Pretty unexpected and awesome.

This incident, however, was unusual in a couple of ways. First of all, the form had been completely filled out. Typically, the contact person will fill out a few sections like the required fields and that is it – they hit Submit and send their information to us hoping we will call back. But this form had every single field filled out in detail – including a list of competitors.

But there is more!

The email address of the contact person ended in @dell.com. As I mentioned the Contact Us form on our website is filled out often but, sadly, not very often by a company the size of Dell. I’ll admit my first reaction was disbelief. To give you an idea of how large Dell is, it ranks 41 on the Fortune 500 list. Revenues are $61 billion. To give you some perspective Google ranks 92 on the Fortune 500 and has revenues of $29 billion. I suspected that this was a hoax or someone playing a joke on us. In fact, we were originally contacted in April so this could have been an April Fool’s joke.

But it wasn’t.

I called Jeff H and asked him how we could help out. He said that he was responsible for sales to small and medium sized business in the United States. He mentioned that they spend a lot on paid ads on search engines which made sense because I see their ads all the time on Google. They weren’t looking to reduce there budget but they did want to increase the profile of their website pages on the natural or organic side of the search engines.

I mentioned a  few of the advantages of search engine optimization (SEO) which Jeff H seemed to appreciate. The list below is similar to what I told him:

1) Free Targeted Traffic
The primary advantage of SEO over any other type of internet marketing is found is that once your website is listed on the first page of results for your keyword phrases, you get clicks to your site for FREE. This means that you can receive traffic from prospects 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 52 weeks a year at no cost. And here’s the kicker – they are looking for the products and services that your company has to offer! Wow – that is beautiful.

On Google.com search for “business laptops”. Dell.com should be on the first page – probably at the top of the page.

2) Excellent ROI
A return on investment is one of the major advantages of SEO. It may take a few months for your website to rank well for the targeted keywords but once ranked, the ROI is excellent because you are getting free traffic to your website. Nice!

I can’t say how much Dell paid for our services but they have re-cooped their investment many times over.

3) Cost Effective
SEO is one of the most cost-effective ways of marketing. The initial work of keyword research, optimizing pages, and improving inbound links takes some effort and investment. But if the site is powerful (read lots of high quality inbound links) and properly optimized then the rankings on search engines should stay in place for months and sometimes years. Brilliant!

We optimized this page http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/laptops a few years ago and it is still working very well for Dell.

4) Increased Brand Visibility
SEO leads to the increased brand visibility for your website. Your business will start showing for strategically important keywords, and more and more visitors will be there to look for the services you are providing via your website.

You can try a variety of other keyword phrases and Dell.com is on the first page of results. Try: “business computers“, “servers“, and “workstations”.

5) Credibility
Your company will get a boost in credibility and reputation because the search engines are ranking your website highly for specific keywords related to your industry.

The end result for Dell was free visitors, excellent ROI, at a low cost, with increased visibility on a variety of keywords and excellent credibility. The screen capture below was taken today. Dell is still ranking well for “business laptops” and beating out over 34 million other web pages.

Puzzled, I called Ian McAnerin, www.mcanerin.com, to see if he had any ideas as to why this was happening. He thought that one option may be that Google was pulling the title from our listing on www.dmoz.org. Sure enough the listing on DMOZ has our legal name of Anduro Technologies Inc.

As an experiment, I sent in a request for a name change to DMOZ. Once they change the name we can compare this results on Google and see if that is the reason.

Last November we hosted our first seminar on Online Marketing Strategy in 6 Hours. It was sold out and a tremendous success. So much so that we are offering this seminar again – re-titled as Social Media Strategy in 6 Hours.

The topics and dates for these new sessions are:

• Quickinar: Tweet Like a Pro in under 3 Hours on January 21
• Quickinar: Social Media Strategy in 6 Hours on Monday, January 31
• Quickinar: Lights, Camera, YouTube Action in under 3 Hours on Thursday, February 10
• Quickinar: Facebook Business Page in under 3 Hours on Thursday, February 17
• Quickinar: Kick Your Blog Up a Notch in under 3 Hours on Thursday, February 24
• Quickinar: Social Media Strategy in 6 Hours on Friday, March 25

As you will notice we are calling these sessions, Quickinars. This is a name that we came up with to emphasize that these are short, intense seminars that focus on relevant topics. Right now we are focusing on providing social media training for the Calgary market – we may expand.

We hope that you find these seminars useful and valuable. For the entire list of seminars and more details look at our Quickinars page on Eventbrite.

If you have questions please email me, jeff.nelson@anduro.com or call me (403) 410-3803.

Hope to see you at one of the sessions.

As a result, we had an objective (do the video) but this was one of those situations where we had no time, no media room, dysfunctional equipment, and no one to shoot the video.  Being 2 resourceful guys we improvised. We met at Mount Royal University, snagged a classroom, set up our cameras on a tripod, hammered out a script (very loose) and shot the video. Here is what we came up with. Enjoy.

