Hmm, what sparked this one? I have received numerous RFP’s lately, and as I read them, I can tell that the people writing them spend some major time assembling them. I almost feel bad for them, because you can tell that someone really spent time trying to ask just the right questions, only to get back responses that sound very similar (to their disappointment).

I would think that hiring an SEO company these days is just like being a judge in a beauty pageant where the final participants were sextuplets. Everything on the surface looks exactly the same. The same applies with SEOs – you don’t know if one company can get you a top 10 for a competitive term or if they are not able to do so until you work with them for a while.

Think about it. These are the typical questions we see in RFPs:

• How many people are in your firm?
• Give examples of terms you have optimized for.
• Provide references.
• What is your process?
• How do you bill for services?
• Do you offer guarantees?
• BLAH BLAH BLAH

Many of these questions don’t really matter much. Let’s break down a few:

How many people? – The SEO firms that I think are the best are smaller. If I couldn’t do SEO anymore and I had to ask someone to do it for me, I’d hit up people like Rand, Andy and Aaron, each with companies under 10 people (I think), or I would at least ask them for a reference. I wouldn’t go to iProspect, iCrossing, 360i, or any of the other I’s. Nothing against them, but I think I would get better service and more passion from the others.

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Have you ever thought of what you would do if your site was well positioned for all of your main keywords? Say you are DeWALT. What happens when you rank well for drills, miter saws, electric drills, cordless drills, power tools, reciprocating saw, etc, etc?

Do you stop SEO altogether?

Maybe you do. But what about the mindset of someone who uses these tools?

Why are they seeking out drills and saws?
Could they be repairing their homes?
Is there something DeWALT could offer to add value?

Recently I had the privilege of doing some research around a few kids games online. It became immediately noticeable that many big companies who could easily leverage the strength of their massive domains aren’t thinking of the “application” keywords. Application keywords often focus on how people USE the things you offer on your site.

After reading a case study many months ago on weather.com’s expansion to keywords like “Outdoor Weddings” it has had me thinking for some time.

Since SEO is still so new to so many companies, many are still targeting their primary keywords only and that is a great start! Heck, most companies are totally screwing up opportunities to rank well for primary terms. What do you do when you had a great ROI, exhausted top rankings, and maximized traffic for those primary keywords?

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