To finish up the two part series on content hosting, http://massa.techndu.com/2007/12/17/CONTENTHOSTINGTheGoodTheBadAndTheUglyPartUno.aspx I’m going to tell you how I see the benefits and drawbacks of third party content hosting from 3 unique perspectives. The hoster, (the person putting up your content into their domain), the hostee, (the person providing the content), and the search engine spidering the hosted content.

There is also a fourth party involved and that would be the visitor or reader of the content. But for the purpose of this post, that relationship, (while ALWAYS the most important reason for creating content regardless of where it gets published), is not relevant.

Definition: What is Content Hosting?

You’re likely familiar with the concept even if not the term.  Content hosting has been discussed several times over the last several years, although not nearly as often as other types of linking.  I first openly discussed it in June of 04 http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=530.  Bear in mind there have been some algorithmic developments since then, especially with anchor text, but the concept has changed little in almost 5 years.

You may have been exposed to the concept but associated it with other terms such as pre-sell pages, advertorials, content pages, interactive PR,  or about a dozen other creative terms. I prefer content hosting.

CONTENT HOSTING, is the act of placing text provided by a third party on a new page with a unique url  into your domain and providing an interior link to the new page by virtue of some type of transaction or agreement .

EXAMPLE:

Advertiser A offers to pay,( or reciprocate or trade),  webmaster B to place A’s text into B’s domain. A will provide B with an agreed amount of text, (usually 150 to 250 words), which will contain 3-5 embedded text links to a target url chosen by A.

B creates a new url, (usually with target keyword as part of the url such as www.thirdpartydomain.com/targetkeyword.html), using the template that he would use to place any other type of page into his domain to maintain a consistent and professional look , including nav links, adsense, graphical ads,  headers, footers, etc., and uploads it to www.thirpartydomain.com. B then places a link to  www.thirdpartydomain.com/targetkeyword.html from either the index page of thirdpartydomain.com or an interior page no more than one level deep.

The Buyer

The Good:

By virtue of the possible trust of this domain and depending on the supporting theme of the domain compared to the content , this page could place and start generating qualified traffic sent directly to you in a matter of hours to days!

Typically, this type of linking passes page rank as one would expect.

This type of linking has shown to generate more qualified traffic than traditional text links.

Intent doesn’t come into question nearly as much as traditional text links

Concern over competitors indentifying your linking partners is greatly reduced

Gives you control over not only anchor text but more importantly the message you want delivered with that anchor text

Get multiple links for one price

Gain the reputation brownie points from an established domain

Easier to spider and track than traditional text links

The Bad:

The webmastering community is not as familiar with the concept or terminology as with traditional text links and that makes it difficult to explain. It can get frustrating.

More difficult to set up correctly in the beginning due to the above

Unlike text links where you can write one 5 or 10 word ad with the same anchor text and be done, with content hosting, each page needs to be unique to avoid duplicate content issues

You only control the text part of the page and not the layout or design

You don’t control the source of the page, (unless agreed upon beforehand but my experience is this is a problem), so the title tag, meta description, h tags etc, may not be what you would choose.

You must respect the integrity of the hosting domain

The Ugly:

If you break the agreement, (stop paying), the content you provided is now generating the traffic you REALLY want but the webmaster is no longer sending it to you. This is really no different than if you had a deal for a text link and broke the deal except that text links don’t generate placements, but pages do. My experience has been that when you pay for hosted content and then the webmaster re-directs the links that used to go to you to his own affiliate program, it’s a big pill to have to swallow.

 

The Seller

The Good:

Low- risk, (relatively speaking),  stable revenue

High profit margin recurring income. You can make money for months and even years for about 10 minutes of work.

Content provided for you and get paid to take it!

Placements going directly to YOUR domain generated by THEIR content. You keep these placements even if the buyer cancels.

Any inbound links generated by this hosted content increases the visibility of YOUR domain

You decide what , where and how the content gets displayed. After all, it is YOUR domain

You display your adsense, your banner ads, your header, footer, nav bar and you didn’t have to write any original content yourself. It’s almost like getting paid to make more money.

 

The Bad:

You have to deal with other people trying to tell you how to add content to your site. They can be a little demanding.

You have to deal with the sales and customer service aspect even though you are always in control.

You will likely be expected to provide stats of at least page views.

The Ugly:

There is a risk of varying degrees because at the end of the day, content hosting is still, arguably, very similar to paid links. While intent is much more difficult to ascertain by any third party, patterns do emerge and you should be diligent enough to at least periodically check that duplicate content isn’t being added to other domains.

