Over the last few weeks JumpStart Marketing have begun working with a wide range of new clients. It is great fun trying to get a varied selection of websites to the top of their niche. Some niches are relatively easy and some are not so easy. Some require a small budget and some require a large budget. Whether it is a big brand company or a small local company the feeling is still great when you get their website to the top.

The new clients we aim to drive to the top of the search rankings are:

• Carey Glass Joinery
• First Step Insurance
• Happy Jane
• 3Q Recruitment

We have decided to take on an Adult niche client this month. This is proving to be a good challenge and discussing the keywords to target is hilarious. It is only early days for all these clients so look out for them on page 1 of search results over the next few weeks.

In my line of work I have to create 2 – 3 new SEO proposals and quotations each week. These take time to create. Luckily for me I have it down to a fine art at this stage.

In general the bigger the potential client is the more work needs to be put into your proposal. Big clients have big budgets and you need to demonstrate your competence in the field if you want a slice of this budget. You need to be able to point out what is currently going wrong with their site and how you are going to fix it.

The areas that I feel I need to cover in each SEO proposal are:

1. Quotation - I usually get this one out of the way on page 1. I always quote minimum investment values, under which I will not go. If a company tries to haggle then I politely ask them to take their work elsewhere. I always give an honest quote and never charge a Cent more than what I believe is necessary for your site to be a success.

2. SEO Breakdown – This section gives a percentage breakdown of where your SEO budget is going to be invested. It covers 5 key areas:
Discovery 5%
Optimisation 40%
Link Building 40%
Landing Page Creation 10%
Reporting & Analysis 5%

3. SEO Audit - I give a detailed break down of the positive and negative aspects of your site. Each site we audit has varying degrees of positive and negative SEO elements. A lot of websites I work with will have perfect optimisation but they will have very few inbound links to power their website up the rankings. Obviously this type of candidate would require much more link building work for their site than other websites.

4. 5 Key Areas To Focus On – Here I list the top 5 SEO elements that need to be focused on. I give a small description of the current situation and let the client know the exact steps we will take to fix this. The top 5 areas we list here are usually:

1. Link Building
2. Optimisation
3. Landing Page creation
4. Content Creation
5. Social Media

5. Ranking Analysis - I perform keyword research for each client and put together a benchmark ranking report for them to view. This really hits home the message that their site is under performing in the natural search results. The rankings don’t lie. Many clients will have an idea from Analytics that search engine traffic is their main traffic source. What they often fail to realise is that 80% of their organic traffic is generated through branded search. A ratio of 4:1 (branded : non branded traffic) is not good enough and needs to be fixed. Their SEO strategy will primarily focus on targeting the non branded element of search.

6. Ranking Targets - If I advise the client to go with a 6 or 12 month SEO plan then I will make specific predictions of what I think is achievable in terms of ranking improvements. I don’t give specific predictions for specific words. My predictions work off percentages. From their ranking report I will aim to increase top 1, 5, 10, and 30 rankings by a certain percentage.

Years of working in the industry with a range clients has allowed me the ability to make pretty accurate predictions. It is also advisable to set realistic expectations at this stage. SEO is a long term commitment so taking on a client that expects top results in 1 month is not advisable.

7. Reporting - I give a brief explanation of what the client can expect in terms of reporting. I list the KPIs that we will be tracking and the frequency of reporting.

8. Work Experience - I have worked with many of Ireland top companies and I want my potential client to know this. They are hiring someone with huge experience getting results in competitive industries and they are paying very low prices for this. Having been in the business for almost 7 years now I have worked in a huge number of different niches. If this report is for a new finance client then I list out the financial clients I have worked with and also list out key ranking achievements I have made in that niche.

That sums up briefly the key areas I like to focus on in my SEO sales pitches. As I said before, they take time to create. This is work that you are not going to get paid for, but

If you want to catch some big SEO fish then you need to take time to prepare the right bait.

I will expand on each of these 8 points more in future Blog posts

My Sales Pitch - I do the SEO work for 7 of Ireland’s top Internet marketing agencies. As part of this arrangement I put together their SEO Proposals and Quotes for free. They can then use these reports to pitch to new potential new clients providing they outsource the work to me if successful. This arrangement works for them and if you own an Internet marketing agency and need help reeling in the big clients then maybe it might just work for you as well.

