Is it:

• Providing consistent ROI?
• Focusing on their goals?
• Speaking their language?
• Getting to know them well?
• All of the above?

Sure, all the above are important.

But I submit to you, based on my experience with SEO clients large and small over the last 10 years, that there’s something deeper that makes you sticky with clients.

Are you ready for this Big Secret?

Here it is:

Giving a Shit.

I prefer to avoid the use of four-letter-words in my writing, but I can’t think of a better way to say it than that.

You must actually give a shit about your client and their business.

Period.

Not pretending to care, not caring because you’re getting paid to care, but really truly caring.

You must actually give a shit.

I’ll explain.

Your SEO client point of contact may be a small business owner.

Or they may be VP of Marketing for a giant enterprise company.

Or somewhere in between.

It’s easy to assume all they care about is ROI – return on investment.

After all, that’s why they’re hiring an SEO expert, to get results, right?

Sure, on the surface, they’re looking for an SEO expert to help them reach their goals.

But deep down inside, they want to know you actually give a shit.

Here’s the how and why:

A Quick Peek Inside the Minds of Clients

All of this happens outside of our normal day-to-day waking conscious awareness.

It’s the kind of thing we typically refer to as a gut-feeling.

We all make these kinds of “gut-level” assessments about people all the time.

Do you think your dentist or auto mechanic really gives a shit about you, or are you just a paycheck to them?

And, how do you make that assessment?

Likely your answer is something like “I just know” or “it’s a feeling I have”.

Same with your clients.

These assessments involve a lot of complex brain processing and the result is that gut feeling.

Your clients – and you – may not be able to clearly articulate exactly how they know whether someone gives a crap or not, but right or wrong, they will and do have a feeling about you and whether you in particular really do give a shit.

They have that feeling about you – one way or the other – right now.

How to Give a Shit When You Really Don’t Care

You’re mostly out of luck here.

This is not the time for “fake it till you make it”.

You either give a crap, or you don’t.

That said, if you sincerely want to give a shit but for whatever reason you’re not sure how, here are some tips that might help move you in the right direction.

Tip #1: Genuine curiosity about your client

Everyone has a story.

Everyone came from somewhere, has done things before now, has had terrible failures and terrific successes.

Everyone has interests outside of work.

This is of course true of your client.

You would likely be fascinated by the things they’ve done and seen in their life, if you only knew.

Can you feel your curiosity starting to pique?

Tip #2: Genuine curiosity about your client’s business

Maybe you’re not really all that interested in B2B SaaS offerings, or eCommerce, or IT-heavy business models.

Or whatever your client’s business does.

But I submit to you for your consideration that if you’re not interested in your client’s business model, you’re simply not paying close enough attention.

There are many interesting questions to be curious about such as:

• Who started the business and why?
• What are the problems this business solves for its clients or customers?
• What’s truly unique about this business compared with competitors?
• What are their future plans?

Get curious. Ask questions. Then ask some more.

Tip #3: Focus on the bigger picture

Think of all the employees that work at your client’s business.

Working there means they can afford to do things like buy food and pay for housing.

Maybe they have children and being employed there means they can afford to take care of their children, pay for college, that kind of thing.

You’re helping this business with their marketing goals, right?

That means you’re helping to keep all those people employed – and you’re contributing to their ability to buy food, afford housing, take care of their children, maybe take a vacation or pursue interests outside of work.

You’re contributing to the quality of their life.

Sure, their continued employment may not directly hinge on your efforts, but you’re playing a part.

That matters. Think about it.

Final Tips on Giving a Shit

Okay, so let’s say you actually do care.

How you communicate makes a big difference.

What are some ways you can help cement your genuine caring in your client’s mind?

Here are a few tips.

1. We, not you

Use “we” language.

“Our organic traffic is…”

“What we need to do to achieve this is…”

“Our site performance last month…”

Not “your traffic”, not “what your team needs to do”, not “your site performance”.

Get on the same side of the rope as your client and start pulling.

2. Speak their lingo

All businesses use jargon.

It’s likely the general public doesn’t use that jargon.