Google: 5 Myths and a Reality about Google Adwords.

I am going to paraphrase but keep in mind, this is directly from the keyboard of Google “itself”.

Myth 1: “Online advertising is not for local businesses.”

Seems to me that people think because they are a local company they don’t need to advertise locally. Did you know that you can set your target to your city/town only? The targeting ability of Google is pretty amazing. Bottom line – ADVERTISING LOCALLY is very important. There is generally plenty of competition locally and more and more, potential customers are checking online first.

Myth 2: “If your business is already on Google; advertising on Google can’t help you.”

This one is particularly interesting to me. So essentially, if you are ranking naturally, you don’t need to advertise. This is definitely not the case. Unless you are ranking fairly high up on the first page of search results, I would put an ad up. That way, people will definitely see you. The interesting part is this sentence:

“In fact, appearing both on the right and on the left side of the page at the same time increases the perceived relevance of your website and as a result even increases the number of free clicks you get to your website.”

That puts an end to that battle!

Myth 3: “Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is better than paid search.”

I am extra interested in this one since I am the Pay-Per-Click specialist here at Anduro Marketing! Google deems SEO and PPC to be equally important but says PPC has a few advantages – it’s quick, it’s easy, you have more control and it is more measurable.

They do go on to say that you should definitely do both – follow the webmaster best practices and optimize your site (we can help you with that too!) and also have ads.

Myth 4: “Google AdWords costs too much, I can’t afford it.”

The beauty of AdWords is that you can spend as much or as little as you want. Start with a small budget and as you see the return on investment, you can invest some more, trying new things as you go.

Myth 5: “You need to be an expert to get started.”

So, yes it is easy to set up an account and campaigns but there are so many little things that take practice and time to perfect. We have had many clients who have set up an account and tried it for a while without great results. There are so many settings to think about and some of them are defaulted to benefit Google in that they encourage your account to spend more money than necessary. It definitely helps to at least get an audit done by our team to see if you are on the right track.

…and one reality about Google AdWords

“I am too busy to do this myself.”

I hear this all the time. Maintaining an AdWords account can be quite time consuming. While you don’t need to log in every day, especially in the first few weeks I recommend at least every second day. The account will be fine once it is set up to be left a lone for a few days and you don’t want to make too many changes too often but you definitely should at least check in. Or hire us!

Interesting article.

I was definitely intrigued by the post which is why I am sharing it but the more I think about it, there are a lot of missing components here. The article How Much is a Google Top Spot Worth? posted on the SearchEngineWatch blog is definitely interesting.

To sum it up, there are some graphs and pictures and stats that show how important the first spot is and how much more traffic a company gets if they are in the first spot as opposed to the 2nd and 3rd etc. While it is our goal in life to get people in these top positions on Google, there are definitely some things to point out here.

I am in no way, shape or form trying to diminish this article or argue with it. It is definitely important to be in the top spots in Google – if it wasn’t, Anduro wouldn’t exist how we do now. And I agree that the top few positions are where the eyeballs are but there is a point that is being overlooked.

What about conversion rate?  I agree that you want traffic but if it is unqualified traffic because everyone is just clicking on the first result since we all trust Google to know what we are looking for, maybe it is better to be a bit further down on the page and catch those people who are really, truly searching. Maybe those people are more qualified. Of course, it makes sense that the chance of getting a conversion increases with more traffic but I think this study is inconclusive. There are other factors to consider – conversion rate being one of the biggest ones.

Have a look at some of the comments under the post. Pretty interesting to see the different reactions from people.

What do you think?

The link pointed to an article called “Spammers, Evildoers, and Opportunists” by Derek Powazek. In a nutshell it is tirade against Search Engine Optimization and companies offering SEO which includes our company, Anduro Marketing. I couldn’t resist reading the post and responding.

First Derek gives a quick history of the search engine industry:

“First came the web, and it was a mess.” “Then came the search engines. First primitive indexes of dumb keywords, then Google…” “The ascendancy of Google has meant that, if your goal is to get the most eyeballs possible (as any ad-supported media business’ goal is), then prominent placement in the search engine results became a top priority.”

Not a bad history actually. He should post that to Twitter. But then Derek loads up the page with name calling and loaded language to emphasize his point. His labels for Search Engine Optimizers include: “goat sacrificers”, “snake oil salesmen” and “a new breed of con man”. He then makes 3 points and elaborates on each.

1. The good advice is obvious, the rest doesn’t work.
2. SEO is poisoning the web.
3. The One True Way.

Actually, Derek is right on each point but beyond the basic point Derek seems tarnished, tainted and terribly mislead or misinformed.

1. SEO is Obvious.
In many ways Derek is correct – much of SEO is obvious. Picking keywords, adding them to web pages and getting any type of link back to the website is free and relatively easy. But so is cooking a burger or changing oil in a car. I can do both but I don’t except occasionally. Why? Lots of reasons. I don’t have time. I’m too lazy. And the chef at BrokenCity does a much better job. Besides, I don’t have buns, burgers, condiments, fries and a stove at the office. Why should I cook a burger at lunch time when I can pay someone to do it and talk with customers, colleagues and friends instead? Sheesh.