Link building can be a time consuming job. It can also be extremely boring. I am always on the look out for software that will make it easier and quicker to increase exposure and build links and get better results for my clients. A service that I am currently checking out is called OnlyWire.

Automatic Social Bookmarking Software
OnlyWire can auto-submit content to the highest ranked social media sites. Bookmarking your latest Blog posts on these types of websites can have beneficial effects in terms of increased traffic, exposure and link acquisition. Manual Social bookmarking takes forever to do but if you want to get your articles noticed by the masses then social bookmarking cannot be ignored, even if it takes time. Hopefully this automated solution will solve this problem and allow me to disseminate my lates blog post throughout the social media world with just one click.

Whats available: You can post to 42 different social media sites at a time. You are allowed 300 free submissions per month.

What’s the catch? To use the free version you have to place the bookmark button at the bottom of this post onto your blog. It has some advertising on it which you can get rid of on the paid version.

How does it work? You register with all 42 social bookmarking sites and log your details into the onlywire system. You create a new and exciting blog post and you press a button to auto submit the article to the social bookmarking sites. There is a Wordpress plugin that allows you to submit via a tick box.

I am currently availing of the free version for the JumpStart Blog. I will write a review of this service in a few weeks when I start to see results.

If you are already using the software and can give some good feedback then leave a comment below.

p.s. I do not make any money out of promoting this service. If it is a piece of junk then I will say it is.

When dealing with new clients there is a certain amount of information that we would deem necessary to obtain from the client. The answers to these questions will help us to put a strong SEO plan in place. It is also a help that the client is becoming engaged in the process.

We typically ask the following client questions:

1. Give a brief description of the business you are in. List the services you provide in order of importance.
2. Where is your target market? International or national? Is there a certain radius around Dublin, Limerick etc .?
3. Could you give me a list of the search phrases (10+) that you believe are most important to your business?
4. What are the 3 ‘must have’ high ranking search phrases for your business?
5. Who are your main competitors? (Provide web addresses if possible)
6. When are the annual busy periods for your business?
7. How would you position yourself in the market – do you compete on price? are words like low cost, affordable, and budget suitable to your business?
8. Could you list out the main selling points of your business? What separates you from your competition? What makes you the best? (a list of three or four tag lines would be fine). Try and be specific if possible. (not good = ‘we offer the best customer service’ – everyone says this – try and be more specific)
9. Do you have some type of analytics software installed on your website? Can we gain access to it?
10. Will it be possible for us to make changes to your website or will we have to go through your IT team? Getting FTP details will make things a lot easier and quicker results will be achieved.
11. Can you give me a brief outline of your current social media strategy? What social media platforms do you currently use? Do ye have the capability to create a steady stream of unique content for your website e.g. for a Blog or News section?
12. Have you ever hired an SEO company in the past? Was it successful or unsuccessful? What are your expectations for us? What timeline do you expect us to achieve results within?

The more detailed the answers the better. We can get an idea of the expectations that the client has and the amount of work that has to be done. The expectattions of the client are often very misguided, but it is good to know them at this stage as it gives you a chance to control their expectations.

These are the questions that I personally find useful. The list is not exhaustive, and you probably have your questions that you like to ask. If you do then let me know the question in our comments section below.

Search engine rankings are an essential KPI for any SEO campaign.

Of the 3 main KPIs:

• Conversions / ecommerce
• Organic traffic
• Search rankings

the search rankings are probably the least important to track. They are still VERY important, but actual traffic on your website and how much they convert would be a better thing to focus on in result reports for clients.

Create a Benchmark Report

Keywords - When you are targeting hundreds or thousands of different search terms it can be impossible to keep a track of them all. When working with clients you should take a small sample of the most important keywords to their business (ask them what they think their top 5 keywords are – it is important to keep the client happy even if the keywords they mention are not extremely important) and combine them with the some important keywords you have discovered through keyword, website and competitor analysis. This will give you a rough snap shot of their visibility online.

Take the keyword list that you have created and create a benchmark report. This shows the client where they currently rank for their keywords. This should be done before any SEO work is performed. This allows you to track the impact your SEO campaign is making.