The Search Engine

There really isn’t a good, bad or ugly for the search engine. It is simply another web document that needs to be dealt with. Since there are those who will attempt to use this technique for the sole purpose of increasing their page rank, and lean towards this type of process because of it’s more difficult to identify intent nature, we can expect as much controversy to swirl around this topic at some point as we have seen with the paid links issue. In fact, the more popular this technique becomes, (and it’s popularity WILL increase because it works), the more discussion we will see.

I would fully expect the stance of the engines to be very much the same as the stance with paid text links. FUD spread directly relative to the amount of public discussion.

 If there is any upside for the engine, (and the buyer and seller to a large degree), it would lie in the Don’t  Make Google Look Stupid concept I referenced  in my last post. A video by Shoemoney illustrates the concept perfectly.

Shoemoney’s don’t make Google look stupid video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOBcXEja_dM

With the intent of the hosted content being much more difficult to identify, the outings with complete certainty will be less likely. And of course easier to defend even if it is outed.  As long as a content hosted page is not shoved in the face of an engine as being obvious, it does not force them to take some kind of action to not look stupid or appear not in control as much as they would like the public to believe. This at least increases the chance of longevity and decreases the risk of penalty.

 

The Key to Making it Work

Respect.  Respect for the hosting webmaster and his site, respect for the search engines and above all respect for the people who would be reading the content.

If you try to shove as much unrelated crap as you can as fast as you can into as many domains as will take your $50, then the benefit content hosting can offer will be short-lived indeed.

But if you provide quality original content with links to content that can further the sales process, choose only domains that offer related, makes- good –sense themed topics, and do it in a way that does not make the engines look stupid, this technique can offer a stable and superior reward vs risk ratio.

 

Peace Y‘all

G

 

now get outside and play but if you mess up them new shoes, I’ll make you wish you hadn’t!

 

^{Why would someone buy from me instead of someone else?}

If you can not answer that question, you don't need an SEO. You need to find your unique value proposition and then develop a strategy around what it is that makes me want to quit going where I used to go to buy what you offer and start buying it from you.

Are you cheaper?

Do you have some kind of software that makes my experience more fun, more convenient, more faster?

Are you the only person in the world that offers this product or service ?

Are you just a much better looking guy than your competitors?

Do you do something that appeals to a specific market? Maybe you have pink ribbons on your site because you support breast cancer research?

Do you have a contest?

Do you sell naked?

There is always the chance that what you THINK is the thing that makes you special turns out to be not so special to the rest of the world but making the mistake of being wrong about your unique value proposition is a whole lot better than making the mistake of thinking just build it and they will come.

If you can answer that one simple question, NOW an SEO can make you more money faster and with less expense. Answer it not and in about 4 to 6 months you'll likely be another one posting on forums how you got ripped off by an SEO when in fact it was you who ripped yourself off by not answering the single most important question to ask yourself BEFORE hiring an SEO.


Peace Y'all
G


No! You can't have a puppy. You won't even keep your room clean so I KNOW you can't take care of a dog.



PS:
Read Seth Godin's  The Purple Cow
http://www.amazon.com/Purple-Cow-Transform-Business-Remarkable/dp/159184021X

Ambiguity is the property of words, terms, notations and concepts (within a particular context) as being undefined, undefinable, or without an obvious definition and thus having an unclear meaning.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambiguity

Ambiguity, like it or not, has been a driving force on the web since it’s inception. Words, symbols and acronyms being used by multiple people to explain or define multiple things at multiple times for multiple, (self-serving), purposes. Doorway pages, SEM, long tail, keyword research, canonical, page rank just to name a few terms and acronyms that have been capitalized on by the fact that their definitions and meanings are clear as mud to a lot of people.

There certainly are those who do know what they mean and what that meaning actually means in terms of practical uses, but there are a LOT more who don’t and that has been used to advantage at times by those who did  and at other times by those promoting terms they themselves had no idea of what they were talking about. It just sounded good so let’s sell it, blame our problems on it or accuse someone else of not knowing what it really means to make ourselves look smarter. SEO of course being a classic example as it may be the ambiguiest of them all.

But if I had to choose just one term or word that has been thrown around the most often to mis-identify, mis-label, and mis-clearup the most, it would have to be SPAM.

