Insurance is a popular, profitable area for some SEO's. Trying to find reputable insurance for an SEO business is not so popular because many insurance agents do not have the experience to make the distinction between what a web design shop does versus what an SEO or PPC business does.

Prior to entering this business I was an insurance agent and before that I was an underwriter and I still have my agent license (hey, you never know!!). There are policies out there which SEO's should consider purchasing as well as any web design or development shop.

There are a few different policies you might want to consider in this industry:

• General Liability
• Professional Liability (Errors and Omissions)
• Workers Compensation (if you have employees)
• Short-Term and Long-Term Disability

As a business owner, you will have or not have the following conditions:

• employees
• office space
• equipment
• office space where you conduct business with clients and vendors

Workers Comp and STD/LTD

Workers Compensations and STD/LTD are fairly general insurance policies with respect to the policies not really being specific to the SEO business. Here in the US, Workers Comp is administered on the state level. Workers Comp is required in certain situations, depending on your state, so it is wise to check with your attorney and insurance agency regarding what is appropriate for you.

While you only have to worry about Workers Comp if you have employees (actual employees hired and placed on payroll not contracted labor or freelance arrangements) you should consider Short Term and/or Long Term Disability insurance even if you're a solo SEO.

Short Term and Long Term Disability

If you are coming from corporate America you likely had these policies under a group plan (which is why it's so cheap). Essentially, it breaks down as follows:

• Coverage responds if you are injured and unable to work (this doesn't cover sick time and generally excludes maternity coverage)
• Short Term Disability will cover you for a certain period of time (usually under 90 days) at 100% of your pre-tax (sometimes you can choose post-tax) income.
• Long Term Disability kicks in either after Short Term has expired or if you decided not to purchase Short Term at all.
• Long Term will typically cover you at 60% or so of pre-tax (or post-tax if you are given the choice) for an extended period of time.

Wages are usually determined based on your prior year's tax return in conjunction with a current Profit/Loss statement (another reason why you should report all your income!).

Sometimes it makes more sense to get a quote on LTD (as it's cheaper) and just build up a reserve of your own to cover what Short Term Disability would have covered (rather than spending money on premiums and losing it if you never file a claim).

If you advance a claim for either, there usually is a waiting period of a few weeks to a few months while a case manager is assigned to investigate the claim.

Be prepared to get put under the microscope much more than you would if you were part of a large group plan (if you work for a large company as an example) as you are no longer part of a protected herd, but this is where using an independent agent can be help in fending off the overzealous claims adjuster who might see you as an easy case :)

Different policies have different exclusions so it's wise to discuss all your extracurricular activities with your agent as things like sky-diving are usually not covered causes of injury.

General Liability

This is one of the most common forms of business insurance. The meat of what this type of policy provides is:

• Bodily Injury and Property Damage
• Defense Costs while defending a suit
• Personal Injury
• Medical Expenses
• Operations Liability

Most of this coverage is applicable when/if some of the following conditions occur:

• Client is injured on your premises
• Damages to property you are renting to other businesses
• Advertising mishaps (slander, libel, copyright infringement, etc)
• Injuries sustained by others on your defined premises due to the activities and operations of your business

Combining GL with Property Insurance (BOP Policies)

Many times, a GL policy is combined with Property Insurance to make what is called a BOP or business owners policy (BOP package).

Property Insurance is fairly standard and covers things like:

• Inventory
• Equipment (probably computers for most of us)
• Records and Documents
• Buildings
• Other Real and Personal Property
• Lost income due to a covered loss

A BOP is really geared towards business which have an office building, equipment in that office, meet clients on the premises, or rent out space to others.

Neither of these, or the BOP package, cover Workers Comp. A BOP is a good solution for a shop which has a physical location, clients on site, and has inventory/equipment on premises.

Professional Liability & Specialized Insurance

These types of policies is where a chunk of the specialized coverage for an SEO would come from. A BOP policy is meant to cover "products" with respect to liability so as an SEO, web designer, or web developer you'll need more specialized coverage which covers things like:

• Data Storage
• Malicious Code (say your Wordpress site gets hacked and distributes malware or keyloggers)
• Hosting
• Loss of business income (say your host goes down and your client's e-commerce site goes offline, or it goes offline due to an error on your end)
• Data security

Depending on your level of involvement with servers, software, and application development you may want to scale up and get a more specialized policy. Lots of larger insurers sell specialized, broad polices under the name of Technology Insurance or Information Technology Insurance.

Over the years these policies have developed to cover more and more specialized areas of tech insurance. In the beginning they were mostly geared towards straight IT companies but now cover all sorts of tech groups like:

• Web Designers
• Web Developers
• Consultants
• Outsourced Applications
• Hosting Services

Be Up-front

Our industry is no different than any other, lots of snakes. If you are engaging in some kind of off the wall activity you really need to tell the agent. Tell them exactly what you do, if you are doing things that your state or other states consider illegal (fake reviews for instance) then don't expect your policy to respond to such things.

