It seems that a day does not pass by that someone contacts me either by email or phone on how they can make my website rank number 1 on Google. They all claim to use “white hat” optimization techniques and NEVER would use the bad “Black Hat” processes of their evil competitors.  You get the calls and you can hear the hissing noise in the background of an overseas Voip call as they tell you what good things they can do for you and your website.

I tend to ignore them all and mistakenly thought that OTR clients would do the same … I should have known better.

I got a call from a client a bit back as they told me of the changes we had to make to their website so that they could be ranked number 1 in Google. I asked them who had called and they told me it was our phone company, so intrigued I said to send me the changes in an email and I would go over them and to include the phrase it was that they were going to make work for them. The client sent me the information including the key phrase for their industry and how much they were paying for this service.

There was nothing really wrong with the changes they were asking for and so I had no issues there either for or against. However the phrase they were going to make them number 1 in Google for … well they were already number 2 for that phrase and also on the first page for a number of other phrases. The client had already signed a contract for 1 year for the SEO services and was now paying around $500 per month for them to “fix” their website … so I made the requested changes.

The results … they did in fact move them up 1 position from number 2 to number 1 on Google for the requested phrase. I loved the emails that came in from the SEO company reporting on the progress and how they were so pleased that they had moved up in the page rankings for the key phrase chosen. On the downside all of the other key phrases had either disappeared or were now well down the list. Overall the client will have paid $6,000 to reduce their overall impact from an SEO perspective.

The truth is that SEO begins with:

• The initial strategic plan of your website
• Research into copy and key phrases that people search
• Interviews to determine your business and how to deliver that message effectively
• Site architecture that makes sense to website visitors and to the search engines
• Insertion of the key phrases into the appropriate tags within the site
• Insertion of the key phrases into the web content in a readable manner
• Analytics of the results
• Social Media Integration and Management

So do  I blame the client … no I blame me and my company for not letting our clients know that at OTR we already build their sites with SEO in mind and we can add analytics to the hosting package …  AND that we offer ongoing SEO including Social Media integration into their web presence. We can write your Tweets, write your Facebook comments and write your Blog articles.

So the next time you get a call and think, “Hmmm this could be a good idea” make sure you give us a call first and we can help you through the processes.

Ian Conklin
www.otronline.com
OTR Web Solutions Inc