Spam

Mystery meat of the luncheon persuasion? Unsolicited email? The act of “stealing” organic placement from those more deserving by virtue of superior content or could it just be the search engine scape goat that allows them to deny any liability for imperfect results?

There is no such a thing as search engine spam

Anything you can control you can spam, assuming your defintion of spam is close to the same as mine. Email you can write and send. Unmoderated forum posts, blogs and diggs for example you have at least some degree of control over even if only until a moderator sees it. But basically, as long as you can type something, hit enter and it is displayed, you can promote whatever you choose for any reason you choose. I know I'm a little left of center, but to me trolling a forum is as much spam as dropping a viagra link. Search engines don't work that way!  

I’m not trying to instigate another circular debate about the ethics of search engine placement and I have no intention of arguing the matter. We are all free to believe whatever and whomever we choose, and I have a right to enjoy that freedom as much as anyone else.

I believe that SEO's, (whatever that is), do NOT manipulate search engines. I've seen SEO, (whatever that is), defined as the art of manipulating the search engines. That is false. If you set out to place a web page on the first page of results for a target keyword or phrase thinking you are manipulating the search engine, you are doomed to fail.

Thinking you are forcing the search engine to do anything is a mistake. Thinking you are hiding anything from a search engine is a mistake. The only answer to top placement is recognizing what a search engine does, accepting that, assessing the potential rewards and risks and working within those confines.

It is difficult and time consuming to identify exactly what it is a search engine does and how it does it. Algorithms are complex and just how far you want to dig is up to each individual doing the digging. It really has nothing to do with how smart you are. It has much more to do with how much time and/or money you are willing to invest to learn the quirks of a specific engine.

With most people, myself included, there comes a point of diminishing returns where it makes more sense to simply understand the concepts and base your actions on educated guesses more so than researching another 100 pages under another 100 phrases. Also, keep in mind, success breeds success. As long as you apply the concepts you discover and your sites capture those top spots and generate sales, then you can accept that you are right and act accordingly.

The only person or persons who can manipulate a search engine, are the persons who have access to the admin panel and/or source code of that specific search engine. If you can't get to the admin panel, you can have no effect whatsoever on what that search engines does based on anything you do to your page or site. All you can do is construct data that you feel is most likely to fall within the parameters of the algorithm.

That is NOT manipulating search engines, that is learning how search engines work and then manipulating your page. No matter how vehemently some may disagree, that is a fact!  No one can "help" a search engine find what they are looking for anymore than anyone can "make" a search engine do what they want. Search engines just do what they do.

This may seem like a very minor point to some, but this is the main concept that has caused so much division within the search engine marketing community. The misunderstanding or failure to recognize this concept is the reason some people try to hide content thinking they are fooling the search engines and why some people become so militant about saving the planet from search engine spammers. Both camps are missing the glaringly obvious.

Some things work and some things don’t. Not all of the things that work make the search engines look good to the public or even in their own eyes and that forces them to either admit there may be a problem or find some way to make themselves look better. Claiming the problems they see in themselves lies not with their own algorithms, but rather is due to nasty people they can only identify after the fact is just good marketing and public relations.

I have been preaching this concept for a long time, (http://www.v7n.com/basic-concepts.php), but I ran across a video from one of those guys that when he speaks, smart people listen,( Jeremy Shoemaker http://www.shoemoney.com), just this weekend. He said in a 3 minute youtube what I have been trying to make people understand for years.     

Shoemoney’s don’t make Google look stupid video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOBcXEja_dM

If you don’t watch this short video you’ll be doing yourself a huge disservice. Shoemoney shows in a way that is very hard to argue with, why text links have been carrying an increasing risk factor this past few months. It’s not because they don’t work, rather it is because Google has made such a hard-line stance against them and to do nothing or to admit they don’t need to do something makes them appear less powerful and their search engine not as omnipotent as Google would like. But that is not fighting spam, that is public relations and very smart PR at that.

By torching sites, (as shoemoney eloquently puts it), it gives the appearance that the algorithm is all-knowing and it is only a matter of time before all those nasty spammers get caught. By promoting the notion that some people are bad for doing the exact same thing Google does, (which is to build their own site to maximize their own image and revenues),  it eliminates the liability of poor results and helps to give the appearance of “protecting” the web which is a more noble endeavor than just trying to make as much as we possibly can.

There are risks associated with promoting anything. There are costs and there are winners and losers. But there is no such thing as search engine spam.  

Whatever shows up in Google, Google put there, not you.