It's no different than getting a homeowners policy while saying you don't have a Pit Bull, even though you have a Pit Bull (which are excluded by all standard insurers), then expecting coverage when your Pit Bull bites the neighbor.

While the agent may not understand the nuances of the business, you are typically good to go if you take the time to fill out the application completely and accurately.

Why Use a Local, Independent Agent?

Most folks you get in the call centers of GEICO or Progressive are salaried or hourly employees, they don't live in your community, and they really don't care to get you the best deal (they can only give your theirs).

Having a local agent gives you access to more markets, someone close by to help you fight any injustices the carrier may try to perpetrate on you, someone who is making a living selling policies in a local market (less likely to burn you as they care about their reputation), and someone who can help insure all your personal and business needs.

A call center rep, if they are on commission, generally wants to churn and burn through the calls and probably won't meet with you face to face to go over anything and answer all your questions (or get answers). Plus, most local agencies need help with web marketing so it could be an easy in for you!

What Do You Need?

Scenario 1 (Work from home, no employees)

Get a business endorsement on your personal homeowners policies and schedule your equipment if you need to (might not need to if you have warranties in place already). This will also make your home office deduction look more official to the IRS.

Get a Professional Liability (E&O) policy and look into a specialized Technology policy depending on your business model. Consider STD/LTD insurance for lost wages if you can't work.

Scenario 2 (Home office, external office, no employees)

Same as above but add in a BOP (General Liability and Property Package) which is probably required if you are renting office space anyway.

Scenario 3 (Home office, external office, employees)

You should check with your attorney about how you are defining employees and if that means they are actual employees versus free-lancers or contractors.

You would want to look at a BOP, Professional Liability and/or specialized Tech Insurance, and Workers Comp if required as well as employee benefit/insurance packages for things like STD/LTD.

Insurance is Boring

Yes it's boring but it's worthwhile for most of us from a cost/benefit standpoint (or legal liability standpoint). Solid, legal contracts reviewed by attorney's are also HIGHLY recommended.

Make time to sit with some local agents to really go over your business and your business activities. It's a really soft market right now for business insurance, especially small business, so agents are going to be more than happy to sit with you and go over what they have to offer.

Why Contracts are Important

There are many contracts available online, for free and for a fee. These contracts, even ones from places like LegalZoom have not been reviewed for your specific business by attorneys in your state.

A contract is no good if it's not enforceable. You can probably expect a fee for a good attorney to review your contracts, and make any necessary changes, to be in the high hundreds of dollars or low four figures.

There is a cost certainty to the cost for an attorney to give you the green light on a set of contracts (though, for really big deals you might still be wise to get a contract specific to that deal) but there is no cost certainty to the legal liability you could face if your contracts are essentially worthless in a court of law.

Another thing you'll want to watch out for is a client who tries to give you unlimited downside from a liability standpoint (in the contract) but severely limits the upside to your fees. You might be willing to take on the risk of downside so long as you are getting a decent %, or a few % points, of the upside on the deal. This is another case where an attorney reviewing the contracts can be well worth the cost.

Choosing the Right Business Entity

Your insurance policy is mutually exclusive from your business entity. If you are a sole-proprietor your personal assets are at risk even though your insurance policy covers defense costs. Choosing the right entity is another way to insulate yourself from liability.

In most states a single member LLC up to a full-blown corporation (and everything in between like a multi-member LLC, S-corp, and so on) will insulate your personal assets (home, savings, future personal earnings) from legal liability, whereas a sole proprietorship will leave your personal assets exposed.

The combination of a good insurance policy and the right business entity will cover defense costs (on a covered event) and protect your personal assets. Choosing the wrong set up can be financially disastrous.

The policy will cover defense costs if a claim is covered but if it is a frivolous lawsuit, or something personal, you might have to defend yourself. This is where having the right entity is key because your personal assets are not at risk even though you are probably going to incur your own legal costs.

The best way to protect yourself is to insure and to pick either an LLC or a corporation of some kind. Choosing neither, or one but not the other, can leave you and your business significantly exposed to liability.

The term "competitive research" conjures up all sorts of imagery like expensive tools, shiny buttons, cute charts, and fancy (sometimes foolish) language about precise insight into a particular site or marketplace.

In reality we know that such claims are usually best taken with a large grain of salt. Most competitive research data is scraped from search engines and then has custom filters applied to it. Such filters can actually be a detriment to the data because, in desperate attempts at differentiation, tool-sets routinely use metrics which get overly convoluted with custom values and such that the final product because overhyped and underwhelming.

Some tools make up for their sampling errors by allowing you to upload your keywords & data directly into their database. The problem with this is that you are putting keywords which were "below the radar" into a database that your competitors may be using. Why just give away your data to the competition like that? Talk about working against yourself!

