This is quite a unique panel about the business of SEO. Jake Langwith concentrated on headhunting for good people whereas Lisa concentrated on winning new accounts.
Jake Langwith from Firebrand
Jake is a head hunter specialising in SEO recruitment. Forget job adverts it’s all about the proactive search.
Popular Channels:
• YouTube
• Twitter
• Facebook
• LinkedIn – 85% of people find a job through LinkedIn
LinkedIn Strategies
• Best results within LinkedIn search
• It’s not a glorified Job Board, if you get 5 strikes you get restricted
• Connect to Relevant People
• Connect to Influential People
• Use a paid account it’s easier to look for staff
• Don’t spam
• Ask first if you can connect to LinkedIn
• Connect to relevant groups
• You can filter groups, the most followed are at the top
• Always use the advanced group search with a broad criteria
• Always use multiple job titles but search against the current role
• Use the company filter
Making Contact
• 1st degree contact is free
• Old School – make a phone call
• Message via LinkedIn
• Personal Blog
• Whois Information
• Facebook and Google +
• Emphasise Confidentiality
Lisa Myers from Verve Search
Lisa covered the business development side of SEO. The stats are so geared towards SEO so why is it so difficult to sell at times?
A Typical process
• What industry
• What’s the website URL
• Your top 10 keywords
• Your competitors
After this process the client typically gets frustrated and the client is lost. This gives the industry a bad name overall. A lot of the time saying no is as good for business as saying yes. SEO needs to be more focused on conversions and ROI than traffic.
To start with you need to understand your client’s business. This is key to winning the account.
Key questions:
• Market size and competition
• Relevant keywords and current rankings
• Current conversion rates
• Profit Margins
• Any plans to re-design
• Would they spend money on conversion rate optimisation
• How much is the #1 ranking worth?
Keyword Categories
Different groups and modifiers are likely to have different conversion rates. Brand for example will always have a much higher conversion rate.
Lisa then went on to show how to achieve that through Linkdex which visualises revenue earnings from current rankings, revenue per term and projects revenue increases. This helps close the deal as you are thinking in the same way as the person with the wallet.
This post in part made possible by a sponsoring from Majestic SEO who have the largest Link Intelligence database in Search.
