Q: I’ve noticed that Google Product Search shows reviews of my online store.  Where do these come from and how can I get more of them?

A: Seller ratings on Google are an important part of your site’s presence on the search engine.  Google pulls these ratings from a  variety of sources, including the following:

• Google Checkout
• BizRate.com
• Epinions.com
• PriceGrabber.com
• ResellerRatings
• Rateitall.com

Nothing speaks to a potential customer like a testimonial!  In the physical world, a shopkeeper would probably feel comfortable approaching a satisfied customer to ask “would you be willing to recommend us to your friends?”  But online store owners may not know how to pursue seller ratings.

To put it very simply: if you want reviews, you’re going to need to ask for them.  Here are some simple steps to get you started:

• If you sell via Google Checkout, or any of the fee-based shopping comparison sites such as Shopping.com, you don’t need to take any extra steps to get a review.  These services will pursue a review for your business after any transaction.
• If you do not use one of the above intermediaries for selling, sign up with Resellerratings or Rateitall.com (or both) for a free or low cost reviews page for your business.  Make sure that your business name is an exact match in spelling and format (including “Inc.” or “.com”) to the name you use in your Google Product feed.
• After every transaction, send out an email request to the customer requesting a seller rating.  Include a link to your business’s page on Resellerratings, rateitall, or your seller rating venue of choice, to make it easy for your customer to rate your business.

Keep in mind that merchant reviews on Google Product Search are not the same as Google Local (a.k.a. Google Maps or Google Places).  In a future post, we’ll discuss customer reviews on Google Places.

Readers! Do you have any more tips on how to encourage seller ratings?

Here’s an easy, free way to monitor your business reputation online.

If you have a business, surely you want to know what people are saying about it online.  But staying abreast of all of the forum posts, customer reviews, or blog discussions that mention your business can be overwhelming.  We recommend consolidating all of this info onto an iGoogle page.  Why iGoogle?  Simply because this is already the homepage for so many people.

Here are step by step instructions for adding a feed to your iGoogle page:

1: Create a Google Account

Instructions can be found here.

2: Choose a feed page

Different businesses will need to monitor different venues.  A restaurant should probably be watching reviews on Yelp or Chowhound, while a hotel will monitor Tripadvisor and a software firm may watch conversations in relevant forums.  Let’s suppose your business is  Fuel City Tacos, in Dallas TX.  A search for your business name on Google shows reviews on Yelp, Urbanspoon, and Chowhound, as seen here:

Let’s choose Yelp for today’s tutorial.

2: Sign up for the Feed

With your company’s reviews page open in the browser, Look for the RSS feed icon next to the address bar where the page URL is displayed.  In Firefox, the icon looks like this:

Click on the feed icon and open the feed URL in a new window.  Select “Subscribe to this feed using Google”

Finally, select, “Add to Google Homepage”

3: Enjoy Your Feed on your iGoogle Homepage

Here’s how the Fuel City Yelp feed looks:

Keeping an eye on your reviews is a big first step in the important ongoing task of monitoring and managing your business’s online word of mouth presence.   We hope you’ve found this tutorial helpful!

Many websites built with Ajax contain a wealth of content that is hidden from search engines. Google’s specification for Ajax indexing, promises to fix all that.  Here, we interview a site that recently implemented the specification.  How did it work out for them?

In a recent post, we researched several examples of sites using the Google Ajax indexing specification.  One that jumped out at us was Bookwhack.com (since rebranded to YourNextRead). YourNextRead.com is a website for socially sharing book reviews in a pleasant browsable environment. Says co-founder, Robert Boland: “YourNextRead combines simple one page navigation with multiple book reviews and user recommendations.”  We spoke with Robert about his team’s choice to make their Ajax-generated content indexable on Google.

Gravity: Why did you decide to implement the Google specification for Ajax indexing on YourNextRead.com?

YourNextRead: Since we were starting a new project, we had the freedom to use the latest technology. We decided to develop in GWT Ajax [Gravity's Note: "GWT" stands for Google Web Toolkit]. We looked into how to make YourNextRead crawlable and thought using Google’s new technique might give us an edge.

Gravity: Did you have an Ajax-based site previously that did not have the spec in place?  If so, have you seen a difference between the old & new site performance in search?

We noticed a great improvement after implementing this technique on YourNextRead. Beforehand, none of the Ajax content was visible to the searchbots – only the index page was being crawled.