Let's remember that these custom metrics and estimates are typically extrapolated off of scraped data, or data purchased from IP's, or data from custom toolbars, all of which are data samples. So it is kind of like; scraped data +/- data extrapolations + in-house data + custom metrics = final product.

It is reasonable to assume that the more custom or guesstimated layers you build off of occasionally unreliable data (waves at Google's keyword tool and SERPS) the less and less targeted that data is. Moral of the story is, "choose wisely young jedi".

Getting Useful Data for Free

Now that we've set the expectation stage (don't expect tools to be a push button, slot machine win) you might feel like paying hundreds or thousands a month for these kinds of tools is a bit much. Sometimes yes, but multiple data points certainly have their advantages and it's not that the data is junk by any means, it's just that the data shouldn't be relied upon as if it were scientific. The data can most certainly be helpful but it comes down to ROI for you and your specific project(s).

There are many tools you can use to get lots and lots of decent keyword competition data for free. We aren't going to be covering free trials, just tools that give you what the have for free or tools that give enough useful data inside of a free version of their product.

If you are in the competitive research stage, you've probably already got a topic in mind. So we'll assume that you are doing competitive research on the keyword "camping equipment".

Accessing Free Tools

You could do a specific bookmark folder which encompasses links to your free tools for easy access. The first things you will probably look at are:

• the SERP for your keyword
• age of ranking sites
• links (total links, links to domain, links to page, edu/gov links)
• domain age
• domain name (brand, exact match, both, none?)
• signals of trust (key directories, dmoz, twitter)

Those data points can easily be accessed with SEO For Firefox.

SEO For Firefox

SEO for Firefox is a free firefox extension which will give you important SEO metrics quickly, from a variety of reputable data sources. Typically, you might want to aim for in at least the top 3 given all the stuff that could be included in a SERP like:

• a map
• Google products
• Google images
• Google shopping results
• YouTube videos
• News results
• Real-time results
• and so on...

You can get a pretty good initial glimpse of the competition metrics within a few seconds. This is clearly a brand-heavy SERP and it is reflected in the SEO metrics. Here's a screen shot of what you'd see for a particular domain:

All things considered this is a pretty strong domain. It's a brand, has lots of links, .edu links, also ranks highly in Bing-powered Yahoo!, and has a PR 6 to boot.

Another cool thing about SEO For Firefox is that you can export the results into a .csv file for further research, processing and comparison. If you don't have a copy of Office for Mac or Windows already then, in keeping with the "free nature" of this post, you can use Open Office.

SEO Toolbar

Maybe you know the sites you want to research already or maybe you want a graphical, side by side comparison of up to 5 sites in your market. You can use our SEO Toolbar to accomplish this quickly and efficiently. If you click on the green arrows on the right side of the tool bar, you are presented with a GUI for the processing of up to 5 sites at ones (screenshot below)

The comparison feature gives you access to key, relevant SEO metrics side by side for up to 5 sites.

So by now you should have a spreadsheet or three containing relevant data for the top sites on a particular keyword

Link Tools

Now that you've gotten some of the higher-level metrics out of the way, you can dive into examining the link profile of a competing site.

You can use free tools (or free versions of paid tools) to look at the links from a competing site, tools like:

• Yahoo's Site Explorer
• Blekko's SEO Tools
• Open Site Explorer
• Majestic SEO

While it's a good idea to get data from a variety of sources, and run them through a tool like Advanced Link Manager to get a full(er) picture of things, you can get some juicy data for free.

When doing competitive research for a keyword I want to know what the anchor text profile looks like. When I am doing competitive research on a domain there are other relevant data points like top pages, most linked to pages, and total number of unique domains linking at the domain or page (whichever is ranking).

Blekko and Open Site Explorer are the ones I use for targeted and quick anchor text distribution views. Yahoo! generally ranks the best links first and allows for a CSV export, Majestic's free account gives limited data on referring domains, top back-links, and top pages. So for the purposes of looking at anchor text, I prefer Blekko and Open Site Explorer.

Blekko

Blekko has a link to SEO data and Links data, as shown below:

The Links selection will bring up a Yahoo! Explorer-like list of links, the SEO link option brings up a bunch of SEO data like:

• links to the domain
• links to the page
• anchor text information
• links broken down by geography
• external links
• pie-chart, graphical representation of link data points
• and other non-link related, but helpful, data (crawl data, site pages, etc)

The data is free, you get the data they offer without registration requirements.

Open Site Explorer

Open Site Explorer is a quick and easy way to get the type of data we are looking for in this example (anchor text profile).

