Friday, November 5th, 2008, Search Engine Land posted an article discussing what many of us in the SEO space already know; that Fortune 500 companies are not well represented in the organic space. They reported findings from a study done by Conductor, a New York based search/analytics agency. What was determined is astonishing…again, no surprise to most of us who live and breathe SEO, but astonishing nonetheless. Conductor found that:
- 72% of Fortune 500 companies have very low to non-existent visibility for their most advertised keywords
- 20% of Fortune 500 companies have low to mid presence
- 8% of Fortune 500 companies studied showed mid to strong presence for their most advertised keywords
Why is SEO the red headed step-child of Search?
In my experience here at Outrider, I’ve found that the greatest challenge presented to SEO’ers is getting clients to own and commit to achieving success in the organic space. As an agency, we tout the idea and proven value of approaching search holistically and using the historical data from paid to influence organic and vice a versa, but how often do search strategists and advertisers really reap the benefits? Clients at large see the added value and necessity of attaining a visible presence in both the paid and organic space, but because of the cross-functional demands of SEO implementation, i.e. Marketing, Corporate Communications, IT, Legal,. advertisers’ commitment and participation falters.
Opportunity for engagement is lost when we don’t pursue and achieve synergy between paid and organic search. I don’t know about you, but I know I’ve done the whole “70/30 rule” song and dance a many of times and while intentions are always great, I still haven’t been able to grasp the results that makes all that dancing worth while. Clients know that their bottom line can be positively impacted with a graduated ROI, but they too have to put work into making that happen, and that’s not always so easy. Paid search is instant gratification, where as organic search is like wine—it gets better over time. I think in the minds of many major advertisers, this latent realization of success or failure AND the coordination it takes on their end to make things happen, justifies SEO being overlooked.
Now the question is how do we fix it? What can we do as search consultants to put ourselves in a position to better manage our clients and provide advertisers with assurance that a solid SEO program can easily be accomplished, especially when working in tandem with your search strategists? What can we do to ensure that a strategists’ hard work in defining opportunity for improved SEO is not in vain, and most importantly, start building case studies around success stories to prove that to fully experience relevance we have to make the red headed step-child feel like it’s a loved and cherished part of the family too?
I’m interested to know what you think. Let’s brainstorm together and see if we can develop a resolution that will increase SEO results for 2009!
Communication is key to achieve desired SEO results. One of my current SEO clients has made communication between the SEO team, paid team, display team, client, and etc a main priority to insure the brand stays competitive in the interactive space. As a result the brand’s site has been one of the most trafficked sites of 2008 in their respected vertical.
I agree that case studies are the first step to get clients on board to commit internal manpower hours from the brand’s tech team and all other parties needed to implement SEO recommendations. Immediately after that a communication system between these parties must be established to ensure SEO recommendations are implemented to the site in a timely manner.