Years ago, I ran a plumbing company and when I first started working there, I noticed they all called a drain clog a “stoppage”.

No customer who called on the phone said, “we have a toilet stoppage”, but that’s how we talked internally.

Listen closely to your clients and the jargon they use.

Ask for clarification when you hear something you don’t understand.

Also listen to what they call a “conversion” – you may call it a conversion, but they may call it an “SAL” or an “MQL”.

Learn and use their jargon.

Speak their language.

3. Pretend it’s your website

My first management position was thrust upon me against my will when I worked for a large chain of grocery stores in Southern California called “Ralphs”.

Up to then I was happy in an Assistant Manager position, and I didn’t want the headaches of being a Department Manager because in my mind, the huge amount of additional hassles just wasn’t worth the meager pay increase.

But Alan, the District Manager who I liked very much, begged me to temporarily take over as Dept. Manager at another store where the existing Manager was going out on maternity leave.

I reluctantly agreed, and the only management training Alan gave me was “pretend the sign outside the store doesn’t say ‘Ralphs’, it says ‘David’s’”.

I took that advice to heart and it made a huge difference.

Previously I was not that great of an employee – I worked hard and did a good job, but I had an attitude problem when it came to customers and I had previously been called into the Store Manager’s Office numerous times to discuss my bad attitude.

Somehow Alan’s advice changed everything for me – I started giving a shit about “my” Dept. and “my” customers – in the 6 months I was there average weekly sales rose by 36% & better.

Pretend your client’s website is your website.

Conclusion

At some point you’re going to need to call a plumber, or need to get a haircut, or need to see a dentist.

Who would you rather have helping you? – someone who just sees you as dollar signs, or someone who really gives a shit about you and your specific needs and wants.

That’s what I thought.

Giving a shit makes all the difference in the world.

The post The Biggest Secret to Retaining SEO Clients Long Term appeared first on SEMpdx.

I tend to use a lot of tools and one of my former teammates even when so far as to call me a “tool hog”, so to counter that I wrote a post on the Portent blog with a list of useful SEO and other tools I like to use.

But I don’t just use SEO tools to make my day-to-day SEO tasks easier, there are some SEO tools that I also use to get around common scenarios on the web that are a source of frustration.

I’m going to tell you about 3 of those tools right now, and show you how I use them in the hope that these will also make your life just a little bit easier and less frustrating.

Even a 1% life improvement makes a difference!

Let’s rock.

Frustration Buster #1

Have you ever found a cool website with a ton of great info and resources, but the navigation just sucks to where it’s frustrating to try and find what you want? And/or there’s just so much information it’s daunting to find the gold amongst the dirt?

Sure, you could just do site:whateverwebsiteyoureon.com “whatever topic here in quotes” and one by one see if you can find the topics you’re interested in.

But that’s not very expedient.

And the fun factor is low.

Let’s make this more fun.

Here’s a real-world example that happened to me recently to illustrate this technique:

I’m a guitar player (I’ve always wanted to play guitar so badly, and I can tell you that dreams really do come true, because I can now play guitar so badly) and one of my favorite musical artists of all time is the unsung (pardon the pun) musical genius of our time, the most famous person you’ve never heard of, The Great Todd Rundgren.

He’s an amazingly creative axe-man, and sometimes his guitar stuff is really hard to figure out by ear.

So lucky me, I found a website where some dude recorded and posted a bunch of videos demonstrating various songs by Todd R, playing them on guitar right before my eyes, and I was blown away and wanted to see more of what this guy posted.

But it was a bit frustrating to navigate and find what I was looking for.

So, Screaming Frog SEO Spider to the rescue!

I crawled the site, exported the crawl, opened in Excel, and whammo! – I could use CTRL+F to search, or sort and filter the columns to my heart’s content, add a little conditional formatting, and boom! I could quickly find the videos I was looking for:

On my own, I never would have figured out that amazing song Fade Away, thanks awesome guitar dude!

You can do the same thing with whatever site you encounter to then quickly get the info you want, and maybe best of all, you can save your Excel file for later so you don’t have to bookmark anything. Save it to a Google Sheet and access it from anywhere you have an internet connection, super convenient!

