Outsourcing in many cases comes as a result of filling a need. It could be that a company doesn’t have the resources to bring the work in-house or it could be that they feel search marketing is search marketing and the cheaper they can get it… the more they save. They couldn’t be more wrong.

For example, just about every overseas company I’ve dealt with for link building does link bombing. They go after major terms and target them all to the homepage. That’s not the worse part. The worse part is the sites the links are coming from are totally unrelated. They come from link farms and link pages that are already filled with thousands of links.

All the customer sees is the site’s rankings improving and continues with the service. The problem is,  eventually the site gets caught and then penalized. Who suffers? The client obviously. The outsource company’s response?….”we do this for all our clients and no one has been banned before, it must be something else.” Many of these outsourced companies have very basic knowledge of SEO and online marketing and couldn’t tell you what was wrong regardless. If they could… they’d know what they were doing was wrong.

Social media is another area where the low price lures people into thinking that as long as someone is doing it, the cheaper the better. I’ve seen out sourced companies create profiles and not even create them around the company name or main keyterm. They aren’t targeting the right demographic and they can’t really tell you the value of the service they are providing.

These overseas companies don’t even know that there are ways to use customer email addresses to find them on the social networks. Why reinvent the wheel? You have a customer base and an email list, use it.

Article marketing is another huge problem. With English being a second language, content creation is fair at best. This is your companies image on the line. People reading that content may buy based on what they read. Is the content accurate? Is it written well? If you don’t know… you may be doing more harm then good. Good article marketing involves lots of unique content and going after terms that are relevant to your site. If all links in the articles are going to your home page and they are all different and unrelated terms, this is being done incorrectly.

The point of this is to make people aware that just because a service is cheap, doesn’t mean it’s better. Not to say paying more is, but do your research and ask questions. Many small businesses get cold called or emailed with big promises for little cost. What many small business don’t realize is that bad SEO and marketing can not only waste their money, but can hurt their rankings and brand. Think bout it.. someone with more experience will charge you more, but will do a better job and in most cases faster. Or, you can pay less over more time and still have it done incorrectly. Then you have to pay someone to fix the mistakes. That doesn’t sound cost effective to me.

Unfortunately, some companies prey on small businesses and their lack of knowledge and take advantage of it. While others genuinely think they know what they are doing, but really don’t. Educate yourself. Know the basics and get involved. You can always hire a search marketing consultant to over see the process. I’ve been hired to train overseas companies on best practices. It might be the the best solution for companies looking to outsource.

As with any business your brand is what people identify with. If you are a freelancer or a consultant you are your brand. When you Google your name what comes up?  How many results are of you? How many are of someone else? If someone wanted to hire you and learn more about you what would they find?  These are important questions.

It should also be important to you that when a search is done on your name that information pertaining to you and your area of expertise shows up. Why? The top reason “people searches” are done on the net is to establish ones credibility.

Not having anything is almost as bad as finding something bad. Does your Myspace page show a picture of you flipping off viewers? That could be damaging and costly to your image and reputation. You can keep your personal profiles private, just don’t have damaging content or photo’s showing in your limited profile.

How To Brand Yourself

You can start by creating some profiles on some popular networks such as Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, Google and others. A crucial factor here is to make sure you are active as well as making sure these profiles are completed with a bio, posts and photos of  you. Don’t let these profiles collect dust.

You need to make it easy for people to find out who you are and what you do. A Linkedin profile for example will list recommendations from past co-works and clients as well as your resume. Savvy business people will quickly see if you are on there and if they are linked to you in anyway. They will also be curious to see what people have said about you and your work. So building this profile is a must.

Knowledge Is Power

How knowledgeable are you? How can people find out if you are? Can your contributions be found in a search? On the net you need to have a certain level of credibility before people will do business with you. If you are not sure how to share your expertise and credibility I will give you a few ideas.

Interviews: Reach out to websites, publications, blogs and other related outlets and offer your knowledge in form of an interview. Don’t be afraid to pitch an idea for an interview topic.

Webinars: Webinars are great because people can get more of a personal feel for you. It helps build your credibility because you can answer questions and offer advice.

Podcasts: Share you knowledge on a regularly basis. This is great for building a following and a future client base.

