably don’t want to link to them. So again, it was Aaron who was able to come off looking like the smart one. He played it well. And I always admired him for that.

But I digress. The point is that he got a couple of breaks that gave him the opportunity to display very brandable qualities which helped solidify him in the market, but I believe there is no such thing as luck when it comes to branding. He was able to capitalize on those opportunities because he had worked hard and smart to make himself ready to capitalize on those types of opportunities.

So now let’s talk about why Google would give a rat’s patooty about that.

Google’s driving purpose with it’s search engine is to deliver the perception of relevancy to every searcher to secure their position in the market. In other words, if they don’t give you what you are looking for, you are going to be looking at someone else’s results, (and ads). So even though Google may be one of the smartest companies to ever exist in the history of human endeavor, they can’t read minds. Yet.

So, when someone searches for something that is a broad term that could have several correct answers they have no way of knowing which answer is best for that person at that time other than having access to a lot of historical data that could be used to indicate a likelihood that one of the limited number of results they return would be the one YOU thought was most relevant.

Let’s look at another example of branding. However this one has spent millions and millions to be able to have the same thing Aaron got for just  --- well --- a LOT less.

Victoria’s Secret has a huge brand, huge catalog and a huge website. When someone searches for that term, Google has no idea of whether you want their catalog, their swimwear or their sexy undies.

{I can’t provide you with the link easily because I’m in India and Goole  re-directs me to google.co.in and while the results in this particular case are very close they are not the same. Sorry, you have to do the search instead of just clicking the link}

So, Google wants to do two things. Show they have the power to find just what you are looking for AND provide a better user experience than their competitors by sending you directly to the appropriate page instead of sending you to the index page and making you dig for what you wanted. SMART! Very smart.

Now back to SEO book for a moment. The same EXACT principle applies to Victoria’s Secret and to SEO Book. Both have huge brands, huge sites and a lot of relevant options that relate to the broad BRANDED term.

Do a search for books about SEO. Now there are no longer 5 results for SEO Book because that query is not the same BRANDED thing. In fact, seobook.com is not even #1. BUT when you search for SEOBOOK, Google knows that others have searched for the tools from seobook.com and they have searched for videos etc.

{pack your bags kids, we’re going on a sidetrip}.

Now for a little conjecture. For the SEO Book search, notice the two references to the same basic thing at different urls. Buy the book at order and buy the #1 rated book at buy now. This indicates to me, (the Guru loves arguing about SEO theories so feel free to chime in), that it is not them knowing what has been searched for as much as they are tracking clicks from links on the site. If I’m right about that, this is huge in terms of knowing how to structure your interior pages to build authority status. They wouldn’t have the data for the clicks on the page without the toolbar installed, (which I doubt Aaron has), but they would have referrer data either way and I believe that could do it. It could also be contextual I suppose but I doubt it. Searches or clicks would be much more reliable especially when there could be dozens of pages about videos or tools on seobook.com the same as there could be a LOT of pages for panties at Victoria’s Secret. The Guru wouldn’t know about that. He’s just guessing. : )

So, there it is. He has multiple #1’s on the first page because Google doesn’t know EXACTLY what you want from a search for a branded term but they know the options to offer that are most likely to keep you coming back to Google for your next search.  Very smart for Google and a very good reason to build your brand.

This is a perfect illustration of what I’ve been trying to get across in the last post I made about focusing on the people and the engines will follow. Aaron could have had no idea that by building his brand Google would decide to list his site 5 times giving him a huge advantage as a barrier to entry if nothing else. He built it for the people he could convert.

Build for the people and the engines will follow.