Fun, right?

Let’s keep going.

Frustration Buster #2

Some sites really blast you with ads.

Some sites blast you so hard with ads, it feels like a commando mission trying to read the content – I’m ambushed by pushy popups I must neutralize, sneaky sliders that must be eliminated, and intrusive advertising attacking unexpectedly & materializing out of nowhere pushing the paragraph I’m reading down and out of my sight causing me to take evasive actions – quick!, scroll! scroll!! scroll!!!

I hate that. So intrusive. So frustrating.

So, here’s what I do.

I use this text-only cache bookmarklet I found on the ever-excellent AJ Kohn’s site here, and now the popups and sliders and other enemies of my undisturbed reading don’t even stand a chance.

This bookmarklet is super-cool – drag that puppy up to your bookmarks bar, and at the push of a button you too can enjoy content distraction-free.

Life just got that much better, am I right?

Frustration Buster #3

This is one I learned from the late, great Eric Ward, AKA Link Moses – here is a link to the YouCaring page that Danny Sullivan set up in case you want to help out his family, they’ve reached and slightly exceeded their goal, but you know, every little bit counts.

There are probably times where you, like me, like to open a bunch of SERP listings you found, so maybe you hold down the CTRL button on your keyboard and mouse click, mouse click, mouse click… it’s enough to give someone carpal tunnel syndrome.

There must be a better way!

Yep, there is.

Link Clump Chrome extension to the rescue!

This lovely little Chrome extension, to quote them, “Lets you open, copy or bookmark multiple links at the same time.”

What a time saver!

After you install the extension, just hold down your right mouse button and drag across the SERP listings – here’s a screenshot of what that looks like:

After you let go, all those links will open in new tabs.

Fun, right?

Conclusion

SEO tools are great, they help us to be more expedient. But there’s lots of other cool things you can do with them that have nothing to do with SEO audits, recommendations, or client work.

You can use them to make your life 1% better, starting right now, and for free.

What are some cool uses of SEO (or other) tools that you use to make life easier, faster, less frustrating, and just plain better?

Don’t hold out on us! Please share your cool use cases in the comments right now.

The post 3 Fun (Non-SEO) Things You Can Do with Free SEO Tools to Make Your Life Easier & Less Frustrating appeared first on SEMpdx.

One of those technologies is called a “Content Management System” or CMS for short. I wrote this guide to help shed some light on what Content Management Systems are and how they work.

Let’s start with the basics.

What is a Content Management System?

Commonly referred to by the acronym CMS, Content Managements Systems are technology frameworks that allow people & businesses to manage their website’s content, images, and other resources from a single Admin Panel and user interface.

Content – text – is managed from a user interface that is often similar in nature to a Microsoft Word user interface with options to type or copy & paste into a text box area, and use various formatting tools such as bold, italics, the ability to add a hyperlink, and so forth. Often there is an option to switch to a view of the raw HTML code for those who may want to make changes directly to the code.

Images can also be added into the text with formatting options for how text appears next to or around those images.

Separate logins can be created for different users, and some CMS’ allow for different user levels (administrator, author, editor, etc.)

What Does a Content Management System do? Why Use a CMS?

Using a CMS offers some advantages over creating a website from scratch.

The process of coding websites from scratch as typified by a web design business involves a team or teams of designers and developers to make the website vision become a reality.

Designers will create rough layouts called wireframes which are devoid of design elements but serve as blueprints for the home page and interior pages such as a category and product page for an ecommerce site, or article pages for a news site, and so on.

After wireframing, designers will create mockups, often using software such as Photoshop, and after a number of iterations a final design (look, feel, layout) will be selected. Often the hardest part of this step is not so much mocking up the designs, but getting the website stakeholders to agree on a final design – “death by committee” is a real thing, and sometimes it’s better to have less cooks in the kitchen, so to speak.

Developers will then take over and “slice up” these designs and will write from scratch the HTML, CSS, and JavaScript code to make the website come to life. HTML is for content delivery, CSS for formatting and positioning elements such as text and images, and JavaScript for interactive elements such as being able to use checkboxes or other selector elements to change the contents of the page (such as choosing apparel by size and color).

