Of course you teach them how to use the website backend as soon as it's set up - but if you've ever actually done that you'll know that within a few weeks the user will have fallen in to bad habits/forgot something so its always worth having a few follow up sessions. In addition if they
are writing a blog making sure and teaching them not to link to bad neighbourhoods, to link with decent keywords to their strongest pages etc is an ongoing process.
Design time. At least if you plan a site rather than rely solely on trial and error.
So you know how, for example, 8 different landing pages will convert at design time? Not even SEOMoz was able to do such - they had a quite famous competition to get users to rewrite their landing page which increased their conversion from 0.5 to 2.5%. If SEOMoz can't write the perfect landing page at design time then how is anyone else supposed to?
Lame. I'll admit that one of my clients has half a dozen such sites. Originally they simply did a 301 redirection, but when I convinced them this was pointless (and the tracking figures reflected this) the opted to create mini-sites rather than ditch the domains. And they admitted that this was through fear and ignorance - they didn't want someone else to grab the domains. But it's still and utter waste of time; the main sites are too strong so these mini-sites don't get any traffic.
The mini-sites not getting any traffic (and presumably links) is the fault of the SEO. If an SEO is running mini-sites well they should be getting a ton of linklove and thus traffic.
In effect, each is a site with slightly more verbose versions of different content section from the main sites, but with the added bonus of some keywords in the title. Basically it's a lot of effort for usually little gain (I can think of certain rare circumstances where such an approach worked), generally it means you main site isn't strong enough in certain content areas.
That's your problem - you're doing microsites wrong. Microsites, IMHO at least, should have a fresh and different slant on the content than the main site - one that is less commercial and more informative so that people are more likely to not mind linking to it. e.g. Company X sells biscuits. You find that you are struggling with keyword 'biscuit fan' so you create a microsite
www.biscuit-fans-united.com. On that site you run a campaign to bring back Company X's worst selling biscuit. The site is a bit of fun and in no way looks commercial - so people link to it and visit it. Of course as it's mentioning Company X's biscuit it links to it relatively often and naturally gets Company X in people's mind. That, IMHO, is a good microsite.
You said linkbait is grey hat. I'm saying it's like saying that all Scottish people are tight -
some may be, but no way are
all. The linkbaits I mentioned are white hat, where of course the whole crazyness that ensued after the
xbox-playing-prostitutes linkbait (dammit look there's another link!) shows that some can clearly be black-hat.
Indeed. Which is why I suggest periodic review - but it should be client-led, unless you are also a marketing consultant for your client (it does happen). The web is but one facet of a company's public face; only the smallest companies won't have anyone specifically responsible for marketing. And while the client might appreciate monthly statistics and metrics, they ain't going to want to discuss SEO with you every week.
Some clients really do want to know what's happening constantly - but they are the overly-keen ones. Just because you're not discussing it with them though doesn't mean you're not doing it. If I'm working on linkbuilding, for example, I'll provide a linkbuilding report at the end of the month, but I'll have worked on it throughout the month not just once a month. Equally, for at least one of the sites that I do SEO for, I send through blog suggestions multiple times a week as a)they thank me for doing so and b)otherwise I know they'd never blog
A narrow but fair point. But how many companies are in such a dynamic market that they are creating new products every 5 mins?
Not many, but many markets are constantly reacting to news and changing their approach based on that.
And how quickly do you think the SEs spider your sites.
Looking at one of the sites that I do SEO for currently, they're looking at a new page appearing in the SERPS within about half an hour of it going live (maybe a bit less) and the oldest cache for any of the pages I can currently find is January 12th (though that is on an unimportant page that has never changed since site-launch) and almost all the rest are between today and January 22nd.
If you have a very high pagerank and a huge trafic flow then the SEs will be watching every move, but for the 99.9% which constitutes the rest of the web, it takes week (and in some cases months) for the SEs to re-crawl your site.
Recrawl yes, but to actually see new pages appear in the SERPS, which is where you'll see any big changes from competitors, it should be within an hour.
You are right, but again, it takes time for the web to react to your changes. I usually end up tracking my sites using Analytics (and sometimes with proprietary code) and I normally allow customer to see the same reports. And they are prepared at launch as to what the key metrics mean, and they can track it themselves. I suggest reviewing the site at an interval and often they agree, but some will just leave their site for years without any major change - don't forget, many sites are there to support a bricks & mortar operation rather than to drum up internet trade.
None of my clients want to sit their watching their traffic increase or decrease - they'll happily pay me to condense the information down in to a useful report. I don't understand why anyone wouldn't want their website to drum up trade through the internet. I deal with one client with a very sensitive area that they work in, that a conversion is merely getting them to contact that business (at which point the company could easily make £30,000 due to them doing so) and they get a decent amount of clients through the web (which is increasing by the day
).
If you ran a small business where your new website was your first step into cyberspace and you're not flogging widgets by the thousand, you are not going to want the SLA with guarantees hosting that Blade007 needs for £xx per month; you'll be paying £xx per year for 99.5% average uptime.. that's 44hrs downtime per year. Not a lot for Bodger and Fixit (builders) or Robin Crook (Chartered Accountant). It may be a HUGE problem for Tesco and a significant one for OcUK, and thus they need to pay extra.
Sure, but this goes back to £12 a year hosting, which was the original proposition. Hosting for £50 a year will suit many small businesses, but you wont find any host that I would call reliable offering
£12 a year hosting. There is a bottom end beyond which it is just too cheap and you know that you'll be getting a terrible service because of it.