They currently have a 30 day trial and offer 3 plans:

• Free, No Registration - limited to 3 reports per day, shows up to 200 links and top 5 link metrics for a given criteria
• Free, Registration Required - no limit on reports, 1,000 links returned, top 20 link metrics for a given criteria (anchor text, top pages, etc)
• PRO - part of subscription to SeoMoz, up to 10k links, no limit on metrics
• CSV export available for all plans

If you know the sites you want to look at, and the keyword(s), you can likely get away with just using it as a guest. However, the free but registered plan does give you a bunch more data. What I like in this example is that you basically type the domain name in, hit enter, then click on the anchor text distribution tab and the anchor text data is right there:

You'll see the actual anchor text, the number of domains linking with that anchor text, and the total links with that anchor text in them (good way to spot site-wides from one domain). In this example, our target keyword is not in the top 5 (or 20) with respect to anchor text occurrences. This domain is a large brand though, so you'd likely want to make sure you could build an authoritative and useful site about the topic in order to overcome Google's love affair with brands.

Checking the On-Page Optimization

Though I believe the link data and domain data to be mostly paramount, the on-page criteria follows closely in the importance department.

This is pretty self-explanatory and you don't really need a full blown tool for this. Basically you'll want to look at things like the title tag, meta description tag, and the on-page copy itself.

You can do that pretty easily with just your eyeballs, but the SEO Toolbar also has a feature where you type the keyword into the box in the upper-right, and click the highlighter:

In this case I used 2 words, and they are highlighted in different colors:

This can give you an idea of how the site is using the copy to say, scream, or shout what the page is about. Sometimes you'll find that sites might just be ranking for a keyword or phrase based on the authority of their domain. If they are ignoring the on-page and off-page (links) for a keyword, it could signal to you that this might be a keyword worth pursuing and a keyword you can reasonably expect to rank for.

Making it a Process

Competitive research is just one piece of the puzzle, as you know. I find that breaking the entire process down into manageable chunks can help each process be more productive and efficient. This would be my process when researching the competitiveness of a keyword. While there are other pieces to your SEO research you should note that you do not need to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on fancy competitive research tools off the start.

Save the money you might spend on tools on link development, content development, and content promotion.

When your boss/client asks you why your web site can't be found in Google, what are you going to say? You should prepare, because, eventually, that question will be asked.

Should you cross that bridge when you come to it? Employ an SEO specialist to "do some stuff", after launch, in order to get the site ranked? Isn't SEO just another marketing function, like buying advertising?

In this article, I'll outline why it's a bad idea to treat SEO as an add-on. I'll look at how to roll SEO, seamlessly, into your web strategy.

Strategic Considerations

These days, SEO is not a series of easily-repeated, technical steps.

You may have heard that SEO is about adding meta tags. Changing the underlying code. Making a few minor changes to content and submitting a site to a search engine. If you follow this process, your site will be found on the first page of search results.

This was true years ago ago. It isn't true now.

If that is all you do, chances are your site won't appear on the first page of results. It might not appear until page 72. If at all. The search engines have grown more sophisticated. They look at many different factors, and they don't place weight on meta-tags when determining rank.

What do they look for?

They look at a variety of factors.

One factor is the vote. In search, a link is a vote. In order to get people to vote for your site, you need a site that is link-worthy. And the voting box is rigged. A vote from a huge brand, like Microsoft, for example, is worth way more than many votes from sites few people have heard of. The search engines tend to reward popularity, as determined by other sites. If the information you're providing isn't popular enough, you won't be ranked.

In order to get these links, you need to publish pages people will link to. And not just the home page. You need links into internal pages, too. Ask yourself: what sites would you link to? What pages would you link to? Chances are, you're unlikely to link to a competitor. You're unlikely to link to someone else's e-commerce product catalogue. You'll most likely link to pages of note. Pages of reference material, pages of news, and other remarkable content that is noteworthy.

That's what everyone else does, not just in search, but in social media, too.

Another factor is the quality of your information, which we'll look at shortly.

Sound difficult to achieve?

Do You Even Need SEO?

You may not.

If you have a known brand that your existing customers will navigate directly to, you won't need to do much in the way of SEO. So long as you can be found under your brand name, you'll be rewarded. However, if you want to attract new customers, and attract customers away from competing brands, then you need to give SEO serious thought. At very least, you'll need to ensure your site is crawlable.

You can participate in the search channel without using SEO. You can buy clicks, using PPC. The downside is this can get expensive, as the incentive for Google is to force click prices ever higher via bid competition. You need to weigh the ongoing cost vs the cost of implementing an SEO strategy. Many people undertake both SEO & PPC, of course, in order to maximize a sites' visibility.

You need SEO if a long-term, cheap, visitor traffic stream is important to you. You need SEO if you seek to attract search visitors who may not have heard of your company before. You need SEO if your competitors are doing it, as they'll take your market share, given they have a presence in the channel, and you may not.

OK, I Need SEO

What is the optimal way to approach SEO?

If you've yet to launch a site, or you're planning on launching a new site, you're at a distinct advantage to those who must retrofit an SEO strategy. This is because SEO flows from strategy. It is very difficult to retrofit if the web strategy works against SEO, which can easily happen.