While some of the development phase may enjoy some time savings by using code libraries of various types, developers nevertheless have their work cut out for them to not only create all the HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, but also sync to a database like a MySQL database.

As you can see, this is a lot of time and work. And unless the development process includes creating an at least somewhat user-friendly interface for people to add new web pages and other web content, every time you need a new page, you need a developer to work.

Content Management Systems can shortcut much of this process, and provide a relatively easy to use user interface that makes it easy for non-developers to create and publish new web pages or modify existing pages whenever they desire, without having to bother developers, so publishing to the web is faster and that’s a great advantage that CMS’ offer.

Which brings us to…

How Does a CMS Work?

Setting aside how any particular CMS software itself is created (via programming language), in short summary a CMS works by using web page layout templates which communicate with and pull data from a database to populate a web page with text, images, header and footer navigation, maybe a sidebar element, and so forth.

These various web page layout templates are often comprised of the necessary code such as HTML, CSS, PHP, & JavaScript to complete each templates design and layout. There can be various templates such as on an eCommerce CMS, a template for the home page, a category page, sub-category page(s), and product level pages.

These page templates “call” various elements from the database, such as a MySQL database, dynamically populating the various resources and elements that comprise that type of page whether it’s the home page or some type of interior page such as a product page or article page, along with all the navigation and other “boilerplate” elements that comprise that page type.

Again, this makes it easier for non-developers such as content authors to be able to directly publish new pages and update existing pages, without involving developers, which can save time and money, making using a CMS for a website very attractive since they often work right out of the box, albeit often with some customization being necessary. And depending on your skill set, you may still need heavy developer involvement to design and configure your CMS, or you may be able to do much or all of that yourself.

Also, CMS’ will typically have a “theme” or “skin” which is easily changed, and so unless you require specialized customization, having a new look and feel for your website is as easy as changing your clothes – with a few mouse clicks you can have a totally refreshed design.

Another super-handy aspect of many CMS’ are plugins and extensions which extend the core functionalities of the CMS. A good example here is WordPress which has a thriving community of plugin developers – if the core WordPress install does not have a specific function you desire, chances are there’s already a plugin for that.

All of that adds up to a great deal of flexibility you won’t get if you have your website coded from scratch.

What are examples of Content Management Systems?

There are many CMS’ on the market, some are free, others not.

Some CMS’ specialize such as Magento which is an eCommerce CMS, others are general CMS platforms such as WordPress.

Here’s some CMS examples – but there are many more:

• WordPress
• Joomla
• Drupal
• SilverStripe
• ExpressionEngine
• TextPattern
• Cushy CMS
• Radiant CMS
• Magento
• Blogger

Go to your favorite search engine and type “example of content management systems” and you’ll be inundated with choices.

What are the Downsides to Using a CMS?

CMS’ provide a lot of benefits, but like everything in life and web technology, there are tradeoffs. Each CMS has its own set of limitations and quirks that you will either have to live with, or hire someone to modify for you, or modify on your own if you’re able.

CMS’ will also require a learning curve if you’re not already familiar with that particular CMS’ user interface, setup requirements, and functionality. You and/or your staff will need to set aside time to figure out how to use the CMS for your particular job.

You may also require technical help if you run into issues, if your CMS gets hacked, or if you desire customizations or functionalities you’re not able to handle yourself. For example, if you’re moving your current website to a CMS and you want your site’s look and feel to remain the same, that’s going to require some developer resources to make that happen.

Due to the dynamic nature of how CMS’ works (see the “How Does a CMS Work” section above) by storing elements separately then assembling them on the fly, page load time may not be as fast as you might desire, or your users might desire. You may be able to mitigate this through caching and use of a CDN (content delivery network).

You may find the downsides outweigh the benefits and decide against using a CMS, but many of the downsides have workarounds or existing proven solutions.

Summary & How to Choose a CMS

A content management system can be a great choice for managing a website because it provides a relatively fast and easy way to publish web pages and websites, especially compared with designing and developing a website from scratch.

