Selling SEO: Easier Said Than Done

I’m relatively new to sales, so stopping in at trade show booths - as I did this week - and asking to speak to the marketing manager to pitch search engine optimization (SEO) services was, at first, out of my comfort zone. I am used to being the one getting pitched to, back when I was a newspaper and magazine editor.

So imagine my surprise when I found myself not only good at selling SEO services - but actually enjoying it tremendously. I find that I don’t need to say much more than, “do you know where your website shows up in search engine result pages?” Alarm bells go off, eyebrows go up: I have their full attention.

(If I have the time before a show or conference, I like to do a bit of keyword and search volume research, coupled with “practice Googling,” so I can demonstrate to prospects some specifics of where they’re falling short with SEO.)

Getting on the road to SEO

Sometimes a marketing manager will tell me, “we know about SEO; we had our website designed with that in mind.” When I (gently) inform them that their metacontent and on-page practices are short of desirable, they are listening…

Basically, you could say that SEO is easier said than done. It’s great to know what SEO means - after all, many businesses haven’t made the effort to learn SEO - but the actual execution of SEO is tricker than you may think.

If you’re just getting on the road to SEO, I make the following suggestions:

• SEO services are scaleable; you can control the number of pages you get optimized, as well as the number of keywords you use for the optimization.
• Scaleablity means that SEO can be customized to fit your budget.
• Don’t assume that your website designer and developer understand SEO well (or even at all).
• Don’t assume your competitors aren’t doing, or thinking about, SEO for their sites.
• Don’t mistake SEO for some high-tech ‘flash in the pan’: figuring out how to get found online is getting more important all the time.
• If you’re buying traffic right now, don’t drop it until you have a chance to see how generating organic traffic (define) performs for you and if they can complement each other.
• If you have an older website, you should celebrate! SEO just got a fair bit easier for you.