For example, Google tends to favor a regularly updated, well linked, reference information publishing model. One example is Wikipedia. Obviously, commercial sites aren't going to look anything like Wikipedia, however there are a few lessons to be learned. The key point is to integrate some form of detailed, text information publishing into your site, which preferably has a reference angle i.e. it's not just a page of sales copy.

Take a look at Amazon. Amazon is a product catalog, with a twist. Amazon lets users write reviews. The review text can be crawled by search engines. The existence of review text helps distinguish Amazon from other product catalogs, which to a search engines, would all look pretty much identical i.e. book name, publisher name, price, product description, etc. Search engines tend to relegate duplicate content.

So, you should include a section on your site that allows for the regular publication of unique, reference material. For example, industry news, a trade dictionary, discussion forums, blogs, feedback loops encouraging user content and comment, tutorials, user education, and so on. You might decide to split your web strategy across multiple sites. One site is the corporate umbrella site, another site is information based. Your SEO will likely have many ideas on this front, so the key is to involve them early.

Retrofitting SEO

SEO can be added after a site is launched, but it can be problematic.

Possibly the worst case scenario is a brochure site, consisting of thin product information and mission statements. Links don't tend to flow to such sites, and they don't tend to be information rich. Links will most likely need to be purchased, adding to the cost, and the search engines take a dim view of this practice, so it can increase risk if pushed too hard. If your competitors are attracting links without having to buy them, then they'll always be at a competitive advantage, and be very difficult to catch as each day passes.

There are a couple of ways around this problem. Create a new section of the site devoted to publication of reference material i.e. industry news, a trade dictionary, glossary, discussion forums, blogs, tutorials, and so on.

If the site isn't suited to this approach, consider splitting your web strategy across a number of sites.

Neither are particularly elegant, but the important takeaway point is that SEO isn't something that can just be tweaked under the hood. It needs to be an integral part of your site, and these days, that means adopting some form of information publishing strategy beyond simple sales copy.

User First

The web is about putting the user first, and search is no exception.

Web content is commodity. If your site doesn't have the information the user wants, then there is nothing keeping them on your site, and no reason for them to visit in the first place. There are plenty of other sites. The site that gives the users exactly what they want, wins.

Luckily, in search, the user is already telling you what they want.

SEO's have a great way of mining this information. They can access keyword data, collected by the search engines. This data shows what terms users are looking for. You could create an entire web strategy based on this information.

For example, let's imagine a site owner sells heating systems. It would pay to know that a lot more people search for "solar heating systems" than "boiler heating systems". Obviously, interest in solar energy is increasing, so the owner may want to feature these products more prominently, and provide news on the latest developments by way of a blog. Keyword research shows a lot of people also want to know about installing heating systems, so the owner may want to provide guidance and/or a nationwide list of installers who install his product. That list of installers could be broken down into regions, which will likely attract regional search traffic. The site owner could encourage his national network of installers to link to his site, especially since he has demonstrated he is happy to send traffic their way. The site owner could also include a glossary of heating terminology, in order to cover every conceivable heating related keyword term.

Do the same with your site. Ask "what are the users really looking for?". Ask your SEO to research keyword lists to see what is really on your potential visitors minds. Provide a means to publish this information. Encourage people to link to your site by giving them a good reason to do so. Create genuinely useful content, then have your SEO and marketing teams get out there and hustle that information.

The Message Is Integrated

This is an integrated SEO strategy, based on the idea of putting the user first, giving them what they want, and encouraging them to share it.

Seth Godin wrote a book called "All Marketers Are Liars". In this book, Seth notes that, these days, marketing needs to be integrated into the product from conception. The days of bolting a pretty marketing face on to a generic box, after it comes off the factory line, are long gone.

It's the same thing with search. It should flow through your web strategy, just like usability, your message, your brand, and your language.

We have certainly seen a trend over the last one to two years where Google is focusing on more personalized search and an increasing focus on providing local results. As you know, a searcher does not even have to be burdened with entering a local modifier anymore.

Google will gladly figure out, for you, whether or not your search has local intent. :)

Google's Investment into Local

Late last year Google moved one of their prized executives over to local services, Marissa Mayer. Moving Mayer, fresh off Google Instant and a variety of other high profile areas of Google's search development, to head up local is a real strong reinforcement of how much attention Google is putting on local and local result quality (or perceived quality).

If you are a business owner who operates locally, say a real estate agent or insurance agent or really any other consumer-based service, then this presents a huge opportunity for you if you can harness the targeting and tracking ability available online.

Merging Offline Marketing with Online Marketing

A lot of small businesses or larger businesses that operate locally still rely quite a bit on offline advertising. It use to be that business owners had to rely on staff nailing down exactly how a lead came to them (newspaper ad? radio ad? special discount ad? and so on).

While it is still good practice to do that, relying solely on that to help gauge the ROI of your advertising campaign introduces a good amount of slippage and is not all that accurate (especially if you sell something online).