Gravity: I notice that your site doesn’t include degraded content for Yahoo! or Bing.   Was this a conscious decision or do you plan to implement some other approach for Yahoo and Bing?

We have not included degraded content for Yahoo or Bing, as other development tasks have been prioritised at the moment. Google is the largest search engine and tends to lead the way on search engine standards. We believe/hope Yahoo and Bing will soon follow Google’s lead.

Gravity: Did you have any technical difficulties or challenges when implementing?  Anything in Google’s instructions that could be clearer?

We did find it difficult to implement the specification at first. In particular, it was hard to find examples or advice on the web as very few other sites are using this technique.

Generally Google’s documentation was clear, although it was tricky to understand how to practically implement the section on ‘Creating HTML Snapshots’. Many of the websites we found describing the new technique focussed on the HTMLUnit implementation. However, we are using a PHP backend to generate much of our content so we could not use this. There are some pseudo-code snippets in the documentation to help with server-side content generation, and it took a while to get the results we wanted.

Gravity: How do you feel about the outcome and the indexing you’ve gotten for your site on Google?

We are still in the process of refining the method and our keywords. However, the indexing of YourNextRead has improved enormously. Webmaster tools indicated there are now many queries linking to our site, whereas previously, there was only one.

You can see for yourself with the attached graph of crawl stats, taken from Webmaster tools:

Gravity: Is there anything you’d like to share with any other website owners who are considering the specification?

The GWT forum is a great place to ask questions as some of Google’s staff are looking out for questions on the new spec and are happy to help. [Gravity's note: See this thread on "Crawlable AJAX - jQuery Load" as an example.]

The ‘Fetch as Googlebot’ option in webmaster tools was invaluable for testing purposes. The spec would have been much more difficult to implement without this being available.

Gravity: Thanks for the interview!

We’re grateful that Robert was willing to share a few of his experiences with us and our readers!  In future posts, we hope to connect with more sites that are implementing this new specification.  If you have experience with Google’s Ajax indexing, we hope you’ll leave a comment sharing your thoughts!

Local listings are more important than ever. Here’s how to get your business listed in the major local search engines.

Google

Google’s local search results can be seen at http://maps.google.com. You can submit a free listing to Google Places (formerly the Local Business Center)  by logging in, but first you’ll need a Google Account.

To claim an existing Google Places listing, navigate to your business page and click on “I own this business.”

Yahoo!

Yahoo!’s local search results are available at http://local.yahoo.com.  Local listings are free, but listing enhancements can be purchased for $9.95/month. You can submit your local listing here: http://listings.local.yahoo.com/ (you’ll need a Yahoo acount).

Bing

• View Bing Live Search Maps: http://www.bing.com/maps/
• Add a new listing at the Bing Local Listing Center (click on “Add a Listing” at the bottom).
• UK Businesses –  Local search is fed by 118 Information; add a listing here: http://www.bingforbusiness.com/
• To claim your business if it already has a Bing Local listing, navigate to your business listing and click on “Change your business listing.”

Ask

Ask’s local listings (available at http://www.ask.com/local) are partnered with Citysearch.com. See below for information on how to add your business to Citysearch.

Citysearch

If your business already has a page on Citysearch, navigate to your business’s page and click on the “Own this Business?” link to claim the business.  You can manage profile details for free, or add premium features for a fee.If your business does not have a page on Citysearch, go here to add a listing:

https://myaccount.citysearch.com/self-enroll?execution=e2s1

If no matching business is found after searching for your business on this page, you will have the opportunity to create one.

Yelp

Yelp is an online city guide made up of user-generated reviews. A listing here is most appropriate for consumer-oriented brick-and-mortar businesses, but could be used for any business.

• Read the Yelp business owners guide
• To add a listing, first perform a search for your business name & location. If no results come up, you will see a large, red “Add Business” button on the page. You will need to sign up for a free Yelp account.
• To claim your business listing, navigate to your business page and click on “Edit Business Info.”

YellowPages.com

Yellowpages.com does offer a free listing. Follow the instructions to add your listing here: http://listings.yellowpages.com/.