Search Engines - Choose a selection of the most important search engines that apply to the business. For example, if it is an Irish business that sells only to the Irish market then you will be focusing primarily on Google.ie, Google.ie (pages from Ireland), Yahoo (Ireland only), Bing.ie. Obviously Google.ie are by far the most important search results to focus on in your ranking analysis report.

Page Depth – There is no need to check anymore than the top 2 – 3 pages. If a website is not placed in the top 3 pages then it is nowhere. Page 3 search rankings are worth little to nothing as it is.

Search Rankings Analysis

At JumpStart we also tend to focus on giving a ranking analysis. We like to work with percentages so we would include facts and figures such as:

Over the year we would be able to see clearly the progress being made. We can see month on month progress and we would supply the % increase of the last 2 months to show that the SEO work we are performing each month is having an effect.

Other stats we include are:

This table allows us to focus on overall visibility. Over time we would look to achieve 100% visibility in the top 30 and eventually in the top 10 rankings for all our sample keywords.

This would be accompanied by a summary of the key ranking stats of note.

Ranking Analysis

• Position 1 rankings have increased by 500%
• The amount of top 5 and top 30 rankings have both increased by 13% & 10%
• The % of possible listings has risen. 57% of the sample keywords we are targeting are present in the top 50 rankings on the search engines we are targeting. This is a % rise of 14%
• The % of possible listings in the top 10 remained the same.
• Significant rankings that have been achieved so far include
  • On Google  – pos.1 for ‘xxxxxxx’, ‘xxxxxxxxx’, pos.3 for ‘xxxxxxxx’
  • On Yahoo – pos.1 for ‘xxxxxxxx’, ‘xxxxxxxxxx’
  • On Bing – pos.1 for ‘xxxxxxxxx’

Report Frequency – SEO is a long term strategy. Results take time to achieve. Rankings also fluctuate a lot of the time and this can lead to rankings going up and down. There will rarely be a time where all your rankings will improve. For these reasons it is not really an option to submit rankings reports more than once a month. In one week you might have a majority negative factors due to various reasons; however, over a month these up and downs will tend to move in the right direction if the SEO work is done.

What you will find if you submit daily, weekly or fortnightly reports is that they will lead to your client eating up your SEO retainer time in discussing results. Your results will not improve by discussing them so this is a huge waste of time and is avoided by viewing SEO rankings over a longer period. There are even arguments to be made that 1 month is too short a period for proper analysis.

Submit to Client:

1. Ranking Report – Use a ranking software and compare month on month results.
2. Stats & Analysis – Detailed break down of the rankings & reasons for.

The dark arts of SEO can be difficult at times to fully understand. I recently had the pleasure of a hotel manager in Dublin telling me that he would expect top search engine rankings within days. He told me how their hotel had been investing with another SEO company but the results just hadn’t been appearing quickly enough.

I reviewed the site and thought that the old SEO company had done a decent job. They had a lot of the proper foundations in place and a clear SEO strategy was being pursued. I could easily of slated their work in an attempt to win the contract but there is no point lying.

There were a number of reasons why the hotel website was not ranking well for their top keywords. The top 3 reasons were:

1. Domain Age / Trust - It was a very new site and would of built up very little trust with Google.
2. Google PR - Their site just couldn’t compete with their competitors. As it was a new site it had accumulated very few quality inbound links.
3. Competitiveness - The hotel industry is highly competitive online. Anyone expecting a position 1 ranking for ‘Dublin Hotel’ within a couple of weeks does not understand how SEO worlks.

Of course there will be plenty of SEO agencies out there that will promise you this kind of quick result. They will say anything to get your business. By committing to something like this these agencies are immediately showing that they are clueless about SEO.

Avoid these companies like the plague.

Now I wouldn’t normally be upset by such a request. I would just explain the scenario and try to educate the client a little on how SEO works. I would never give a client unrealistic expectations and if this costs me their contract then so be it. The contract would only end up getting ripped up anyway and our company’s name would be bad mouthed if I was to take on a job with unrealistic expectations. After I gave the explanation of why their expectations were too high I then was told by my client:

“I am familiar with Google Caffeine and this should make results achievable in days rather than weeks”

When you get hit with a whopper like this it can sometimes stun you into silence for a considerable time. Questions start running through your mind….maybe Google Caffeine isn’t just involved with faster indexing, maybe it also gives you top rankings? You start to doubt yourself but then a realisation kicks in that if it sounds like a whopper and looks like a whopper then it is just a whopper answer.