There are different types of CMS’ out there such as Magento for eCommerce, and WordPress for general purpose sites, so if you’re considering moving your site to a CMS or from one CMS platform to another, I suggest doing some research and talking to several site owners / webmasters and ask them about the pros and cons of the CMS you’re considering.

Ask them what they like about their current CMS, and what they absolutely hate. A good question would be “if you had it to do all over again, would you choose your current CMS or something else?”. Another good question would be about the learning curve they experienced because unless you’re already familiar with a particular CMS, you will need to take time to learn how to use it.

The post The Essential Guide to Understanding Content Management Systems appeared first on SEMpdx.

SearchFest 2013 drew hundreds of attendees from near and not-so-near to absorb tips & expertise on a wide range of search marketing topics from a distinguished cluster of expert speakers.

But there were a couple of other special attendees, as you might have noticed – ones with fur and claws and cute little faces that seemed to say “adopt me, adopt me!”

They were a little nervous due to the crowds (I’ve been known to be a bit shy among strangers too) but they were a big hit with attendees, many of whom stopped by to visit with Chomper (pictured at the top of this post with Theresa Brown who adopted him recently) or Candy Cane who was also recently adopted.

In fact, Chomper was Cat Adoption Team’s 30,000th adoption!

So why were there cat’s at SearchFest 2013? – I forget to mention that Cat Adoption Team (C.A.T., get it?) is our Charity of Choice this year.

Kathy Covey is currently the PR Manager for C.A.T. and she recently sent me this update on how things went at SearchFest & after:

“Monte Cristo was the first to be adopted, even before SearchFest – quite literally just a few days prior but after I built the SearchFest cat web page and we started talking about him.

“That is what happens and why social media can be so powerful for adoption of pets. I firmly believe that when you start talking about a pet for adoption, getting others involved in the conversation, something goes out into the ethers if you will and the person destined to adopt that pet is drawn in.

“Chomper was one of the kitties who made a short appearance at SearchFest with Candy Cane. He was the very nervous black cat who was very startled with all the clapping. Chomper became our 30,000^th adoption on Friday! (March 15, 2013)

“Candy Cane went home pretty quick after SearchFest (again that magic). He was very outgoing and we just knew it was finding the right person who would accept that he was FIV+ (feline immunodeficiency virus). Candy was the one we brought on stage. He too was terrified of the clapping but otherwise is a super confident kitty.

“Curry, a 13 year old cat with a huge attitude, found her special person as well. We were concerned for Curry. Being 13 years old and not liking cats meant that she really did not put her best “paw” forward here in the shelter. She was cranky and stressed (being around other cats).  Jennifer saw past that and took her home. Here’s the e-Tails article I did on Curry prior to her adoption.

“The two who are still waiting are Scion and Simba. They are buds/sisters in fact and it would be terrific if they could go to a home together.

“Scion is shy and will need a gentle hand to gain confidence. Perhaps that’s why having her stay with Simba, who is a very outgoing gal, will be best if possible. They are “sisters” who lived together prior to coming to CAT.

“This pair was given up to us by their owner and have been waiting for over a year to find a new home. They are not very old (just a little over 2 years) and are quite affectionate. If I had to guess why they were still here at CAT….. it would be because we really would like them to go to a home together.

“Every Tweet or social post about these cats will put them one step closer to the person who will adopt either or both of them.

“Of course, if SEMpdx members and fans prefer black cats, or white cats, or tortie cats, visit our cat & kitten adoption list and pick your favorite to promote, we won’t mind.

“The more folks who see what great cats we have available and how wonderful a pet cat is, the better.”

As our Charity of Choice for 2013, SEMpdx will be contributing 10% of our organization’s proceeds to C.A.T. as well as some of our Board Members donating time to do PPC, SEO and Social.

And, we’re also covering the cost of adoption during the month of March – so if you’ve been thinking about having a furry feline friend around the house, there’s never been a better time.

And how can you resist a face like this?

Cat Adoption Team
14175 SW Galbreath Drive
Sherwood, OR 97140

503-925-8903
contactus@catadoptionteam.org

The post SearchFest 2013 Feline Attendee is 30,000th Pet Adoption appeared first on SEMpdx.