Many people come to us, discouraged and puzzled about why their site has fallen in the ranks even though their site is optimized for all the right keywords. Others reach out to us for help with keyword optimization of their site’s text, mistakenly convinced that this is the only thing their site needs to succeed. Here are five reasons that gaining ranks with standard ranking tactics is harder than it used to be for the average site owner:

Keyword Optimization Isn’t as Important

Identifying keywords and using them to optimize your text used to be two of the easiest SEO tasks for the layperson (as well as the not-so-technical SEO). If you were a halfway decent writer, and could figure out the right keywords to include in your text, you used to be able to make some headway in the ranks. However, where there used to be a relatively straight path from keyword optimization to improved ranks, there are now several complicating factors. Now your thoughtful keyword strategy is also vying with:

• Personalized search in Google, which causes a searcher’s past behavior to influence their search results
• Real-time results in Google, which sometimes give fresh content and tweets an edge over older pages
• Better contextualization: Type “corwin” into Google and you’ll get decent results for three very different Corwins: the publisher, the Animal Planet celebrity, and the town. Type “out of league” and Bing reasonably matches your query to results for the movie “She’s Out of My League.” The search engines have gotten much smarter about contextualization and phrase matching, and their ever-improving intelligence is becoming just as much of a rankings factor as your keyword optimization. (And, on a related note: remember when people used to optimize their sites for misspellings? The search engines make that irrelevant now.)

You’re Overloaded with Tools

You used to have only a few optimization tools to work with. Meta tags – go optimize ‘em! Links – go get ‘em! Thankfully, as SEO has gotten more complex, search engines are now giving you more tools and information to work with. But unfortunately, these tools and information can overwhelm and confuse. Canonical tags are extremely easy to use, and also very easy to mess up. Webmaster Tools give you tons of information, and at the same time lead many of us down the wrong path. (For example, with the data now available, you may be tempted to believe that a decline in site speed caused your ranks to plunge, but you’d probably be wrong.) With all of these elements to analyze and address, it’s difficult to identify what’s most important, which skills to brush up on (or outsource) and what’s worthy of your time and energy.

Web Technology has Outpaced SEO-Friendliness

E-commerce tools, blog publishing platforms and content management systems, AJAX, mobile devices, the proliferation of video…all of these technologies and more have made the web more exciting and dynamic! But in many cases, these features require specialized technical skills to prevent or remediate significant search engine indexing handicaps.

Everybody’s Doing It

After years of marginalization, SEO is finally on every website owner’s radar. SEO awareness has evolved to the point where most people are addressing keyword optimization and site indexing concerns when they build and maintain their sites. And I haven’t met a new client in years who isn’t already thinking through a link building strategy. Having an SEO-friendly site isn’t a competitive advantage for you any more; it’s a requirement. And, if my decade-plus in SEO has taught me anything, it’s this: when everybody is doing something, that thing becomes less powerful as a ranking factor. (See above – “Keyword Optimization Isn’t as Important”)

Rapid Evolution

“Hi, I’m Google, and I’ll be your search engine today. Our algorithm change du jour is the ‘Chef’s Surprise.’ Depending on your site, it will either be delicious or leave a foul taste in your mouth. You’ll be trying it whether you want it or not.” Yep, Google changes every day. I used to eschew algorithm-chasing, and refused to participate in obsessing over SEO gossip on a daily basis.  I knocked it as a pointless way of life, but these days I’m convinced that it’s important to embrace that mindset, at least a little bit. This is something that SEO specialists have built into their schedule, but it’s not as simple for the average site owner to find the time to keep up with latest developments in search.

***

It’s harder than it used to be to influence your site’s ranks using keyword optimization and link building tactics. So what should you do about it? Do what we do: Think big picture! Once you’ve nailed the basics: a search-friendly site, optimized text, and a well-targeted message, try something new to achieve a well-rounded online presence. Branch out into social media. Encourage positive reviews. Maybe shoot a little video if it’s a good fit for your audience.  And use the information you glean from your analytics to make real changes on your site, not just to gain better ranks, but to improve engagement for the visitors you have.

Rich internet applications (RIA), using Ajax, Flash, or other methods, have always been a problem for search engines.  That’s because search bots don’t have the ability to access content interactively the way humans do. In 2009, Google introduced a proposal for indexing Ajax.  We’ve got clients using lots of Ajax, so naturally, we’ve been watching closely to see what sites are adopting Google’s specification, and how it’s working out for them.

If you need the background on Google’s Ajax crawling specification, here it is in a few bullets:

• In October of 2009, Google proposed a method for developing Ajax-based sites so that the content in those sites would be crawlable.
• Vanessa Fox provided some helpful interpretation on Search Engine Land: “Google May Be Crawling AJAX Now – How To Best Take Advantage Of It.“
• For those who are seriously considering implementation, you can read Google’s full specification.