As local businesses start to see the light with SEO and PPC campaigns versus dropping 5 figures on phonebook advertising, a big selling point as a service provider or an in-house marketing staff member will be to sell the targeting of online campaigns as well as the tracking of those results.

If your a business owner, it's equally important that you understand what's available to you as an online marketer.

Types of Offline Advertising to Track

Locally, you are essentially looking at a few different types of advertising options to work into your new found zest for tracking results:

• Radio
• Television
• Print
• Billboards

Print is probably the most wide-ranging in terms of branches of advertising collateral because you can get into newspapers, magazines, flyers, brochures, banners, yellow pages, and so on.

While your approach may be different to each marketing type, the core tracking options are basically the same. You can track in your analytics program via:

• Separate Domains
• Custom URL's
• Custom Phone Numbers

The beauty of web analytics, specifically a free service like Google Analytics, is that it puts the power of tracking into the hands of a business owner at no cost outside of perhaps a custom set up and implementation by a competent webmaster. All of these tracking methods can be tracked in Google Analytics as well as other robust analytic packages (Clicky.Com as an example, is a reasonably priced product which can do this as well, save for maybe the phone tracking).

Structuring Your Campaigns

With the amount of offline advertising many businesses do, it is easy to get carried away with separate domains, custom URL's, custom phone numbers, and the like.

What I usually like to do is use a good old fashioned spreadsheet to track the specific advertisements that are running, the dates they are running, and the advertising medium they are using. I also include a column or three for the tracking method(s) used (custom URL, separate domain, special phone number).

In addition to this, Google Analytics offers annotations which you can use to note those advertising dates in your traffic graph area to help get an even better idea of the net traffic effect of a particular ad campaign.

How to Track It

Armed with your spreadsheet of ads to track and notes on how you are going to track them, you're ready to set up the technical side of things.

The tracking is designed to track the hits on your site via the methods mentioned, once they get there you'll want to get that traffic assigned to a campaign or a conversion funnel to determine how many of the people actually convert (if you are able to sell or convert the visitor online).

Custom URL's

A custom URL is going to be something like:

yoursite.com/save20 for an advert you might be offering 20% savings on
yoursite.com/summer for an advert you could offer a summer special on

You may or may not want to use redirection. You can use a redirect method if you are using something like a static site versus a CMS like Wordpress. With Wordpress, you could create those url's as specific pages and just no-index them and ensure they are not linked to internally so you keep them out of the search engine and the normal flow of navigation. This way you know any visit to that page is clearly related to that offline campaign.

A redirect would be helpful where the above is not possible and you need to use Google's URL builder to help track the campaign and not lose referral parameters on the 301.

So you could use the URL builder to get the following parameters if you were promoting a custom URL like yoursite.com/save20:

http://www.yoursite.com/savings.php?utm_source=save20&utm_medium=mail&utm_campaign=bigsave

Then you can head into your .htaccess file (Apache) and insert this code:

(should be contained on 1 line in your .htaccess file)

RewriteRule ^save20$ /savings.php?utm_source=save20&utm_medium=mail&utm_campaign=bigsave [L,R=301]

When you test, you should see those URL builder parameters on the landing page and then you know you are good to go :)

If you are worried about multiple duplicate pages getting indexed in the search results (with slightly different tracking codes) you can also leverage the rel=canonical tag on your landing page

<link rel="canonical" href="http://site.com/folder/page/"/>

Separate Domains

Some companies use separate domains to track different campaigns. The idea is the same as is the basic code implementation with exception that you apply any redirect to the domain rather than a sub-page or directory off the domain as we did in the prior example.

So you sell snapping turtles (snappingturtles.com) and maybe you sell turtle insurance so you buy turtleinsurance.com and you want to use that as a part of a large campaign to promote this new and innovative product. You could get this from the url builder:

http://www.snappingturtles.com/?utm_source=national&utm_medium=all&utm_campaign=turtleinsurance

The .htaccess on turtleinsurance.com would look like:

(should be contained on 1 line in your .htaccess file)

RewriteRule .* http://www.snappingturtles.com/?utm_source=national&utm_medium=all&utm_campaign=turtleinsurance [L,R=301]

This would redirect you to the home page of your main site and you can update your .htaccess with a sub-page if you had such a page catering to that specific market.

Custom Phone Numbers

There are quite a few ways to get cheap virtual numbers these days and Phone.com is reliable service where you can get a number for roughly $4.88 per month.

I know companies that implemented custom numbers for a bunch of print ads and it was pretty eye-opening in terms of which as performed better than others and how much money is wasted on untargeted print campaigns.

There certainly is a somewhat intangible brand equity building component to offline ads but it is still interesting to see ads which carry their weight with traffic and response rates, as well as being really helpful when it comes time to reshape the budget.

