Proven Search Engine

Optimization Results

Don’t Get Duped!!

Here is another one of my pet peeves and one that I’m sure you can relate to.  I’ll be working away and I’ll get a cold-call from some company telling me that they can get my site to #1 on Google.  Sound familiar so far?

Ask the Right Questions

This is where I may be a little different.  Always up for some fun, I’ll start asking questions.  These are the same questions YOU need to be asking any provider of marketing services – including me:

• What proof can you show me that you can do what you’re saying you can?
• What are you going to do to improve my ranking?
• What assurances will you give me that you’ll produce results?
• When can I expect to start seeing results?
• Where is your site in the rankings?
• Why are you cold-calling me on the phone if you’re so good at online marketing?

The last two questions are my favourites.  Most often they’ll tell me they’ll send me a quote or more information but I’ll never hear back from them.

The Point?

I share this with you for a few reasons.  First, because we all get these types of phone calls.  Everyone and their dog thinks that they are an expert at Internet marketing just because they read a post on search engine optimization on some guru’s blog once.

Second, I wanted to share some of the questions you should be asking these guys.  The MOST important one is ‘What assurances will you give me that you’ll produce results?’

Guaranteed Search Results?

I used to preach that Google is too fickle and nobody should be guaranteeing top results. I still believe that to some degree for global search terms but since I’ve also been working a lot more within local markets and finding it so easy to produce top results, I will tend to guarantee search engine results.

I say ‘tend’ because I have to research each market and its potential before I promise anything.

Proof is Key.

Finally, the topic of proof.  Be careful with this one because there are a lot of snake-oil salesmen out there that can talk a great game but have never produced any results. I’m fortunate because as evidenced in my videos, I am the least smooth-talking dude on the planet so I have to show results or I come across as an idiot.

My favourite example of my results is my personal blog at ehaaranen.com.  I knew how important it is to have success stories and I figured if I wanted to sell search engine optimization services I’d better have a site that ranked well.  I also knew it would be a lot more impressive if I out-performed other seo experts so I decided to optimize my blog for the term ‘website seo services.’

That term gets a lot of traffic and also has a lot of global competition. My blog is now at #1 on Google (click here to see) and has been for well over a year.  It took me about 3 months to produce those results and I’m competing with companies with teams of people and significant budgets.  Doesn’t matter. I still manage to outperform them month-after-month.  I also see that my blog is now at #2 on Google for the even more competitive search term ’seo services’.  Click here to see live results.

Another example is this site. It doesn’t have very much content – mostly pages outlining the services I offer.  Yet with the right site structure and a good linking strategy, this site is now at #2 on Google for my main search term ’sales prospecting’.  Click here to see live results.

Quick Note

I’ve provided these two examples because they are global search terms.  That means I’m competing with pages from around the world for these placements.  Most small businesses compete on local search terms for the simple reason that they can’t sell anything to someone on the other side of the world.  This makes things so much easier and it isn’t uncommon to see brand new sites showing up on the first page of Google within 2 or 6 weeks of being built.

It really is that easy in most cases.

Final point. Getting search engine rankings is nice – and it is important – but it doesn’t matter if the visitors you get to your site don’t either buy what you’re selling or become sales leads for you.  I talk about this in my free guide so if you haven’t read it yet, enter your name and email in the top right hand corner of this page.  You’ll enjoy it.

In the meantime, give me a call if getting better search results is in your future plans.