Telling people that they are not understanding something correctly is never an easy thing to do. Pre-conceived notions are hard to dispel. In the end I am not sure if he believed me.

Q. Will we get the contract for their hotel?
A. I am not sure

Q. Do we want the contract for their hotel?
A. I am not sure. Even if the client does take everything we said on board they are still going to be very impatient. I don’t think we would ever be able to dispel the notion that results can be achieved quickly in his mind. If they were willing to leave their last SEO agency so quickly then the same could happen to us.

The last thing our SEO agency wants is revolving door clients. A client is not just for Christmas, a client is for life!

There are very few SEO specialists in Ireland. There are even fewer good SEO specialists. The problem with SEO is that it is not really something you can study in college. You might touch on the concept of Internet marketing in your business marketing course but that does not prepare you for the reality of high performance SEO. To be able to handle high level accounts you need experience and a good balance between technology know how and marketing principles.

At JumpStart, we believe we have the right mix. However, many web design and Internet marketing agencies claim to have these qualities when in fact they are bluffing. I know this by the amount of web design and Internet marketing agencies that already outsource their work to us!

JumpStart SEO Outsourcing

Many of Ireland’s top Internet marketing agencies outsource their SEO projects to JumpStart Marketing. In fact, 75% of our SEO business is sourced from other agencies.

The top 5 reasons for this are as follows:

1. Cost – Our hourly fee of €30 per hour is highly competitive. Most top agencies charge over €100 to companies for an hours work. By outsourcing to JumpStart the agency will make €70 profit for doing nothing.
2. Reliability - Our main rivals for outsourcing work are SEO specialists in foreign countries. If you have ever tried outsourcing to India then you will probably understand the reasons Irish companies try to avoid this where possible. Unlike, our foreign competitors we are reliable. We get the job done on time and if there are delays we will alert you to this.
3. Performance – We get paid by the hour but if the results are not achieved in the allotted time then we will work until results are achieved. Most other companies do not have this level of pride in their work performance and they will charge you for every penny.
4. Location – The fact that we are based in Ireland and know the ins and outs of the Irish market provides us with an enormous advantage over our foreign competitors.
5. Communication – We are native English speakers and know the intricacies of the English language. We know the localised language of Ireland. Our foreign competitors do not have mastery of the language. This leads to project mistakes and constant delays.

If your company needs to outsource SEO work then consider JumpStart Marketing. We are discrete and we get results for our clients. Contact Shane at (087) 2605743 to discuss SEO outsourcing further.

The search environment in Ireland is about to undergo a serious functionality change in the not to distant future. The roll out of Google instant will make finding what you want online quicker. Quicker = Good.

Real time search results will become a reality once Google Instant has been rolled out globally. So far it has not been applied to Google.ie (update: it has now ) so the majority of Irish Internet users are probably not familiar with how it works.

How it Works

As you type your search query into Google the search results underneath appear as you are typing. This is different from the suggestions Google currently makes. Actual search results are displayed as you type. It is hard to describe in text so watch this video and see for yourself. You can even go one better and view Google Instant actually in use on Google.com.

So what does this mean for search marketing?

Google states that this new feature does not have any effect on search rankings. That is good news for me I suppose; chasing the Google algorithm can be a tough race. The new feature does not affect the Q score in PPC advertising either. However, how Google instant handles impressions now is still up for debate – from a Google source

“We’re not able to determine the degree to which your impressions will change. For some advertisers, the number of impressions might increase or decrease.”

Google think that this new feature will help users to find better results. They believe that this will improve the quality of clicks to your site, which will then obviously have a positive effect on your conversions.

Verdict

Once you get over the temporary blindness caused by first time use then this feature will probably be a success. It isn’t going to change the search marketing landscape. It will be different but the same rules will apply. Google hope that this enhanced feature will result in increased Google users and this of course will mean more visitors for your site and mine (if you know how to play the Google game!)

For those of you that are new to the world of Search marketing the following article will lay out the types of budget that you would need to consider spending to be a success online.

