When clients come to us about “SEO” I find that many of these companies are not there yet. They want to be number 1 on Google and to see their site traffic skyrocket. But often they forget about the basics – about building a compelling experience for their visitors, about ensuring that they capture some footprint and about using their Internet presence to truly conduct business. Recently, we had a client who launched a beautiful site a few months ago and was disappointed that he did not get inundated with new leads. People told him, “ You need to SEO your site.” He ended up calling us, among many other vendors. But before we jumped into the optimization, we explained that we must first look under the hood and find out what is going on - on his site, in his business, in his market and among his competitors. We looked at his overall goals and at the opportunities that exist for expanding his business internationally via a strong online position.  Now, his CMS is being overhauled to align with his needs, his target audience is being well defined to ensure the site provides them with a compelling experience and his site will be positioned to maximize exposure to relevant traffic. Further, we opened this non-hi-tech business man’s eyes to the realm of opportunities for his traditional brick and mortar business on the Internet.
When I see what goes on with many SEO companies, I am reminded of a bad experience I had in a home renovation many years ago. I had a window leaking in my house. I called a window company which was only too happy to replace my window. But that did not solve the leak. An engineer later found that the wall above the window was the problem. When we complained to the window guy that he should not have replaced the window if he was not sure it was the cause of the leak, he told us, “YOU told me that your window was leaking so I replaced your window. You did not ask me to figure out why your window was leaking.”This “Rosh Katan” attitude is abundant in the website industry and it bothers me. A very small, niche technology company came to me complaining that they don’t get any leads from their site. On their own, they had already decided to redo their site. But not much thought was put into it. By the time I met them, they were already developing a concept for the new site - but when I met them for my first briefing, they defined about 20 different markets that they were seeking to penetrate. Then they told me they want to be at the top of Google for all those markets. And of course they want to do this on the tiniest of budgets. The “Rosh Katan” approach would be to just let them progress and then optimize the pages they deliver. But instead, they left the meeting with a very good understanding of the need to focus — the SEO briefing I gave them was like a business 101 seminar. Just like it would not be fruitful for a small, developing technology company to try to rank highly for 20 different markets, it’s not smart for them to try to penetrate 20 different markets. They need to start by first focusing on what they do best and to resits the temptation to go in a new direction everytime they get a phonecall about some potential application for their technology. They already have products for 1 market and are starting in 2 additional sectors. We calmed things down and brought focus to their overall business outlook. I do wish they had a bigger budget so that they could start truly marketing online and build a solid sales channel. But that will come - if their technology is really as good as they say it is.