Your SEO Guy: Expert or Business Partner?

By Rich Devine | 1 Comments | Posted in in Analytics , Marketing , Search | Permalink

My team had a call with a prospective client the other day. I sat in and listened as the client made some frank observations about ‘SEO people’. In essence, she said her company’s progress with SEO always seems to miss the mark because consultants can never get past their own knowledge. They spend too much time bragging about their elite technical competency or secret strategies; and too little time understanding her business.

I’m not always the smartest dude, but I steered the remainder of our conversation toward questions and ideas about her business.

Her point is valid. Without question there is a tremendous amount of nuance, technical implication, and know-how required to do SEO right — it’s not a discipline for fakers, you’ve got to know your stuff. But is that really what sells SEO? It shouldn’t be.

SEO should be about about the promise of performance. I’m not talking about rankings or traffic — I don’t care about rankings, and I don’t care about traffic. You heard me. What I do care about is performance.

Too often SEO professionals equate rankings and traffic with performance. That’s a mistake. Certainly rank success and traffic contribute to performance, but rankings don’t make me money. Traffic…believe it or not…isn’t a recognized currency that can buy lunch.

SEO professionals can be really smart within their discipline, but it’s rarer to find SEO folks that also have strong business perspective. It’s the difference between the Expert and the Business Partner.

So what are you getting from your SEO person — an expert or a business partner? Hopefully both. Here’s some basic questions to help you determine what kind of SEO you’re talking to:

1. Does he spend lots of time talking SEO jargon — algorithms, robot.txt files, canonical redirects, etc., etc? EXPERT

2. Does she ask questions about your business and products? BUSINESS PARTNER

3. When you talk about success measurement, does he talk in terms of rankings and traffic? EXPERT

4. When you talk about success measurement, does she talk in terms of behaviors and goals tied to specifically to your business? BUSINESS PARTNER

5. Do you understand what he’s actually doing, and why it’s important for your business? No: EXPERT. Yes: BUSINESS PARTNER

7. Does she speak transparently about the process, and try to match unique strategies to very specific business objectives? BUSINESS PARTNER

8. Does he try to steer you away from other marketing efforts like paid media, creative & UX, or traditional advertising — in favor of just focusing on SEO? EXPERT

9. Does she want to coordinate SEO efforts with other marketing channels and stakeholders, including creative, paid search, display media, web analytics, traditional advertising? BUSINESS PARTNER

You get the idea.

Now don’t get me wrong. There is nothing wrong with being an expert. But if you’re hiring an expert for SEO, be aware that strong business perspective isn’t always included.

this blog post originally appeared at RichDevine.me