Public Service Announcement: Because we have a few clients who are considering this specification, we reached out to Google and were pleasantly surprised that they were responsive to our questions regarding implementation. Google’s eagerness to encourage web-wide adoption of the specification means that they may be more open than you might expect in terms of communicating with early adopters. If you are seriously considering implementing Google’s Ajax crawling specification, there is no better time to reach out to Google directly with your technical questions.

Here are some examples of sites using Google’s Ajax indexing specification, and a look at their current indexing status in the Google search engine:

Holiday Inn

The site Holidayinn.com appears to have implemented Google’s Ajax crawling specification (we’ll call it Google-Ajax for short) to a limited extent.

An example of the Google-Ajax protocol can be seen on this page:

http://www.holidayinn.com/hotels/us/en/san-francisco/sfocc/hoteldetail

The Google-Ajax links can be seen by hovering over the links labeled: Rooms, Amenities, Dining and so on.  “Amenities” links to /hoteldetail#!Amenities , “Dining” links to /hoteldetail#!Dining, and so on.

In each of these URLs, the fully rendered javascript can be seen by replacing “#!” with “_escaped_fragment_=”, as seen here:
http://www.holidayinn.com/hotels/us/en/san-francisco/sfocc/hoteldetail?_escaped_fragment_=Amenities — this is the fully generated page that Google uses for indexing purposes.

You can see the “Dining” page in Google’s search results, here:

At this writing, Holiday Inn’s Google-Ajax pages have been live for weeks, but these pages are frustratingly hard to find in Google’s index.We do not know whether the incomplete indexing we’ve observed is because of a glitch in implementation, or if Google’s robot simply hasn’t gotten around to visiting all of these sub-pages.

Facebook

Facebook appears to have fully implemented Google-Ajax.  After some digging, we were able to find examples of Google-Ajax URLs indexed in Google, as seen here:

Facebook is an interesting case study, because in addition to implementing Google’s crawling specification, the site also has alternate content that is browsable without javascript (we call this “degraded” content). After several weeks of watching Google’s index, we are finding that the degraded pages are far more prevalent in Google’s index than the Google-Ajax pages. It’s redundant to have fully degraded content and Google-Ajax in place, so we wonder:  is Facebook planning to keep this redundancy for the sake of Yahoo! and Bing? (There is no official word yet on whether Yahoo! and Bing will support this specification.) Or is Facebook holding off on getting rid of its degraded content until it feels more confident about Google-Ajax? Or are other factors at play?

Google Itself

An excellent example of a successful implementation of the protocol can be found at Google’s GWT showcase site:

http://gwt.google.com/samples/Showcase/Showcase.html

Here are some pages within the showcase:

http://gwt.google.com/samples/Showcase/Showcase.html#!CwCheckBox

http://gwt.google.com/samples/Showcase/Showcase.html#!CwFileUpload

http://gwt.google.com/samples/Showcase/Showcase.html#!CwBasicPopup

A Google site search within the Showcase section shows 154 pages have been indexed from within the Showcase – including pages that are clearly within the Ajax experience:

It’s readily apparent from looking at Google’s cached versions of these pages that Google is indexing the content on each individual page within the Ajax interactive experience on the site. We can conclude that Google web search is indexing Google-Ajax pages just like any other webpage.  We would call this one a total success, which is hardly a surprise, since it’s Google’s own implementation.

It does not appear that Yahoo or Bing have indexed any of these pages.

Bookwhack.com

Bookwhack.com appears to have fully implemented Google’s Ajax Indexing Specification.  Unlike the Facebook implementation, this site relies fully on the Ajax crawling specification to generate crawlable text. We’ll be watching this site closely.

Lately my company has been putting a lot of time into our Facebook page and status updates.  We want to encourage people to share links to our site in their status posts, but before we make that push, we’re hoping you can settle this question: Will links from status posts and fan pages help our company’s rank in Google?

A: Most Facebook status post links will not directly benefit your site’s search engine ranks.

Here’s why: the majority of Facebook individuals’ status posts are not indexable by search engines, because they’re hidden behind a login.  That means, even if a status post contains a link to your website, Google, Bing, and Yahoo! won’t see that link, and won’t be able to apply any “juice” to the page on your site that is linked.