Do you honestly think Google doesn’t know that?  

I have heard some argue that Google is getting better at fighting spam, but what that really means is Google is getting better at not looking stupid. Which brings me to today’s topic.

CONTENT HOSTING – The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

Spotting obviously compensated text links doesn't take a rocket scientist. Pretty much a blind monkey with no arms can run tattling to Google that another blind, no armed monkey has text links on their front page. But after a few dozen monkey "outings" on popular outing sites, (more commonly known as seo forums and blogs), and the top results are still heavily populated with obviously compensated text links Google starts not looking as smart as we thought they were. Action must be taken to address this and torching ensues.

So, with a link based algorithm that has pretty much re-defined technology stock trading, now that we see a problem do we abandon links? I don't think so. I think we just look for ways that make us look smarter. Hello third party content hosting for a fee. Good bye text links. Who cares anyway? Once digital pointless started advertising .edu links for $1 did any of us really think there was much value left in them? I know we all like to accuse Google of trying to tell us how to build our sites but I believe digital point did more to kill text links than Google did. Anyway -------

Today is the first installment in a two part series about content hosting and what value proposition it offers the buyer, the seller and the search engine. My next post will be to describe specifics of content hosting, (sometimes referred to as presell pages), what it can and can’t do for sales and placements for both the buyer and the seller and why, (at least for the time being and until they start getting “outed” by SEO’s), content hosting is the text link, (and pay for post), of the next few years.

Peace Y’all

The Seo Guru

 

 

If you don’t stop pesterin your sister, you’ll be cutting me a switch DAMNIT!

Should you buy links? Wrong question!

The question you SHOULD be asking is, “should I be promoting my online business and what risks am I willing to accept?”

{NOTE: the SEO Guru ALWAYS approaches any topic regarding the online experience from a commercial perspective.  So, even though there may be things of interest to some beyond the scope of buying and selling goods and services, the Guru is not addressing those. }

There is really only one reason anyone should want to pursue, (free, paid or killed for), a link in the first place.  The potential of increased profits.  

I suppose there could be an argument made that simple validation is also a motivation worthy of consideration but to me the only reason that justifies compensation is either the direct benefit of a delivered lead trackable to a third party source of someone who has made the investment to attract traffic that they are willing to transfer to me  for a fair price,( where would PPC be without this little concept in place?), or the indirect benefit of things like endorsement from trusted sources, branding and of course, improved visibility in organic results of search engines.

Links given freely are always appreciated of course. Even if they weren’t, there isn’t much you can do about it. If someone wants to link to you for any reason you might as well be glad because you can’t control what someone else does on their site.  Even the Associated Press is going to have to accept that you can’t control what other people link to. http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20071009/185531.shtml

What Do Free Links Cost

Control is the issue of course and there is a cost associated with loss of control.  Reputation management issues begin with a link. When the #1 result for a search for your name has a title like “ World’s biggest loser”, now there is a link you can live without. There is little question that even if you do nothing more than whine about it, you have an investment of time that could have been better spent not doing  the whining.

Or like in AP’s doomed case where you feel the link does them more good than you, you may end up wasting millions in court costs and lawyer’s fees only to find out it would have been cheaper to offer to simply pay Moreover to stop linking to you in the first place. What a dilemma huh. If you paid someone to NOT link to you, is that still considered natural linking?

When a link is compensated either by reciprocating, trading or cash on the barrel, at least then you do have some degree of control over placement, context and method of compensation. There are undoubtedly benefits and upsides to making a deal.

A deal is a deal and it doesn’t matter if that method of compensation is dependent on clicks or page rank. At least it doesn’t matter to the dealer or the dealee. That is business and the way business has been done since the first cave man traded a pretty rock for a mastadon steak dinner. The perception is that what you and I conduct is no one’s  business but ours. That is the perception and the perception is what is causing all the uproar, confusion and circular debates in the world of online marketing.

Enter the internet and a search engine generating a lot of traffic and wielding a lot of power to divert or alter that traffic on a whim. Now a third party forces it’s way into the deal by virtue of perceived risk and all of a sudden there are considerations beyond the objectives of the dealer and the dealee. Naturally, this is going to freak some people out. Others it will only not sit well with, while still others see the controversy as opportunity and publish their viewpoints in the hopes of gaining links as well as swaying people to their way of thinking.

