29 October 2008 One Comment
So, a sales guy walks over to me with a URL in hand. He asks that I give him a brief overview of some of the SEO points he should go over for a sales call, and what we can do for this potential client. I pull the site up, give it a few minutes to sink in, and I start typing some notes (I can’t tell you how boring a sales guys finds this whole process).
A few minutes later, I turn my complete attention to my notes so that I may convey the points to my buddy. I start a sentence “it seems that there wasn’t any really keyword research performed as I can see…” when he interrupts. “Yeah, because of the title tag and the content, right?” I reply “well, yeah, that’s right.” This theme is repeated for about 10 minutes when I realize, we have this same conversation a lot.
You see, when you work for an agency, you get to take note of a lot of sites that have never even given SEO a thought. Not in the slightest. And this is a big problem. Not because these sites do not have an online marketing strategy (though that is a problem), but because it creates a habit that can become self-destructive.
When you see so many new sites with a vast number of similar problems, you fall into the habit of always pointing at those problems. After a while, sites come in and you wave your magic “it is all these things, just like the others” wand at it, and you are likely to miss something else. This can become even more of a problem when you start to optimize mass quantities of sites with the same outlook. There’s a really good chance you are going to miss some glaring issues. So what do we do about all this?
Check That List
I find it best to run the sites I’m about to optimize through a checklist. This is a list of all of the most common problems we see, and the most common steps to resolving them. This way, I don’t give much of my brain attention to getting to those. Just run down the list, and get them done.
Get Out of Your Box
At the end of my checklist, there is a step to “use your noggin now.” This means that “hey, all the common stuff has been taken care of now, Josh. Put the list down without thinking about it, and do what you do best.” This way I can concentrate on finding all those little weird things that may be holding the site back.
Take A Break
This is one of those old tricks that your college professor would advise when studying; or writing that huge paper on how incredibly ridiculous the military strategies of the civil war really were. Take a moment to get your mind off of the project, and come back with a fresh outlook. This will keep you from falling into a rut, and from burning out too quickly.
The Buddy System
Have a colleague or peer take a look at things when you’re all done. Give them what you already have. Share ideas. Some of the most successful campaigns I’ve ever been involved with were the direct result of a casual (as casual as SEO can be) conversation with another SEO. A new set of eyes are more likely to see something differently than the pair you’ve been using to lull over the site for hours on end.
At the end, just remember that sure, there are a lot of common mistakes made by website creators but do your best to look at each case as a different one. When we starting lumping all these sites into one view, we end up offering the same package to everyone where different levels of service are needed.