Search Marketing Insomniac…The Blog of Adam Henige

A news story today reminded me of this fact.  It’s so easy to do something dumb when you’re dumb and you begin thinking you’re invincible.  I can’t say that I didn’t do a handful of dumb things when I thought I was ten feet tall and fireproof.  Fortunately I came away largely unscathed.

As I’ve continued our SEO efforts on the Netvantage website, I find myself wondering what some of our established competitors are thinking when they suddenly see us popping up in the SERPs with the rest of the old guard.  I like to imagine a panicked discussion among managers after seeing us listed in front of them for terms like paid search management.  I envision this conversation starting with the line, “Where in the heck did these guys come from?”  Now whether or not that actually happens, I don’t know, but it makes me feel warm and fuzzy.

More importantly, I need to remember this scene because I don’t want it to be me.  SEO is no different than any other strategic marketing initiative.  You need to have a basic sense of your environment and one eye on the rear view mirror once you’ve made it to the top.  If your website is a key business driver, you can’t rest on your laurels in regards to search engine optimization.  For most sites, search is THE key driver of traffic.  If new competitors begin bumping you down the wrungs of the rankings, even a few notches could lead to some significant dropoffs in the returns from your site.

So just because you’ve been atop the rankings for a long period doesn’t mean there isn’t a hungry upstart ready to pounce and start eating up market share…So to all you search marketing firms out there, make room, because you’ll be seeing a lot of us.

I’m no designer, and I will readily admit that my part in creating the Netvantage website was minimal at most.  However, I’ve taken a much more active role in developing and maintaining this blog as well as Joe Ford’s.  Our own site was handed off to a developer who did some heavy modding so we could customize and control a lot of things that Wordpress doesn’t easily support.  I’m thankful for a lot of flexibility, particularly from an SEO standpoint, that those mods provide.

But I have to say, launching these blogs has given me the opportunity to dive headlong into Wordpress, and all I can say is “WOW.”  What great fun to be had with the neverending supply of plugins and themes.  I even downloaded an Adsense plugin that literally made me laugh the other day with some of the publisher’s information.  For me, this was an opportunity to experiment with a lot of different plugins (including some cool Adsense ones, which I may revert to again in the future…just not right now) and particularly on the SEO side of things.  Foremost among those was All-in-one-SEO.  Just a great, easy to use plugin that I would recommend to someone who wants a quick, no non-sense way to do some nuts and bolts SEO work for their blog.  While our blogs have been up for a short time, I found it quite surprising that within a few weeks, Joe’s blog actually outranked our own site for the term “Netvantage Lansing”.  Admittedly, this isn’t a term we necessarily optimized for, but one I would expect that we would own.  Now, it’s Joe’s.  Hopefully he uses his power wisely…

More importantly, I suppose is the point that there are some fabulous plugins available for Wordpress, and since this blog is my own personal playground, I will continue to give updates on how these “toys” are working out.

Internet marketing does not need to be treated with kid gloves, so why do businesses still treat it that way?  It’s time to put your online actions under the microscope.

The more I’m in this business, the more I see larger companies and organizations moving towards highly analytical approaches to their online marketing.  This makes sense, as it’s such an important touch point for brand building, creating awareness of new products and services and making transactions.  It certainly pays to know what’s going on as these companies pay for ad placements, buy up massive amounts of keywords in their pay per click marketing campaigns and invest significant resources in ongoin web development.

It’s the rest of the business world that scares me.  In particular, I’m referring to those medium to small sized businesses that have stuck a toe in the pond, but haven’t yet jumped in.  These are the organizations that I speak with who say things like, “We have an AdWords account, but we don’t really pay attention to it.”

Hold on a minute.  What?  How does this happen?  I’ve never spoken with someone who said, “We advertise on Fox, but I don’t even know what commercial we run, how much it costs, or if it gets us any business.”  Now, the latter piece of that statement might be true, but most certainly not the first two.  Somehow, the Internet in all of its youth seems to be more of a pet project for a lot of small businesses instead of a serious, accountable marketing channel.

The tools are there to see where your dollars are going, if you’re getting a return, and most importantly it provides you with information to continuously adjust and optimize.  So if you’re going to do it, really do it!  Or, you could call someone like Netvantage and we can help!   We’re nearing the end of the adoption curve here, and it’s time those at the end of the curve gain a proper understanding of how Internet marketing works so we can prove its effectiveness and place it in its rightful standing next to traditional marketing channels.

The more I look around at all things Internet marketing, and this is a must within our industry, the more I realize that despite the rather young nature of what we do, there are regular plateaus in innovation. And by this, I certainly do not mean the technology. Almost every day I’m testing some new feature or new tool that provides me more information that I can consume in new ways. Lost in all of this, however, is the ability to take this information and these tools and do something new.

The boards, the blogs, the articles seem to echo the same information more and more it seems. The last time I came across something that raised my eyebrows was when I stumbled across the Confessionss of an Underground Link Building Ninja.  The focus of that article, was to dig into some truly outside the box ideas on external SEO.  That got me to thinking about the stagnation that’s going on, and how to combat it.  As I continue to move forward with my assortment of clients, I’m going to push myself to try new approaches and share them with you here.  If I’m going to complain about it, I might as well be a part of the solution, right?