Here are a couple handfuls of providers which offer phone tracking inside of Google Analytics. Most of these providers will require the purchase of a number from them to tie into a specific URL on your site or just right into the domain + help track those calls alongside the pageviews generated.

Some campaigns are wide-ranging enough to where you may want to target them with a custom number or two and a custom URL or domain. Using a spreadsheet to track these measures along with using Google Analytics annotations to gauge traffic spikes and drops offers business owners deep view into the use of their marketing dollars.

Custom Coupon Codes

If you run a coupon code through Groupon you of course know where it came from. But other channels are also becoming easier to track. Microsoft Office makes it easy to create & track custom coupon codes. There are even technologies to allow you to insert tracking details directly into coupon codes on your own website (similar to online tracking phone numbers via services like IfByPhone or Google's call tracking). Some online coupons offer sophisticated tracking options, and Google wants to get into mobile payments to offer another layer of customer tracking (including coupons).

Finding a Reputable Provider

If you are a business owner who thinks "wow this is awesome, how the heck do I do it?", well here is some advice. If the field of web analytics is mostly foreign to you I would suggest finding a certified Google Analytics provider or ask if your current web company can do this for you. Certainly there are plenty of competent people and companies that are not part of the Google Analytics partner program.

If you are interested in a Google Analytics partner you can search for them here. There is also quite a bit of information in the self-education section of Google Analytics.

I would recommend learning how to do this over a period of time so you can make minor or major changes yourself at some point. Also, it helps to establish a business relationship with someone competent and trustworthy for future tasks that may come up, which you cannot do on your own.

If you are a service provider, start implementing this for some of your local clients and you'll likely be well on your way to establishing yourself as a sought-after marketer in your area.

I’m going to tell you why an SEO Book subscription, for many small businesses, is a much better investment than just hiring a firm or a freelancer.

We, as business owners, all realize that we need an online presence and the backbone of that presence is a top-notch SEO campaign.

Whether it be straight out SEO services, or help with Google Places, or help with reputation management, most small business owners realize they need to be “there” but aren’t quite sure how to do that properly.

You’re a small business owner, so am I and so are many members of our community & industry. Our work lives as small business owners are typically filled with parts of various roles like:

• CEO
• customer service representative
• accountant
• IT manager
• marketing manager
• janitor

The problem is that SEO can be an abstract thing or idea for small business owners outside of the web marketing industry to grasp, learn, and implement correctly.

This problem leads to small businesses getting taken to the cleaners by either woefully inadequate (and expensive!) SEO firms, competing business models (like YellowPages & YellowBook) selling their version of SEO services due to the significant decrease in revenue from the phonebook model, or just plain snake oil salespeople.

There are many qualified SEO providers out there, tons actually. There's a lot of noise as well and when you don't have a clear understanding of the business it can be hard to discern one from the other.

Finding a Worthy SEO Provider

So if a small business owner is able to carefully avoid those situations and find a reputable SEO firm, chances are that the price for those services will be out of reach or just not economical from an ROI standpoint for some small businesses (unless the firm is hurting for business or it's a new firm starting out).

There’s nothing wrong with that, it’s just simple economics. If a service provider can sell their services for 6 or 5 figure contracts consistently, then it doesn’t behoove their business interest to sell services for 4 or 3 figure contracts.

A Better Option

Even if we stipulate that a business can afford to hire a firm to handle their SEO campaign, where it makes sense for both the provider and the buyer, we’d like to present another option.

That option would be an SEO Book subscription :) Compared to hiring an SEO company, your SEO Book subscription:

• is less expensive, resulting an in much higher ROI for your business
• is more direct and hands on, you get unbiased feedback from hundreds of SEO professionals
• gives the owner the ability to learn the ins and outs so they can manage things themselves
• trains the business owner about the industry and best practices so they can intelligently outsource services themselves if they so choose

SeoBook Subscription Options

There are 2 types of SeoBook subscriptions, with different levels of access. The first option is for access to our (over 100) training modules and our premium SEO tool set. The cost of that option is just $69 per month.

The second option is for access to those same training modules and tools, in addition to our community forums. Our community is the cornerstone of our subscription-based membership service.

Inside the forums you have instant access to the most up-to-date, cutting edge information where you will learn from some of the best minds in SEO.

For the purposes of this post I’m going to focus on the option which includes everything.

How Much Would You Invest in You?

When you started your small business you probably thought (correctly) that it was a good idea to at least have a solid understanding of the key concepts related to your business prior to hiring staff to handle day to day tasks.

You probably learned how to operate and troubleshoot equipment, customer service software, the phone system, the coffee pot :) and so on. You likely know who your target market is and you know what type of message you want to convey via print and web design as well as sales copy.

Those are all things that you had to learn in order to grow your business and for your business to function properly.

You Are Your Business

By investing the time in yourself, and by extension to your business, you were able to confidently hire and train staff as well as put together a traditional marketing campaign with the help of local print vendors and maybe your local web design person.