Guest Article / Post: Creating a guest article or post is a great way to tap into another sites traffic. Just be sure you ask for a link back to your site so you can benefit from the traffic and hopefully some link juice.

Video / Tutorials: Creating video is a great way to build yourself as an expert. Online video tutorials or slideshows help educate while helping you build your brand.

Create Your Own Blog: Creating a blog is a great way to build your own readership while building your organic traffic. It is also one of the best ways to build your credibility.

On any content you create or contribute to… you need to socially bookmark it. It doesn’t matter if it is on your site or not. Create accounts in all the major networks; Twitter, Digg, Linkedin, Facebook, Stumbleupon and so on. This will help increase your exposure to new readers and show how knowledgeable you are on a topic.

You should now have what you need to starting building yourself up as an expert and making yourself stand apart from the crowd. There is nothing like telling someone “Google me to learn more about who I am an what I do”. It works for me everyday and it can work for you.

This article will show you how little money you can spend as well as some facts that will ease your mind and get you started in the world of online advertising.

Some small businesses are intimated by the idea of spending money on a new form of marketing they don’t understand. Let’s face it, many local business only know how to advertise local in newspapers and the yellow pages. Google being as big as they are… small businesses may feel it’s an expensive space to advertise in. Here are some bullet points that will help put things into perspective.

• Local search means that you are only advertising locally not nationally.
• You are going to advertise using very specific terms.
• You will only pay when someone clicks on your ad.
• You set the budget. Spend $50 or $5 a day.
• You can, if you choose.. advertise only during your business hours

Feeling better?

No? Oh, you must still be concerned about the budget? I have worked with a lot of small businesses and honestly the average cost per month is approximately $400 per month. This will depend of course on your service and locale. Doctors can expect to pay more than a pizza place because of the competition, but doctors also tend to make more if they land a new patient. So it balances out.

Advertising online gives you a huge advantage over print advertising. You have access to data that will give you insight as to how people found you?  You can even see what part of your city most people are contacting you from. This can help you with future advertising strategies both on and off line. There are even additional services that can allow you to track calls made to you buy you online ads. This will help you clearly measure if online advertising is working for you.

There are numerous videos that can show you how to set up a campaign. If you still have questions Contact me.

]]> http://www.joebalestrino.com/2009/what-are-the-benefits-of-local-search/feed/ http://www.joebalestrino.com/2009/packaged-seo-great-idea-or-a-false-sense-of-savings/ http://www.joebalestrino.com/2009/packaged-seo-great-idea-or-a-false-sense-of-savings/#comments Thu, 17 Dec 2009 16:04:48 +0000 Joe Balestrino http://www.joebalestrino.com/?p=237 If you’re tight on money will having a predetermined SEO package actually help you? The bad thing about a package deal is, you pick the package. If you knew exactly what you needed wouldn’t you just do it yourself? If you couldn’t do it yourself… what are the chances you’d find a package to meet you’re specific needs?

Part of SEO is to evaluate and benchmark your current efforts and to formulate a course of action. How do you know what you are ordering is even going to help? You place an order for a package to optimize 10 pages but you have 11 or maybe 7! Maybe, you have 10 pages but some of these pages are pages not needing optimization, such as your contact and privacy pages.

I took a look at many SEO packages online and some offer useless services such as search engine submissions. Some packages offer content creation while others don’t. Some offer link building and some offer directory submissions. Others offer low package deals, but you have to commit to 6 months. The service my tout about it’s low $400 package, which turns into a $2400 at the end of 6 months. Which can be in the range of some SEO campaigns but, if you are going to pay that much wouldn’t you want it customized more to your needs?

If the niche market you are in is very competitive, you may need more link building. Maybe you want a directive on how to research terms to write keyword rich blog posts. Or you maybe you need new pages of content added to compensate for terms your current pages don’t cover.  What if you’re pages already rank well and no new content is needed, but your package includes it? You just paid for something you don’t need.

What’s the conclusion? It comes down to your judgment. Find the right package that fits your needs. SEO packages for the most part are for new sites. Providing the site was built with SEO in mind. If you aren’t sure your site was built correctly, then these package deals won’t work for you. Packages I found didn’t mention anything about evaluating a site before starting an SEO effort. When results don’t meet your expectations the blame will be put on you for not picking the right package, so use caution.