Fortunately, there are some exceptions to this rule.  Links from your company’s own page (and your company’s own status posts), from other company pages, and from group or event pages, will typically be indexable by search engine and able to pass link power over to your site.  (Don’t hold your breath for these links to bring a big rankings boost – most Facebook pages won’t have much link power to give).  And, some Facebook users may choose privacy settings that allow search engine indexing of their status posts, which means those links will also have the ability to pass authority to your site.

Even if Facebook status links don’t directly affect SEO power, there are important direct and indirect benefits.  The most obvious direct benefit is the enormous word-of-mouth power that status posts carry.  We sometimes measure this benefit for our clients by setting up segments in Google Analytics that look at Facebook-sourced traffic to determine whether this audience is more likely to engage with the site and (in the case of ecommerce sites) make a purchase.   There are also possible indirect benefits: As the awareness of your site is increased, it could gain links in search-engine-readable places such as blogs or social bookmarking sites.

By the way, in case you’re wondering, links from Twitter are tagged with “nofollow” attributes so that they, like Facebook status post links, probably don’t directly affect search engine ranks.  However, tweets have the advantage of being fully indexed in Google, and tweets get top billing in Google’s real-time search results.

Real-time web indexing isn’t going away anytime soon, and we can only see the importance of online word-of-mouth marketing growing in coming years.  Your company’s on the right track!  Keep measuring the results with analytics, and keep up the good work!

Q: I need a bit of ‘straightening out’ on an issue concerning the removal of pages from Google. A friend of mine told me instead of removing the pages themselves, that I could simply remove the link from the homepage – that way the search engines won’t find it and won’t relist in in their results.

How effective is this? The page needs to remain on the site but not be found by the engines, is the removal of a link going to solve the problem?

A: Removing links to a page is sometimes called “orphaning” that page on your site.  It’s possible that an orphaned page will eventually drop very far down in ranks and essentially become invisible in search engines.

But, there are much better ways to remove a page from search engine indexing: just tell the search engine you don’t want the page indexed!  Here are two ways to do this:

• place a robots tag in the <head> of the page that looks like this: <meta name=”robots” content =”noindex”>.  See our robots tag page for more information about this useful tag.

or

• create a robots.txt file, a simple text file in the root location of your domain, and list the files you want excluded.  See this link for robots.txt instructions.

To add even more certainty to your efforts, you can request that the page be removed from Google’s index from within Google Webmaster Tools.   Click on “crawler access” in the Google Webmaster Tools navigation, then click on the “Remove URL” tab.

The above methods should work like a charm – at least, in the major, “legit” search engines.  Truth is, there’s no way to guarantee that a publicly accessible webpage won’t find its way into search engines elsewhere on the web.  If you really don’t want a page to be shown on any other site, placing it behind a password is the only way to be sure.

Q: Hi! I’m very confused about outbound links. I was told by a SEO firm that outbound links were A Bad Thing as they canceled out your inbound links. But it seems this is not the case.

A: Outbound links are not A Bad Thing and they don’t cancel out your inbound links.  In fact, a “natural” linking profile for a quality website would normally include outbound links, as it is natural for  most quality sites to provide links to other resources.

Outbound links are only bad if they are done as a part of a link exchange or if you’re being paid for providing links that are not tagged with “nofollow.”  In that case, your site could be penalized by search engines.  I would certainly get rid of any outbound links that you may have created as a part of a link exchange scheme of any sort.

You should also check your outbound links periodically to make sure that they aren’t pointing to “bad neighborhoods.”  Sometimes good sites go under, and the domains are taken over by squatters, spammers, malware, porn, etc.  Your site’s status on search engines could be damaged if you link to these – not to mention your credibility with your human audience!

Lastly, it’s reasonable to link to your own website pages as a priority, rather than other sites.  For example, if you have a page on your site that features “tea cozies” it certainly makes more sense from an SEO perspective for your home page text to link to your own “tea cozies” page rather than pointing to some other site’s “tea cozies” page.

My advice is to link out to sites if you think they will benefit your human visitors.  This might include sites that offer related, but not necessarily competing services or products. For example, if you market tea cozies, you might link out to your favorite brands of tea. Outbound links  are also important as part of an overall strategy of social marketing and participatory blogging.  Outbound links can also be linkbait – for example, let’s say you link to a travel blog while criticizing it for missing the mark on the most charming high tea destinations. People in your target audience might be drawn into a conversation.