The Internet Marketer’s Manifestohttp://www.seo-scoop.com/2007/04/20/the-internet-marketers-manifesto/ OR  

Google Needs to Stop Being a Crybaby About Paid Links

http://www.wolf-howl.com/google/google-needs-to-stop-being-a-crybaby-about-paid-links/

But no matter what the position being promoted, controversy ensues as the comments on sphin illustrate.

http://sphinn.com/story/17990

Without the controversy, it wouldn’t be worth the effort.

The harsh truth is that third party influence over certain business transactions are actually nothing new. Just ask anyone who has ever been left anything in a will or tried to sell a business that was located in a leased building. 

But another harsh truth is that anyone who has the power to influence any deal for their own profit, is going to do it. It doesn’t matter if it’s a third party, a dealee or a dealer.  If there is profit at stake everyone that can profit will attempt to and they will use whatever resources they have at their disposal to try to increase their take. That includes FUD, public relations department and behind-closed-doors arrangements.

The Guru actually sees nothing wrong with that as he believes that is as it should be.  Each interested party with even a modicum of business acumen is going to quickly assess risk vs return and act  in their own best interests. That is business, that is human and that is natural human behavior. 

Improved visibility in organic results of search engines. Herein lies the rub.  

So when it comes to links, we already know one of the parties has a vested interest in maintaining some degree of control over the market for a number of reasons creating what could be considered a risk.

Here is a video of Matt Cutts and Vanessa Fox discussing how selling links can cause you to lose your page rank:http://videos.webpronews.com/2007/12/11/pubcon-las-vegas-2007-matt-cutts-of-google-and-vanessa-fox

But only you can decide just what that risk is worth. If the risk is more important to you than the return, fine. Trackable leads, endorsements and branding with a no follow tag -- no problem.  Slap a tracker on the link reporting impressions and click thrus, agree on a cost per impression or per click or per action and theoretically, the benefit of these desired outcomes represent little risk beyond the possibility of over payment due to the lack of industry standards and pricing largely dependent on the individual webmasters own idea of the value of his site, (far too often over-inflated in this Guru’s  opinion).

Even if a monthly fee for branding, endorsement or validation works, again, rel= no follow can give you the false sense of security promised by the Google altered perception machine.

But what if you believe that organic converts better than ppc or that organic grabs the lion’s share of the clicks? What if you believe the more Google tries to control links the more value to influence their ranking the links have?

It’s not my job to tell you what to believe or how to spend your money. As an online promotion service provider, my job is not to tell you what you want or to assess risk for you. My job is to listen carefully to you as you explain your objectives and then honestly inform you of my opinion of the risks involved compared to the returns you could expect and then increase your traffic, sales and/or image at your bidding.

Invariably I get the question, SHOULD I BUY LINKS?

Wanna  know the funny thing? Most of the people who ask me that question are the people who least need to worry about the risk. The risk motivating the question being whether or not they may be penalized by google instead of the risk being about going broke.

Logic would dictate that anyone concerned about the risk of being penalized by Google,  is actually  worried about losing something they already have.  In this case sales coming from targeted traffic generated from superior organic placements in the SERP’s.  Fine, that makes sense as that is pretty much the definition of risk. Losing what you already have or at least losing a perceived opportunity that you have already made an investment in, (which was a calculated risk the minute a decision was made to put up a webpage and long before this question ever came up).   

But far more often than not, when I take a look at the site belonging to the askee,  I see a site that looks like a third graders ransom note and written by a Marlon Sanders school of “But Wait – There’s More” drop out with a title tag that reads,  index-Mozilla Firefox.

Little traffic to speak of and certainly no sales to lose. There is VERY little visible investment in design, content or anything else.  Yet they brag of the #3 spot they have for a keyword with over a million results like that is all they need for proof of their valuable contribution to the world of online commerce.

It’s obvious to me that what they really want is to do very little work, invest very little of themselves and then have me make them a lot of money for a couple hundred bucks, BUT they don’t want the site to get penalized for breaking any google rules.

That’s fine I have no problem with that but don’t waste my time and yours trying to make me think you are wanting one thing when you are actually wanting another. If you tell me it’s a thin site with little content but you want it placed, I can help you evaluate risk vs reward. When you tell me what a great site it is and you want it placed for competitive keywords but you don’t want it penalized, that is borderline crazy and I can’t help you with that.

Then I get the people who read more seo blogs and forums than I do. They come to me and tell me they want top quality links from only trusted authority sites with a minimum PR of 7 and without a no follow tag for $1 each to link to their affiliate site promoting herbal male enhancement BUT they don’t want to break any Google guidelines.

