Two years ago when I attended Social Media Marketing World Marcus Sheridan was top of my list of must-see sessions. I first learned about Marcus in the foreward of Jay Baer’s book YouTility, which became, and still is, a foundational book for my marketing philosophy. Everything both Jay and Marcus were saying resonated with me and I still espouse the Youtility philosophy on this blog: make it useful.
In this session Marcus talked about two pages everyone must have on their websites: how much does it cost and who’s the best in your city. Used to people bristling at the thought of laying out the cost of their services online, Marcus was ready to prove why you need to do this. On the way home from the conference I began writing these two pages. It took me a few months to finalize them and get them up on the site, but I did.
The Best Social Media Consultants in Halifax
and
How Much Does it Cost to Hire a Social Media Consultant
Writing these two pages, he said, and properly optimizing them for SEO would reap benefits for years to come. You’ll notice, if you pop over to the pages to take a look, I never say that I am the best social media consultant in Halifax. You’ll also notice that I don’t list how much it will cost to hire me specifically. These pages do, however, talk about different types of social media consultants and different types of social media services, and in fact, I even link to a large number of my direct competitors on the first page.
How is this SEO Advice working for me?
Two conversations I’ve had recently prompted this blog post.
In one conversation a client hired me at the end of our meeting. I asked him how he found me. He answer was a simple “Google”. But then he added, I saw that you talked about the “best social media consultants in Halifax, and that you were actually linking out to your competition. That said to me you are confident in your abilities, so I didn’t need to look any further.”
Not only did he find me because of my SEO efforts, and read the page that Marcus suggested I write, which probably lead to him finding me in the first place, that page set up an impression of me that lead to a successful discovery meeting.
In another conversation during a discovery meeting with a potential client, I spent some time explaining how I could help them tweak the copy on their website to improve their Google ranking. It wasn’t rocket science (the client actually said that), but they weren’t talking about the service on which they wished to focus, in a way that would help Google show them to potential customers. I mentioned how I had written the page Best Social Media Consultants in Halifax and he snickered. “That’s exactly what I typed in to Google when I was looking for help! I guess it does work.” He asked for a proposal when we were done, too.
My Best, Borrowed SEO Advice
When entrepreneurs ask me about blogging and seo here is what I tell them. First of all you can’t think of them as two separate things. SEO is an ongoing process that you do when writing your blog (and other website copy).
Love this post because it’s the ultimate example of leading by example. Selling SEO expertise and proving the real-world the value of this “rocket science” is a tough sell when everything on the interwebs is “FREE”. Well, free except for all the TIME it takes to figure it all out (with TIME being everyone’s most precious resource). I think I will be borrowing this advice, checking out that book and performing my own experiments 🙂
Thanks Jason. I try to avoid all snake oil systems 🙂 This type of SEO might take a little longer, but it works and, in the long run, it’s a whole lot safer. You’ll have to come back and let me know how it affects your ranking when you’re done! (although, it’s not really something you ever finish)