So what are customers buying when they hire a firm to optimize their website? Where is the value in hiring a company like ours to optimize their website and boost the home page on search engines? The answer is simple. Our customers don’t want to spend time doing tasks that would take them a month of Sundays. We can do SEO faster, better and often cheaper. We have the tools, processes, and know-how to get the job done quickly and effectively.

One of the basic principles of running a successful business is to do what you do well and focus on that. People buy value. If you focus on providing value then customers will buy. But if you spend all your time learning and doing things you don’t have the aptitude, training and skills for then you won’t be able to provide quality products on time at a reasonable price. Trying to do everything sounds like failure to me.

Let me give you an example. Let’s take Dell – a large company with a large budget for brochures and online ads. One would assume that their website would automatically work well with the search engines. Not so. A couple years ago we got an email from a business manager for the business unit focusing on small and medium business. He thought there was untapped opportunities for Dell to rank well on search engines. His rationale was that paid ads on Google cost money and high listings on the organic side of Google are free. Good point. We “messed around” with the URLs, source code, anchor text, internal links, external links and strange things started to happened. Pages on the Dell site start ranking at the top of the SERPs. Dell.com is still in top spot for “business laptops”, beating out 25 million other pages. It’s in 3rd spot, out performing 109 million other pages, for “servers”. The end result – our contact at Dell got promoted. Nice.

But what about small companies? What value do they get from SEO? About 5 years ago Wayne Thomas came to us. He runs a small company called CleanSuite Software Inc. His company produces software for dry cleaning businesses. He wanted to have more visitors come to his website. He had some ideas of how to do that but wasn’t confident and simply didn’t have enough hours in the week to optimize his site and pursue inbound links. We talked. He hired us to help him out and he is a very happy customer. CleanSuite is a small company that is building its reputation and success on our talents. If you go to Google.com and search for “dry cleaning software” his site is listed in 2nd spot beating out 1.3 million other pages. He was in first spot until recently. Wayne, give us a call.

In summary, yes, SEO is obvious to some people but not everyone. For companies that want to reduce their marketing risks, an SEO firm is a good bet.

2. SEO is poisoning the web.

Derek’s complaint is that Google’s search algorithm is based primary on building links back to a site. Then he goes on a rant about “SEO cockroaches” and “SEO bastards” doing all kinds of devious techniques to get links which have temporary value. He is right. If you use black hat tactics and try to trick Google you will get caught and the website will likely be tossed out. But who uses black hat techniques? Any SEO who has been in business for more than 3 years and can prove results never tries to trick Google. What we use are best practices.

1. Picking keyword phrases that will drive qualified visitors to a site – people looking for what companies are offering.
2. Optimizing a web page by adding the keywords in the right spots so that the search engine crawlers can find the phrase. This isn’t secret or hard but it has to be done correctly.
3. Building a web of reputable industry related links back to the site. Not really hard but time consuming so we can’t waste time going after useless links. No one is going to pay us for work that doesn’t produce results.

Derek, what’s wrong with using best practices?

3. The One True Way – Good Products and Good Content.

Derek’s point that many writers create “dumbed down content” is valid. It is sooooo true. I see tons of crappy content on the Internet every day. But I read fast and I can spot dumb content very quickly. Here’s the rub. I doubt that I’m the only one with a critical eye. The folks at Google aren’t stupid either. They know what good content looks like.

Thanks Derek for a stimulating article and your point of view. Ultimately, you and I can agree on something. Create good products. Create good content to let people know about it. Repeat.

Here is a link for more details: Internet Marketing Conference – Calgary 2010.

Great line-up of speakers. So far 60 people have registered. Ends on St Patrick’s Day – March 17th.

Topics include Social Media, Gaming, Videos, SEO, Pay-Per-Click and Industry related news.

Anduro is offering a discount. Call our office and we will give you the promo code.

Malcolm co-wrote the case study, entitled “Anduro Marketing: Internet Services vs. Software Sales“, with Sid L. Huff. Sid is a Professor and Head of School at the School of Information Management, Victoria University, Wellington, New Zealand.

The summary of the case study as list on HBR.org is:
“Anduro Marketing is a Canadian company that sells technical services to companies wanting to improve their search engine website rankings. Though small, Anduro has attracted several major clients in both Canada and the United States, and expects steady profitability and growth. Anduro believes it can generate substantial additional profit by developing and selling a suite of software products that automate its technical service offerings.”

The case presents the conundrum that we had to either develop a technology suite related to SEO tools or focus on expanding our service offerings. I won’t tell you in this blog post what we decided to do. But you can contact me directly and I’ll let you know. Please contact Jeff Nelson via our Contact Us page.