When it comes to something like SEO, where there is no formal education or “certification” (thank goodness), you might have a tough time hiring something to do something you know very little about.

If you don’t know what works and what doesn’t how will you know if the provider is selling you a bag of smoke versus providing an actual quality service? You won’t know, and with what a good SEO campaign from a reputable provider can cost that can cause significant damage to your business.

You Are No Stranger to Hard Work

Investing time, practicing patience, and being willing to learn will reward you and your business many, many, many times over when it comes to the SEO industry. The fact is many people fail because they are lazy and unwilling to learn in addition to having a poor attitude.

You have probably perservered through that and are running a solid business so why not get even more ahead of your competition, lazy or otherwise.

Breaking Down the Costs

Most SEO campaigns can expect to see results in or around 6 months, so we’ll look at the 12 month costs because you should consider SEO (just like traditional marketing) as an ongoing effort to produce results for your business.

From experience I can tell you that a full-on SEO campaign from an experienced SEO or SEO firm for small businesses will likely start at $5,000 per month here in the states. Probably higher for a firm and that amount can flucuate depending on your needs but anything less than thousands per month is unlikely.

When I say full-on I mean the whole deal:

• keyword research
• competitive analysis
• analytics reviews and implementation for testing, tracking, tweaking
• site structure
• on-page SEO (title tags, page copy, and so on)
• off-page SEO, like link building
• adjusting tactics based on rankings growth or decline (and competitor watching)

If you are new to the SEO space you may not know what some of that means, but you know its important (or else you wouldn't be reading this). You know that your visibility on the web is probably a crucial component of your small business’s long-term success.

Would you really want to outsource that for what it might cost you for an employee or two, without knowing exactly what it is the provider is/should be doing?

Don’t Pay 17x More Than You Need To!

So even being conservative in my estimate, you are talking about around $60k per year and that probably doesn’t include additional money you may need for getting links to your site via branding and such.

Meanwhile, you could be investing just $3,600 per *year* in yourself and your business while learning from quite a few of the thought leaders in the SEO space. Perhaps not the biggest self-promoters in the space but certainly some of the best minds.

My dad always told me to be very wary of someone constantly telling you they are the best at XYZ, usually they aren’t. The ones who are the best are doing the job everyday and doing it well, not telling YOU how great THEY are.

It’s important to keep in mind that an SEO book subscription is going to give you the tools you need, the training you need, and more importantly the knowledge you need to be successful. Have a question?

Just ask it in the community forums and we’ll answer it. In fact, many people will answer it and you’ll get wide range of tips from folks with loads of experience and success.

Membership Format

Now, the membership doesn’t mean that we’ll execute the plan for you but you’ll have a step by step guide on what to do, how to do it, why you’re doing it, and the tools you need to do it.

Plus, you have 24/7 access to the community forum which has hundreds of members and is quite active at all hours as we have members from all over the world.

But I Can Do it For Le$$....

There’s probably someone out there that will say “hey I can do that and do it well for like $2k a month”...ok, but even at that price point it’s $24k versus $3,600 per year!!

If you know what to do with your campaign you can easily outsource the “grunt” work for much cheaper dollars + become educated in a field that is very important now, and will be for the foreseeable future. I not only write this as an employee of SEO Book, but also as a person who was a customer for about a year before joining the site. During that time I helped get our company website squared away and learned how to automate or outsource many aspects of our business: from content, to promotion, to additional link development. And if you need help with any of that stuff, there is a requests forum where you can work with some of our members.

Heck, let's even say someone would run a full-service SEO campaign for you at the absurdly low price point of $500/mo! (not likely, given that some quality links cost $299 per year each). Even before link development that's still approaching *double* the cost of an SEO Book subscription while giving you insight from only one person versus hundreds, no premium tools or training modules, and no access to the latest information in the field as well as you not learning SEO from independent, unbiased sources.

In our community you can not only find out what is working right now, but you can also find someone who can help you get the job done without paying for the markup associated with high pressure salesmen or large bureaucratic firms where 50 folks are taking home weekly paychecks for the work done by 5 people.

Discounts on SEO-Related Products

Your SEO Book subscription also comes with tons of discounts on everything from link management software, rank checking applications, SEO conferences, Pay Per Click communities like PpcBlog.Com, web directories which can help with getting exposure/links to your site, social media monitoring services, and many more solid services.

There’s literally *thousands* of dollars in discounts available to our members.

Time is Money, Money is Time

The benefit in outsourcing anything is the time saved and/or the low cost. However, there are typically significant costs (and sometimes irreparable harm) associated with outsourcing any important part of your business to unqualified providers.

Without having the knowledge of what it is you are actually hiring for, you cannot be certain what exactly you are paying for.

Save yourself a lot of money and headaches, learn from the best, and beat your competition in the search engines.

When and if the time comes to hire an SEO firm, you will be fully prepared to make the right decision for your small business. What else could you ask for?