Search Marketing Ireland
Searcht marketing investments will vary depending on the country that you are targeting. This is due to how competitive it is in that country. Currently the online marketing scene in Ireland is not hugely competitive when you compare it to the UK. It is easier to obtain high rankings on local search engines in Ireland. This means that you have to spend less money in Ireland. Of course, the potential rewards are a lot less too as there is a smaller market.

For most Irish businesses the Irish market is sufficient, so I will restrict my recommendations to businesses just targeting this country.

So How Much Should I Invest?
You get what you pay for in this business. If you invest peanuts then you will probably only get peanuts in return. Would you expect to open a shop in town for €250? No, you wouldn’t. Therefore, you should get out of that mindset immediately. Your website is your online shop; it needs to look well, function well and be visible online. This takes money. If you are offered a deal that seems too good to be true then it is. 9 our of 10 websites will fail online or will never make a profit for their owners. This is the sad reality and usually stems from the fact that their website was approached in a half ass manner in terms of investment.

Web Design

If your website does not look the part then it won’t deliver for you. People have high expectations when it comes to websites. They want to be able to find what they want quickly and to purchase it quickly. There is a science behind web design. If you higher a joker to build your site then you will get a joke website

Recommended Investment

• Basic Website - For a basic website that has a unique design and branding, is easy to use and is marketing ready you would need to spend a minimum of €1500. This is a minimum recommended investment amount! For larger businesses you would need to spend more than this on a basic website. Your website will probably be bigger in size and you should look at investing €2000 minimum

The price of web design increases as the functionality of the website increases.

• CMS system - If you require the ability to be able to update a website yourself on a regular basis then you will need a CMS system. This functionality drives up the price of your website. For small website the price would now start out at €2000 and for larger websites it would be €2500

• Ecommerce – If you plan on selling something online then you will need an ecommerce system. These systems require a lot of work to get right. The absolute minimum you would need to invest to get a decent ecommerce system working would be €3000. Most online shops would cost upward of €5000. For large ecommerce sites you would be looking at an investment level of €10,000 plus.

Within search marketing you have a number of marketing options. We recommend that you consider investing in all these marketing options. This will increase your website’s visibility and that will increase your profits. Here we discuss investment levels for SEO and PPC.

Search Engine Optimisation

This form of Internet marketing involves the natural search results. These are search results that are created based on relevancy to a keyphrase. On Google, the natural / organic search results are on the left hand side. The vast majority of people click on these natural links in preference to sponsored links. Therefore, for many websites, their organic traffic figure will be the highest in terms of traffic. This is an area of Internet marketing that cannot be ignored.

Recommended Investment

SEO investment can be broken into 2 parts. There is an initial investment where you purchase a block of time that allows the seo specialist to get all the basics covered e.g. keyword research , indexing, optimisation, link building. Then there is a monthly retainer. The job of an SEO specialist never finishes. It is an ongoing thing and it should be an ongoing investment for you. Rankings come and go, if you do not keep investing in SEO then your rankings are likely to drop over time.

• Initial SEO Block - For small websites in an uncompetitive niche, targeting a large number of keywords, a minimum of 10 hours would be required. For larger websites in a highly competitive niche, targeting a large number of keywords, then you would need to invest 20 hours at the start. At JumpStart, we charge €30 an hour. This is HIGHLY competitive when compared to our rival companies.

• SEO Retainer - For small websites in an uncompetitive niche, a minimum of 2 hours per month would be required. For larger websites in a highly competitive niche then you would need to invest 8 hours a month.

Do the Maths

Pay Per Click

This form of Internet marketing involves the sponsored search results. On Google, the sponsored search results are on theright  hand side. Everytime a person click on your link to visit your website then you pay a certain amount for that click. If you have enough of a budget then you can guarantee page 1 visibilityimmediately for your website.

Recommended Investment

PPC investment can be broken into 3 parts. Like SEO, there is an initial investment where you purchase a block of time that allows the ppc specialist to get all the basics covered e.g. keyword research , campaign set-up, ad copy creation, optimisation. Then there is a monthly retainer. The job of an PPC specialist also never finishes. It is an ongoing thing and it should be an ongoing investment for you. A properly managed PPC campaign will help you attract more clicks for less money.