Again they are telling me they want top placement for a site that lacks the content, the longevity and the trust built by their competitors without having to build as good a resources as theirs without breaking any rules. They are wanting me to promote a great site when they don’t have a great site.

Again, fine. I don’t care and I can help you assess the risk of this too but only by us both being straight with each other.

I can help but the Truth Must Set You Free!

If you want to build a great resource and want to gain link popularity without breaking any guidelines, fine. I’ll help you develop strategies that get links for free. We may build a nifty little widget to give away for free. We may set up a video blogging site. We may do a lot of things that involve virtually no risk of Google penalizing your site, (bear in mind that they can do anything they want any time they want in regards to how and who they rank).

Fine, I can help and I enjoy building complex sites and managing complex strategies. BUT the objective here is not getting penalized instead of making the site profitable fast.

If you tell me you want this site at #1 within 30 days, I can help with that too, BUT it is very likely the placement in Google won’t last long. Very high risk with every so-called SEO on the planet writing to Google accusing everyone else of breaking the rules.  Again the objective here is not making a site profitable. The objective is to spam the crap out of Google.

Fine, I know a lot of people and can help you assess the risk vs the return for just every genre there is to be promoted online.

Finally, there are those who run online businesses. They are familiar with their own site and with the sites  of their competitors. They want to compete effectively and maximize return while managing risk. They know what sales are. They know what margins are and they know that Google’s business is Google’s and they know they have to make sales and maintain margins to survive and that is their business.

These people I can make a lot of money. I can do the work they aren’t specialists in, faster, cheaper and with a better return they can do it for themselves.

If you know what you want and you tell me what you want, I can probably help, but if you are wanting one thing and ask for help getting another you are either lying to me, lying to yourself or lying to both of us and either way, you lose.

So the question is not, SHOULD I BUY LINKS. The question is “how do I make more profits for my online business”? Buy em, trade em, give away goodies for em or pay for them by the click, links are a part of online promotion and you need them if you want increased sales, more branding or improved image.

Now, my next blog post is going to be about

CONTENT HOSTING – THE TEXT LINK OF THE NEXT DECADE
What content hosting does for the buyer, the seller and the search engine and why presell pages are bullshit!  

Peace Y’all

The SEO Guru

 

If I catch you buying cigarettes with your lunch money again I’m going to quit giving you lunch money and you can just go hungry!

Rattling Bedroom Windows and Falling Lamps

Thanksgiving is over and I have a legitimate excuse for not posting for almost 2 weeks. I had intended to write last Monday after the last of the fowl flesh had been devoured, but I felt so out of sorts I feared some form of bird flu may have mysteriously gotten into my system.

I fantasized briefly about a bunch of gobblers getting together at the old Tyson Turkey Town and becoming aware of the fate awaiting them. My mind saw them in a final act of defiance all making a suicide poultry pact and ingesting tainted turkey chow knowing their revenge would be served postmortem.

But alas, as I awoke this morning, a wind with the force of a small tornado came from deep inside and nearly ripped the blankets from the bed.  The windows rattled and the lamp fell from the nightstand in my haste to exit. Instantly I felt the pressures of the world had lifted from me my demeanor brightened and I became my old self and I knew guru-isms would be forthcoming. Let’s proceed.

HOW TO IDENTIFY CLOSING QUESTIONS 

As promised, today the Guru is going to show you how to identify those questions from prospects that tell you when it is time to stop talking about who you know, what terms you offer, how many awards you won or any of the other stuff that YOU feel illustrate the value of your offer and simply get down to it. These types of questions are commonly known as “closing questions”.

One of life’s greatest contradictions, (to me at least), is:

No prospect will EVER tell you when you have sold them and they are ready to buy

Every prospect will ALWAYS tell you when you have sold them and they are ready to buy

“So G, how am I supposed to deal with a statement like that? Which is it”, you may ask.

Again, and always, the answer is you have to listen more than you talk.

In every aspect of the human condition we all expose our true motivations only to those willing to see them.  Our feelings and our true selves are determined by things that happen to us and things that are said to us in our formative years.

There is a lot of debate about what time frame our formative years actually start and end with but for our purpose it doesn’t really matter. It is enough to know that, (allowing for some POSSIBLE exceptions), everyone’s personality was developed as a young child and stays with them throughout their lifetime. As we mature, social influences may modify our actions and how we communicate but the basic motivations remain. Let me elucidate.

