I get about 2 calls a week from people who have used cheap SEO companies or some other company who has not performed to the levels they had expected, and I feel bad, I have always hated seeing people get absolutely ripped off, which is why I have a standing offer to review any SEO proposal in my free time.

What I am hearing more and more of is that many people who purchase SEO services are now turning to lists and ratings of SEO companies with websites like TopSEO’s to help them sort through the garbage SEO companies. “On their homepage the big slogan is 2000 companies evaluated, only 80 chosen.” The question is, what is the criteria used to filter out the 1920 companies who weren’t chosen?

But just when you think you’ve got something you can use…buyer beware…I have found that a very recent winner listed by TopSEOs.com in 2008 as a TOP SEO company that doesn’t currently rank well for their own brand name – this reeks of problems. Major problems.

When I find a company that is not ranking well for its own brand name it spells problems, problems that usually come from overly aggressive tactics. If an SEO company doesn’t rank well for its own brand name that especially raises issues as they (the SEO companies) are the trusted advisors for their clients. Their clients come to them saying, “hey can you help us navigate this confusing SEO space and to get results”? They expect us to use tactics that won’t get them in trouble.

I was told about this company by one of their ex-clients (they will remain unnamed), they are in SEMPO, sponsor major events, and the like, they seem credible right?

We learned about this company because one of their clients called us to explain the situation of how he used the SEO company listings at TopSEO’s to help find a good TOP SEO company, this company was highly rated which made him feel more at ease as he left his old offshore SEO firm who didn’t perform well either.

Note: when I type in this company’s name, I see a few old blog posts that are on important sites which heavy anchor text links within the blog posts. Maybe they used pay per post or some similar service to get links? Who knows.

For those of you using SEO rating services, it really is buyer beware!!

The only list I would trust is this one
Rand Fishkin and the SEOmoz crew doesn’t make a dime off of this list, I think they developed it out of a love for the industry and hoping to connect people who need good SEO services to those whom they feel are reputable.

Lee Odden of TopRank has a nice list of ways to select a company, not sure if he’d still include topseo’s.

Ideally marketingsherpa would bring back their SEO guide

I don’t know the due diligence process that TopSEO’s does for listed “top SEO companies”, but to truly make that list valuable and honest I would recommend that they do some of the following:

I really would love to see TOPSEOs let us know the due diligence process on companies and seek out suggestions to improve the current setup, I’ve done my part in the 8 bullets above, what other suggestions would you have to build a better SEO company mousetrap?

Hey Folks - At the last Affiliate Summit I had the pleasure of having a web business heavyweight in on my session. For those of you that know Jason Calacanis, he is a baller in the web business space and is famous for the SEO is BS comment that set the SEO Industry ablaze. If you are interested in finding out more, here’s a link (to google results).

As you all know SEO is something I just love being a part of and in this presentation, I gave my honest gut feedback on how to do linking the right way, and how to prime the pump if you have to with paid links…lets be honest a submission to Yahoo Directory or Best of the web is a paid listing too. I don’t mean blatant spam sites, I mean just paying for links in general. Jason took it as an opportunity to ask some questions, I wish they were more substantive cause the audience would have gotten more value out some more substantive questions, but here’s the video on my thoughts about how to manage paid links, evaluate your competitors use of them, and see if you even need to. To watch the video with my annotations in it go here instead of watching it below, when you embed it does not include annotations.

I also need your feedback, I spent some time annotating these videos because I talk fast and through out a lot of URLs, if you’d like me to go back and annotate more videos, please comment on our youtube channel or here on our blog - and I’ll start adding annotation of URLs and free SEO tools in the ones that get the most requests.

Thanks for reading and thanks to Jason for at least sitting down and asking some questions - it helped me actually be better prepared for future shows. Jason and I spoke after the show and assuming he was genuine about it - he was a totally cool dude who I think is sick of spammers, but then again aren’t we all!

While, the Google Search Query Report is old news in the industry, has anyone else heard of the “Yahoo Search Query Report”?

About a year ago, Google released the “search query report”, which caused waves across PPC marketing professionals. This report opened up a can of worms so to speak. Basically, the report allows individuals to see any term they are being broad matched to.