Naturally, if providing links to other resources feels forced or unnatural on your website, or if you don’t think it will benefit your human visitors, then you shouldn’t do it.

We hear “I don’t know how to sell SEO” frequently from agencies and developers. This post is the first in a series of insights into how to sell SEO.

Our company, Gravity Search Marketing, is a kick-ass boutique SEO firm. We’re very small, we’re very smart, and many people will attest to the fact that we do what we do very well.

Being “boutique” means we don’t have a sales staff – that’s a role I typically fill by myself. We’re not flying completely blind: I’ve observed sales teams in action at other companies, and I’ve even watched Glengarry Glenross, but I’ve never been trained in the art of selling.  Nonetheless, you may be surprised to learn that we do pretty well for ourselves when it comes to selling.

I don’t know how the big guys do it (honestly, I don’t – could someone please tell me in the comments?) but I thought it would be helpful to share what seems to work consistently for me. Today I’ll focus on the first conversation with a new prospect.

Plan for at least a half hour of listening before you start talking

My favorite sales conversations start off like therapy sessions. People are calling with a problem they want me to solve, and I need to know what that problem is. This problem cannot be expressed in a hurry, and it often has many facets. Here are some of the open-ended questions I like to ask:

• “So, what’s going on with your site?”
• “How do you know this is a problem? (i.e., “How do you gauge the performance of your website?”)
• “What have you tried before?”
• “What is working well right now?”
• “What does your team look like?”

Even if it turns out that you don’t land the sale, by really listening, you’ll have added one more “business like this” to your mental database, and that can be helpful in your ongoing selling and consulting work. I find it indescribably satisfying to learn about the cogs and wheels of other peoples’ marketing campaigns. I’m fascinated to hear what their research has told them about their audience segments and their customers’ perceptions and biases. This knowledge adds up, and is quite valuable in informing my consulting work.

Only after you’ve gotten a thorough understanding of your prospect’s needs should you begin to launch into your “About Us” spiel.

Answer the unspoken questions

You might think your job now is to describe your company, your experience, process, and prices. But don’t miss your prospect’s unspoken questions:  What it will be like to work with you? Are you honest and trustworthy? Will I understand this confusing subject of SEO any better if you’re the one explaining it to me?

One common unspoken question is, “Will we be able to phase you out as an SEO consultant and do this ourselves eventually?” Many prospects won’t say it directly, but they hope to reach a point of in-house competency when they won’t need you anymore. This is a reasonable goal. Will your SEO capability transfer to in-house staff? Can you develop “cheat sheets” for your client, to keep them optimizing according to plan? Do you provide SEO training? Is there a provision in your service for on-call SEO Q&A?  You may find that talking about these services early on will increase your desirability.

You also need to prove beyond a doubt that you know your stuff. I’ll focus on tips for proving your SEO skills in a future post.

Gently Redirect Common SEO Misconceptions

Selling SEO involves listening encouragingly as someone struggles to state their goals in your language. This can be challenging for some prospects, and that’s why many goals come out sounding simplistic, like, “We need to rank #1 for [generic phrase]” or “We need to get [audience X] to find us.” Since you want to have a successful business relationship with this prospect, you must be able to identify unreasonable expectations and gently educate until you can rephrase these goals into something more specific and achievable.

When a prospect is unfamiliar with the basic touchpoints of current SEO best practices, you may need to explain things like:

• “Building links” is not a standalone task. Link building these days requires – at a minimum – a serious effort in improving your website’s content offerings.
• What you want from your organic ranks may be easier and cheaper to achieve in the short run with paid search.
• I value your thoughts on keywords, but with your best interests in mind, we always perform our own objective keyword research.
• Even the best social media strategies will not get off the ground without your input and participation.

If you don’t think SEO is the best way for this prospect to spend their money, do not try to sell them SEO

Believe me, I understand it’s difficult to walk away from a budget earmarked for SEO, but sometimes it’s the right thing to do. SEO cannot fix a product that nobody wants, and even the best SEO likely can’t save a business that already has one foot in the grave. Search marketing, by and large, cannot create demand where demand does not exist.  And organic SEO may not be the best choice in a competitive space where a prospect doesn’t have unique value to offer.  Nobody will be happy in the end if the money going into SEO is wasted because it’s not the right service to fill the need.

If you’d like me to focus on a specific aspect of selling SEO, let me know in the comments, or track me down on Twitter.