There is a reason they call me Susan the Meticulous. I’m going with the notion it’s a compliment. I say yes, that’s me, and I have the shoes to match.

It is a safe (workplace!*) characterization. I do tend toward research and cross-checks. I perk up when I get an afternoon of View–>Source for a zillion websites to get a sense of how our client’s competitors are coding in support of their organic SEO. I jump with delight when I can get a whole year of client HitsLink data, and it if it includes conversion tracking, well, start thinking tranquilizer dart. And, yes, I always set the keyword research setting to return 1000 results.

I have, however, stumbled around the block enough times to respect some limits, one of those being we can optimize a website, at least on the first round, for a very finite set of terms. We’re talking somewhere between the legal driving age and the age you get dropped from your parent’s health insurance. Inevitably we’ve carefully pruned a list of a few thousand terms to a list of a couple hundred, and now the task is to choose which are the top 10% to optimize.

Usually there’s not a year’s worth of data (sigh) about terms that have worked for the client. OK, usually there is not a day’s worth of data about what terms have worked for the client. We’ve got data about search volumes and numbers of competing pages, but we all have to admit that data has imperfections.

So here’s my question. Other than using some variation of the ratio of search volume to competing pages, what comes to your mind reading this - how would you go about ranking a list of 200 great terms so you can take the top 20 for optimization? No matter your perspective - marketer, SEO expert, any other interested party…I am curious what first comes to your mind.

Because no one knows better than someone who adores manually comparing lists for overlap and gaps that sometimes the best choices have little to do with anything listed in columns and rows. Rather, they come from listening to what strategies seem interesting to folks like you, folks who might make it this far in to an entry in an SEO blog.

So let me know. And until then, I’ll be sorting and pivoting among columns and rows, earbuds tuned to the ambient wood flute and yoga bells channel, looking for clues.

*Please do not go looking for those shoes in my closet. My image would be so blown. I can only imagine the new nickname.

I enjoyed reading the recent post by Gord Hotchkiss, titled, “Will Agencies Get Search: Don’t Hold Your Breath.” He’s right about several things:
1) Companies (advertisers) are allocating a fraction of their small online budgets for Search…because they should be investing in Search. Everybody says so.
2) It IS better now than it was even a few years ago.
3) And – he really nailed this one – agencies don’t “get” Search because they see Search as small.

Search does not lend itself to high-falutin’ campaigns or creative graphics. It’s not sexy. And even though pay-per-click (PPC) Search is advertising (right up an agency’s alley), it is not glamorous. The creatives don’t find Search stimulating. There’s nothing there for a copywriter to sink his teeth into, and the art directors aren’t even invited.

There is money in it for an agency, though. A percentage of media spend. As more advertisers dictate that budgets (however small) be allocated to Search, the agencies will “get” Search. As long as Search means PPC.

What agencies won’t ever get is search engine optimization (SEO). SEO is the killer app for advertisers – not so much for agencies.

SEO, even less glamorous than PPC, requires lots of research and patience. Not fun. You do get to do a little bit of brainstorming, but then it’s more research and patience. It’s all about implementing, waiting, measuring, and then tweaking and waiting some more. The lion’s share of SEO work for a site is done upfront, and the results take longer than PPC. Then, you follow up with more of those tweaks I mentioned. That’s not profitable for the agency.

SEO requires access to the company website. Not always an easy task. And company websites are almost never accessible to an agency. Typically, the agency’s client (probably a marketing or advertising manager) has to wait – sometimes weeks – for the “owners” of the site (probably the IT folks) to make recommended SEO changes. Then they can start the waiting and watching stage, only to wait weeks for the next set of tweaks to be put into place by the site owners. Very tedious. And, not something an agency can charge for.

But SEO is effective. And profitable…for the client. Amazingly so. Often, when SEO starts working, clients can reduce PPC budgets substantially and still increase Search traffic to the site. Incremental traffic starts coming in “for free.” So much for the agency’s percent of media spend, I’m afraid.

I understand how an agency makes its money. I’ve worked for – and with – some great agencies. But they aren’t going to get SEO because they can’t see how it improves their bottom line. It’s not fun. It’s not sexy. It’s a lot of hard work.

But SEO really is sexy. It’s a little bit technology. A little bit marketing. A little bit sales. And a whole lot CREATIVE. It’s a giant jigsaw puzzle, and when the final pieces fall in place and the metrics start their upward climb, it’s a beautiful picture. Clients see the results and, sure enough, funnel more budget to Search. Next thing you know, they’ll be allocating some of their Search budget to Advertising.

Once your site is optimized, there are all these important keyword terms embedded in your content, but only the search engines know how they fit into the information architecture of your site. Unless you have unique content, they won’t begin to PREFER your site until other people link to it…preferably using the very keyword phrases you have worked so hard to integrate. Links are equally important to getting good rankings from your SEO efforts on content and architecture.

Articles disseminated across the web are a great way to plant these seeds. On a regular basis, write short articles (600-1000 words), put them on your site, and then offer them up for people to use as content on their blogs, in newsletters, etc. Sites that specialize in this include ezinearticles.com, articlesbase.com, articlesfactory.com, contentdesk.com and ideamarketers.com. When people reproduce your content, they pick up the links, and often will link to the article on your site.

The very best mentions are on pages with relevant content on authority sites, because these links are seen as most significant. We recently participated in an online survey from Business.com on B2B search marketing, and were quoted in the resulting white paper. Of course you can buy links from a big vertical search engine, but by helping them gather good data and providing a thoughtful little snippet, we have fresh new links to our site:

In this case, we didn’t get a keyword phrase as the link, which would have been more beneficial, but they also are distributing this white paper to all their advertisers, so the prominent mention at the top of the section on B2B SEO is even more valuable…prospects can click right through to the site.