Catalyst Search Matters Search Marketing Blog

Rewind one year ago when you, as the company’s marketing manager, sent a detailed RFP encompassing the requirements and expectations for the development of your company’s new website to some of the best agencies around. Somewhere within the technical and design requirements - tucked between defining your “target audience” and listing your “usability requirements” - you included a short snippet stating that your new site must be ‘search engine friendly’. Or perhaps you took a more aggressive posture and required your site be ‘fully optimized’. Good for you. You were smart enough to include Search Engine Optimization or “SEO” in your website RFP.

It really came as no surprise that each and every agency responded positively to your SEO requirement. These are highly successful agencies with experience, talent and a track record for building world class sites after all. Of course they would optimize your website. Why wouldn’t they? They’re designing it and developing it and you’re paying six figures for it. Put a check mark in the SEO complete category, right?

Unfortunately here’s the reality.

For fear of losing your business, many agencies simply say they do search engine optimization when in fact they barely scratch the SEO 101 surface. Most of these agencies say that SEO is “built in” to their design and development process. That’s like saying that an unlimited supply of gas is built in to the purchase of your new car. Boy, that would be swell.

When an agency makes this claim, they’re betting one of two things will happen. One, they’re betting that you (the client) know less about search marketing than they do. Or two, they’re betting that you’ll be so pleased with the WOW! factor (for what the agency does best, the design), that you’ll simply forget about driving qualified traffic to the site. Yeah, right!

The bottom line is that you’re left holding the SEO bag and a website that isn’t doing what its suppose to do.

So for all those marketing and brand managers who are clever enough to include SEO in your website RFP, here are 5 things that will help you determine how proficient your agency actually is with search engine optimization.

1. Key Phrase Strategy: SEO begins with a targeted keyphrase strategy integrated in to the coding, design and content of the site.
2. Channel Integration: SEO considers the integration of other valuable assets such as press releases, video, newsletters, blogs, and even tie ins to your offline efforts.
3. SEO Basics: An optimized website always considers the three critical components every search engine looks for: indexibility (code) , relevance (content) and authority (connections).
4. Linking: An SEO strategy includes a comprehensive linking campaign. Without one you don’t have SEO.
5. Continuous improvement: SEO is not a one time event. It is an iterative process that responds to an ever changing landscape.

So there you have it. If you’re looking for something that is included in the purchase price – enjoy the complimentary white rice with your next Chinese takeout order. If you’re looking to your website to achieve specific conversion goals and branding objectives – then make sure your SEO isn’t just “built-in” but that it’s part of your core marketing strategy.