When the search query report was launched, I was doing PPC for a Big Wedding Brand. The first time I pulled the report for my client, we were being broad matched to the singular term “formal”. This caused my heart to palpitate, as I would have never wanted my ads to appear when a searcher just searched for the term formal. Since the Search Query report’s launch, search marketers have learned to pull these reports to help them build out negatives for overly broad terms they do not wish their ads to be served for.

Google’s Search Query Report showed SEM Marketers that Google’s definition of broad is pretty broad.

What about Yahoo’s Advanced Match? How “advanced” is “advanced”?

Yahoo does not provide the Yahoo Search Query through their interface. However, the Yahoo Search Query report does exist. I came about the report by accident.

I manage an account that spends over 30K a month in Yahoo, which means I get “special treatment.” I have a premium rep, who helps me manage the account. One day I was complaining to my rep that I would really like to see what search queries my ads were being matched to because of Yahoo’s “Advanced Match,”

Lo and behold I discovered the Yahoo Search Query Report. My rep said that they can pull a report that shows me what term each keyword on advanced matched is being matched to.

“Send it to me!” I exclaimed.

My Premium Rep now sends me monthly the “Yahoo Search Query Report” With the Yahoo Report, which is not the case for Google’s, you can see at the keyword level what search queries a keyword is being matched to (Google’s report you can only see the ad group triggering the impression). With Yahoo’s report you cannot see conversions even if you are tracking them in the interface but in the Google report you can.

Now, just as my heart stopped the first time I pulled a Google Search Query Report, my heart stopped again upon opening the Yahoo Search Query report.

I was bidding on a very long tail term – a four phrase term (Note: which included the term “online” in the query) and according to my Yahoo Search Query report I was being Advanced Matched to the term: “Online”

Yes, you read that correctly, my ads were actually showing for the term online – a long tail term nonetheless was triggering my ad to appear when someone searched for the term “online”. Just writing this brings back the heart palpitations.

To pour salt on this wound, the client the report was pulled for was in a very competitive PPC landscape where each click had the potential to spend up to $10.

I have since added 100’s of negatives to my account. The Yahoo negatives, act like the Google “Negative Exact Match.” Adding the term “online” as a negative prohibits my ad from showing up for that term and only that term. For example, if I were bidding on the term “online dating,” I would still show up for “online dating” just not the stand alone term “online.”

This was not the only instance of poor “Advanced Matching” in my account. There were tons of other terms that caused my heart to skip a beat, but “online” was definitely the most disturbing.

I whined about this for awhile in my office, telling my colleagues how unbelievable it was that my ads were showing for the singular term “online”. My colleague Crystal wanted to get a similar report sent to her for a different account. Here is the twist of this story - Crystal who has a different non premium rep, asked for the report and the response she got was…“I have never heard of that report.”

Her rep had no idea what she was talking about. So, Yahoo has this report, which is replete with useful information for advertisers and not only do they not publicize that it exists, but also their own employees do not even know that it exists. No wonder Google makes up about 70% of ad spend.

The fact that Yahoo hides the existence of this report from their own employees makes you wonder how confident Yahoo is with their advanced matching technology.

Maybe Yahoo does not publicize this report because they are afraid of too many advertisers opening up the Search Query Report can of worms.

What can other PPC advertisers take away from this tale?

• Ask Yahoo to send you the search query report. They have it; you just have to be pushy about it if they say they don’t at first. If your Rep does not know about it, ask to speak to his/her boss. I have seen the report - it exists!
• Watch out for Long Tail Terms in your account that have alarmingly high impression levels. For example, can there really be 3000 people a month searching for “online under water basket weaving class.” This should raise red flags that your long tail term on “advanced match” is most likely being matched to some overly broad term such as “basket”
• Make it part of your process to check this report monthly so that you can continually add more negatives to your account.
• Like Google, this report can also provide Keyword expansion ideas that you can add to your account. Amber at PPC Hero goes into more detail this for this in the post “2-major-reasons-why-you-should-run-a-search-query-report-today”
• Yahoo’s advanced match is quite advanced and from what I can tell, Yahoo’s matching algorithm is much less sophisticated than Google’s.
  Take the results that show up when you search for “Online” Google only matches one ad to the term “online” Yahoo has 8 advertisers matching to the term online. (Note: my ad is no longer there). Do you think all these advertisers are really bidding on this term?
  I bet “SingleParentMeet.com” would love to hear their ad is showing up number one when someone searches for the term Online. I’m guessing they would love to be in on the secret of the “Yahoo Search Query Report.” I know I am.