Initial PPC Block - For small websites in an uncompetitive niche, targeting a small number of keywords, a minimum of 6 hours would be required. For larger websites in a highly competitive niche, targeting a large number of keywords, then you would need to invest 12 hours at the start.

PPC Retainer -For small websites in an uncompetitive niche, targeting a small number of keywords, a minimum of 2 hours per month would be required. For larger websites in a highly competitive niche then you would need to invest 5 hours minimum a month.

PPC Budget – For your ads to display on search engines like Google you will need to pay for each click. Therefore, a PPC budget must be set aside to ensure that your ads are displayed throughout the year. We have worked with clients that invest €100,000 plus a year on pay per click. We have also worked with clients that invest €500 per year. The budget amount is up to you. In general, for small websites in uncompetitive niches you would need to invest €2000 per annum. €10,000 per annum is a minimum amount needed for larger websites in competitive fields targeting a large number of keywords.

Do the Maths

Profit Outlook – The investment needed to start your new online business can be a lot of money. The running costs for your online business will be considerably less in the second year and each year after. These are the years where you will see strong ROI. Profits will continue to increase and running costs will decrease.

Warning – these above investment amounts are average amounts. Each website is different and might require vastly different set-up and maintenace costs. If you want rough estimated figures, then you just got them. Are they going to be exact for your website…..probably not. This article is more just an eye opener for you and your business. These are the investment amounts that your competitors are investing. They would not be investing in such amounts if the profit margins were not multiples of the investment amounts.

If you are dipping your toes into the SEO waters for the first time then setting up your website on Google Webmaster Tools should be part of your set-up plan.

For Irish Internet users, Google is the dominant force. More people use Google than all the other search engines put together. Chances are that for many small businesses your Google traffic will outstrip all other traffic sources combined. Therefore, it is wise to understand and to view how Google sees and interprets your site. GWT helps you to see your website through Google(y) eyes

My top 5 reasons for using GWT:

1. Site Troubleshooting
GWT contains a category called Diagnostics. This category has options that will inform you if Google has problems crawling through your site. It can also make HTML suggestions that will help you to improve your website. Website owners need to know if there are any issues with the site that would prevent it from ranking high. This option will help shed some light on that situatation

2. Indexing
Google treats every page of your site individually, therefore it is highly important that all the pages of your website are indexed. Only when your pages are indexed will they start appearing on Google search results.

If you decided to target a new service and created a new landing page for this targeting keywords related to that service, then you want to make sure that Google will find your page. Search engines have the ability to find this new page naturally but there is no guarantee and the process can be slow at times. If you want to ensure your whole site gets indexed then use the sitemaps functionality to help that happen.

3. Link Analysis
Inbound links to your website is probably the most important ranking factor there is. Any information that Google can give you about these links is important. In GWT, there are options for ‘Links to Your Site’ and ‘Internal Links’. Both of these options will give you a very rough indication of the amount and type of links in your site. It is not accurate but it is good to be able to see what Google sees.

4. Site Speed
This has become a ranking factor recently. While there are plenty of websites and software programs that can tell you how fast your website is, it is useful to see what Google itself thinks of your site speed. In the ‘Labs’ section of GWT you will find a ‘Site Performance’ option.
This page gives you an indication of your site speed and compares it to other websites. For example, for my own website www.jumpstartmarketing.ie we get the following read out:

“On average, pages in your site take 1.8 seconds to load (updated on Aug 5, 2010). This is faster than 73% of sites.”

GWT also makes suggestions to help you reduce the load time of your pages. If Google tells you how to improve your site then you are probably best off listening.

5. Geographic Target
If you have a .com TLD and you are solely targeting the Irish market then it would make sense for you to use a .ie TLD instead. Changing your domain name is not something that you should do without some serious contemplation of the consequences, as it can effect your rankings and branding efforts negatively. For those website that have a .com and only want to target Ireland then GWT will allow you to associate your .com website with a geographical target. This is ideal.

Most people use local search engines when searching e.g. Google.ie (not Google.com). On these local search engines the TLD is a ranking factor. Google places more relevancy on sites that are associated with that country as they presume .ie domains would be more relevant to people searching on a .ie search engine. Setting the geographic target on GWT will allow you to compete better on local search engine rankings.