You may have just received an invitation to modify your lifestyle from the Infernal Revenue Service, yet when you pass an acquaintance you smile broadly and when asked, “ how are things going”?, you reply, “Great, everything is good”. 

But if that acquaintance happened to be a guy like the Guru, he would have noticed that just before you saw him your chin was resting against your chest, your shoulders were drooping  and your usually laid back greeting was just a little too enthusiastic. The Guru would know that in spite of what you said, everything was NOT good and that something troubling was on your mind.

Online, we lose the benefit of the visual and the verbal takes precedence but the song remains the same.

There are a lot of great books on sales and salesmanship, and over the duration of the Ask The SEO Guru’s lifespan, I’m sure he’ll be discussing and recommending several, ( How to win friends and influence people by Dale Carnegie is a classic that will never cease to deliver! There is a good reason it stays on the top of every salesman’s recommended reading list. READ IT! http://www.amazon.com/How-Win-Friends-Influence-People/dp/0671723650), but there are two books that the Guru would recommend today that you won’t find a lot of SEO,( or sales), gurus recommending.  It has more to do with the WHY’s people do the things they do than the HOW’s of what to do when they do it.

Both of these books are old. One I read when it first came out and the other I just recently ran across. I recommend them today because they are old schoolius maximus and I believe when it comes to the sales of technology products and/or online services old school sales concepts coupled with online proficiency is an extremely powerful  tool.

Of course the internet is changing everything and I’m sure it is going to even alter basic human behavior at a formative level, BUT, the vast majority of people in a position to be a prospect of yours was born before 1990 and that means that old school, (pre-web), psychology will still be the driving force behind their personalities. THAT is what makes that combination of old school sales techniques and tech savvy so powerful.

#1. Power – How to Get it and How to Use It by Michael Korda (1975)

http://www.alibris.com/booksearch?qwork=5267117&matches=45&author=Korda%2C+Michael&browse=1&cm_re=works*listing*title

Out of print and hard to get but it dramatically changed the Guru’s life and has made him far more money than the meager cost of the book. I had read several psychology books and papers prior to this one and pretty much knew we were all neurotic to say the least, but this book taught me how to see what motivated the decision makers in a company.  Not all decisions come from the CEO, and even the ones that do usually come only after a decision has been made by someone else.

There is an entire world of mental wrangling involved in virtually every aspect of this process and if you don’t understand the different motivations of those who have power compared to those who want it and those who only THINK they have it, you are going to be asking yourself what went wrong with your sales approach A LOT!

The second recommended reading for today is:

#2. Games People Play: The Basic Handbook of Transactional Analysis. by Eric Berne (1964)

http://www.amazon.com/Games-People-Play-Transactional-Analysis/dp/0345410033

This one is a little cerebral for my tastes BUT it is short and concise, which is good because your time should be spent learning a little, then selling a lot, learning a little more, then selling a LOT more.  The best thing is it identifies specific actions and statements and explains the true motivation behind them.

Ok, so what we hope happens is that the prospect says, “well, you’ve done a great job of explaining the benefits of your service to me and you have overcome every objection I had  so, let’s write it up”! And believe it or not, it does happen like that sometimes but not enough you could live off of it.

Far more often, if you have covered the preliminaries and asked your qualifying questions to discover the prospects primary objections and  you have overcame those, your prospect is likely very close to being sold on you and your offer and he will tell you but in so many words.

He will have a few,(usually only one and usually minor), questions that tell you it is time to ask for the deal.  When you hear these questions, answer them and c lose.

Here is The Secret

The secret to being able to identify closing questions compared to the prospect merely voicing a concern or objection is ----- it will be a question he has already addressed.

This is the concept that you can easily learn and apply to let you know when your prospect is ready to make a decision. There are almost as many variations of closing questions as there are prospects and it would be silly for me to try to give you every possible variation. It makes much more sense for me to give you the easy to get concept and then you can apply it to the specific questions as you get them.

So what I mean by, “it will be a question he has already addressed,” is that somewhere early in the conversation, (usually within the first 30 seconds of the prospect speaking), a comment was made that tips you to the prospect’s primary concern.

I’m going to give you a broad example even though I hesitate because it is important that you remember not to look for the exact phrase being repeated but rather you get the general idea and recognize the theme of the context.