- Bonnie

Remember this…

In the partial words of REM, “I…” may be “…losing my religion.” Or at least I feel like I am. I come from a branding heavy background, which I passionately believed in…beginning way back in my undergraduate classes, where I learned about the importance of developing a strong, consistent brand identity for clients…onto graduate classes where I learned that a brand is the promise of an experience…onto a 10+ year career in branding firms and advertising agency environments where I learned from some of them (it’s surprising how some are still focused on colors and photos and miss the picture entirely)…that a brand is how people perceive you and encompasses all aspects of a business from it’s name and identity to its offering to how its employees talk to its customers and everything in between…until one day…I entered the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) & Search Engine Marketing (SEM) world…and asked what is it all worth—BRANDING?

A few weeks ago, I began my new job at SEER Interactive and ever since I’ve been challenged to question, how important is branding if no one can find you? If your brand mandates that you have to refer to your product as “pre-owned,” but people are out there searching for “used,” how important is it to adhere to your brand? Will changing your web copy comprise your brand? Dare I say, more importantly, will changing your web copy hurt your sales?

Isn’t business about making money?

My belief starts to crack…and I think to myself…it’s kinda like the chicken and the egg. You need a strong offering before you can meet a customer’s need. Is branding just something we force onto the business after we’ve succeeded at generating some revenue? In reality don’t most businesses start as a result of finding a need and meeting it?

At the last agency where I worked a co-worker actually had a cartoon hanging on his door that consisted of two ad execs talking about post-rationalization and something to the effect of it being acceptable and alive. I now start to consider…is it possible that branding really is just post-rationalization? …UNLESS you acknowledge that it’s something that occurs organically at the engagement of your first customer encounter and extends beyond as you grow…in which case…I question, how can these branding firms take thousands and sometimes, millions of dollars from businesses to post-rationalize what already existed and then, fail at showing any impact let alone specific impact?

Again, I ask, at the end of the day…isn’t business about making money?

As I sit at my desk at my new job…I get to wondering…have I been brainwashed? Who really decided all of this branding philosophy and practice anyway? And just because someone decided it way back when doesn’t mean it works or it’s the right approach now…right? It’s kinda like that moment in life where you realize that not everything your parents taught you is actually true or right…remember that?

It’s weird for me to even have these thoughts. I feel like I’m partaking in blasphemy. I’ve heard other people bash branding and marketing many times, but now I’m questioning the importance and validity of it. How did this happen?

And then, I recall sentiment an accomplished, former employer, whom I respect wholeheartedly, used to always share, “If you’re not it business to make money then, you shouldn’t be in business—go start a non-profit!” I remember how much I love that! …So true, right? Even if your business is socially or environmentally conscious, your #1 objective is to make money…it’s always to make money!

So, if business is really about making money…why do so many businesses pay money to agencies to develop branding for them when the agencies can’t really produce any measurable results? I know this happens, because it’s the challenge we faced in all of the agencies where I worked previously—how do we show impact? How do we prove that our branding/marketing efforts are generating leads and beyond that how do we capture how many leads these efforts have generated?

ENTER SEARCH MARKETING!

With search it’s all about impact! It’s all about results—specific quantifiable results! No longer do I have to look at a client in a meeting and offer up some explanation of how we’re going to “Generate Awareness,” an objective impossible to measure, and then, smile in the hopes that that objective would suffice and that they enjoy working with my team and me enough to give it a shot and hope for the best—knowing that we will never really know! If you’re a marketer, I ask you…have you ever felt that way? No, actually I know you’ve felt that way…so instead, I ask you how many times have you felt that way? Too many to count, right?

The good news is that with search marketing it’s all there in black and white, or should I say, green!

I feel free at last! With search marketing I can show my clients exactly how much ROI they are earning.

SEARCH MARKETING allows us to:

• Estimate how many people are searching terms per month (using various tools)
• If our client knows how many leads it takes to close one deal and
• If our client knows the value of that one deal closing,
• We can estimate how much ROI our client should earn.
• And then, we can measure the impact of our campaign!

Try calculating your SEO ROI yourself…

Let’s get back to the reason why a business is started to begin with—to make money!

I fought for branding for the past ten years of my life and yes, it exists and has importance, but I ask you…how important is adhering to branding requirements if no one can find you? How important is a well-branded business if no one knows it exists?