The prospect may say to you:

We’ve been working with another SEO and waiting over 6 MONTHS, (he’s telling you time is a major objection), and we’ve got NOTHING! (he’s telling you he feels like he’s been ripped off. The trust objection).

So if you’ve been listening, you would know that in your presentation you want to be sure to point out how you will conduct a thorough review, (feature), so that you don’t waste time and he can see results fast, (benefit that overcomes the time objection). And that seeing your regular reports, (feature), lets him know what you are focusing on but it’s the results he can see, (benefit that overcomes the trust objection because you can’t deny results), that make it a win-win.

From here the conversation may take several minutes, (personally, I’ve never been good at those aluminum siding kind of sales presentations that take hours.  I’m like the impatient fisherman. If I haven’t caught anything in about 10 minutes, I’m ready to pack up the tackle and beer  and go somewhere else.), and you may talk about all kinds of things but as soon as your prospect says something like:

so how long before we see results

OR

how often do you send the reports

DING DING DING DING DING

THAT is your closing question. You know because you have already answered those questions and he is asking because you have removed all the other minor objections, you’ve covered the obligatory stuff that he already knew, he likes you and he likes your offer and he is telling you he is ready for you to ask for a decision.

I want to point out two things here.

#1. I know I keep repeating myself here but it’s because it is important.  This is a concept and not a procedure. If you tell yourself you didn’t get the sale because the prospect never said what the Guru said he would say, then you don’t get it and I’d advise you not to throw out those classifieds because you’re going to be needing another job pretty soon.

#2. When a prospect asks a closing question, it doesn’t always mean he’s ready to make the decision to sign on the dotted line. BUT, it does mean he’s ready to make a decision. It may just be that he’s ready to make the decision to ask another closing question. That is a good thing because as long as you’re not hearing “no”, you’re moving in the right direction.

In my next issue, I’ll give you some tips that close the deal. I’ll give you some specific examples but more importantly I’ll give you the concepts that explain why it works. That will conclude this series on how to become the worlds’ greatest SEO salesman and we’ll get back to more SEO centric stuff.

I know that I make it all sound so easy but that is only because it is. There are a million little intricacies that come into play in virtually every sales situation. That is what makes it interesting, exciting and fun. And while every person and every situation is unique the game is always the same.

In case you’re wondering why I’m telling you all my sales secrets, it’s because I WANT to make selling tech services easy for you because I want you to sell more and hire me as your outsourced staff. I went to India to build an outsourcing company because after 11 years in the trenches I know that for almost every shot you get to secure another paying client  there are a lot of services the client needs but you either don’t have the resources or the inclination to provide them because it is a pain in the ass. BELIEVE me I understand.

The Hard Part Of SEO

The hard part of SEO is not getting the clients. In my 35 + years of sales, I have never seen a stronger market more ready to buy than the market for online promotional services. Selling SEO is not the hard part.  Having the resources to provide all the pieces needed to provide the most value to the client is.

I know from experience that a LOT of you reading this now have lost sales or at least potential income the client was happy to spend because you lacked the resources to actually provide all the services you knew the client needed.

Being in the trenches everyday for 11 years,I know what it takes to recruit, train, supply, manage and pay enough people to be in a position to offer a wide range of services like design, copy writing, press release distribution, social media promotion, link acquisition, custom scripting, database design,  custom enterprise solutions, etc, etc, etc.  Each of these things could be a deal breaker and in today’s market you need to be able to offer these types of services with confidence or too many times you will either provide poor quality, (which could cost you more than just money. It could cost you your reputation), or have to let the prospect seek out your competitor.  I can help.

We are now at 18 full time employees in India our American copywriter! We now have  6 in the SEO department, 1 full time designer, 2 customer service reps, 2 .asp developers, 6 php coders and a managing director. And we’re growing. I’ll be back In Ahmedabad for another two month stay at the end of this month and we will be adding a java department.

We are all good at one or more of those things or we wouldn’t be in this business. BUT, now you can be good at all of them and stop losing sales or leaving money on the table by making my staff your staff. I WANT to help you to sell with confidence by offering the resources you need at a price that can make you and your clients money. A win-win-win.

I can’t be all things to all people and there is no guarantee that we’ll be a good fit, but I can guarantee that if we are a good fit, I’ll show you how to sell more with less stress and give more value to your clients.  If it doesn’t work out all you’ve lost is the time it takes to email me and discuss it. But consider this – what if I’m right?

 

Peace Y’all

The SEO Guru

Quit sittin so close to that TV before you go blind!