One of the more interesting aspects of my work is competitive intelligence. Who is competing in the market, using what tactics, and with what success? When limited to online activities, CI shows you what they *have been* doing, not what they may be doing now. However, as I learned quite well during my 10 years working with neuropsychologists, past behavior is indicative of future performance when it comes to humans. People will do what they’ve done before.

So when I see an SEO in his late forties with a new yacht, I am desperate to examine his web properties and PR image. Where did he find his success, yes, but more importantly is his success built upon a foundation of outdated websites and a circa 2001 online business model? or even better, *one* outdated website in one vertical?

What are the odds that a comfortable #1 spot holder with a family of teenagers and a world-capable yacht will rise to a modern day SEO challenge to his top spots?

One argument is he has the funds to kick into gear and hire the best staff to retain that top spot in the face of a threat. True. But that human behavior thing suggests that he did not hire the best and brightest on the way up. In fact, it appears he kept things very close to his chest (including profits). Odds are very strng that he would do as he has done before, having been reinforced for the behavior with a yacht.

Another argument is that he will sell his holdings rather than fight, even if he doesn’t act until he is #3 and #4 in the SERPs having lost the top placement to my challenge. I accept that possibility, but it has nothing to do with me as competing SEO. All that does is further distract him from meeting the competitive challenge, or further underline this as an opportunity for me. A perfectly ripe pear hanging from a tree branch must be picked or it will rot. Someone has to eat it.

Modern day SEO can overcome many current top placeholders in the SERPs. I have had clients approach me after they watched their business lose the top spots to a newcomer over more than a year’s time. What were they doing for that year? You got it: watching their properties drop from the #1 spots, and watching the new guy get energized with his success as he rose to the top. What they see now is a new guy at the top, but they don’t see what he is doing now. What he did before is indicative of what he will continue to do - challenge the incumbants, compete, and dominate. What will they do now, after watching themselves get overrun for a year?

It’s not a pretty picture. I encourage them to hire some quality SEO talent and get out of the way as much as possible.

I wrote this post because I have always viewed SEO as a form of competitive webmastering, while many webmasters consider SEO as a set of tricks to rank in search engines. Webmasters don’t need to hire SEOs. Business owners should hire SEOs to out perform other webmasters.

I’ve been succeeding at SEO since 1996 so obviously I have understood the nature of the game as it changed over time. Actually, I never really participated much in the “hard core” SEO of the late nineties, where small technical tweaks earned temporary top ranks. I always played the long term SEO game, where thematic associations (achieved hrough links, yes, but also significantly influenced by semantics), content, and relationships between web pages worked the SERPs.

Lately I have been enaged in discussions with more advertising and PR people. In the past, they did their own thing and hired SEOs when they needed technical web site work or link love. Nowadays they seem to agree that what-has-become-known-as-seo is critically important to their disciplines.  Is SEO part of Public Relations? Not in the old SEO sense (technical web page factors) but yes for the modern SEO where words, content, and relationships rule. I think people’s perception of SEO is quite different from actual SEO. As usual, though, we have to deal with perceptions when we deal with clients, customers, and audiences.

There is definitely room for PR people (public relations firms) in the modern SEO world. True, I get a backlink in minutes where a relationship manager might take a week of client massaging (and spend some change on drinks or lunches), but those slow links are valuable as well. If the SEO guides the PR guy to buy obtain those links from the right places, in the proper SEO form, an SEO-PR Guy team could be quite powerful.

If you are a PR guy and interested in exploring PR-SEO relationships, let’s talk. I’m in Seattle and Vancouver quite a bit, and New York and Denver every few months (so you can buy me lunches). Otherwise, I am very comfortable working from home over the web. Let’s do it your way to start. Your way seems like more fun.

Someone calling himself “Daniel R.” has started a blog that explores the integration of Public relations (PR) and SEO. I call him “someone calling himself Daniel R.” because that is part of that I consider a problem with traditional PR when it says it wants to “get” the web. The web is largely about commitment. You need to blurt it out, take a stand, express your opinion, and be prepared to handle the consequences. And that handling of consequences will characterize you.

Daniel R. says he is a member of NetImpact, which he refers to as “a young professionals organization focusing on Social Corporate Responsibility”. I went and looked at the netimpact web pages because I am very much interested in social responsibility. I had never heard of NetImpact, but that’s not too surprising. On the web pages I saw a picture of a group of NetImpact “young MBAs” standing in front of a white truck marked “Food Bank”:

Now Food Bank sounds great. But what is that corporate logo on the truck? You know, the big red lettering? Right where it says CONAGRA FOODS? You know Conagra, one of the largest processed foods manufacturers in the world. One of the big players, often named alongside Archer Daniels Midland. Think genetically modified foods slipping into the distribution chain (search StarLink fiasco), think global corporations prohibiting farmers from saving their own seeds to replant, think food companies that seek to use chemicals in place of natural foods whenever possible in order to save pennies, when there remain significant unanswered questions about the safety of food additives, the safety of huge scale processed foods, possible connections between food additives and ADHD and other childhood disorders, etc.

Now I am not at all accusing ConAgra Foods of any wrong doing. And of course they are AT LEAST providing some sort of support to this Food Bank (at least the picture says so..). As a cynic tough,  I wonder what the tax writeoff was on the foods they donated to the food bank? As a marketer I wonder what that branding and “PR” was really worth… if they had needed to purchase it. As a human I wonder about the value of all of those high-energy MBAs volunteering to work for NetImpact. Hmmm….
Anyway the point is not ConAgra or NetImpact… the point is commitment. I welcome Daniel R. to the SEO space (as if I had any diplomatic role to play in the SEO space! Hah! Now that’s funny!). He’s only written a few posts, but his topics are good… Public Relations needs SEO, and SEO may benefit from working with Public Relations people. The question in my mind is, why should they? And why should I listen to Daniel R. If I don’t even know his full name?

SEO is fast moving and aggressive. SEO is opinionated, because as SEOs we see the real deal and work on metrics. We know what works, even though the web guy and the systems guy with 30 years experience might think otherwise. We know what will get results, even if the marketing department wants to wait until Nielson or Comscore say it’s ok. Perhaps most importantly, we want to be proven wrong, because if you can’t prove us wrong we know we are right. And if you can prove us wrong, all that does is enable us to fix what’s wrong and move ahead.

SEO is about metrics and results, which come with accountablity. Is PR too often about propaganda and cover up?  Does today’s crop of PR people have what it takes to run with SEO? Is that even a smart thing to do?

Natasha over at ThreadWatch nailed it today with her commentary on corporations seeking SEOs as employees. In “Everyone and their momma wants to hire an SEO these days” she says:

As someone who recently went Corporate, I gotta say, it wasn’t difficult finding a job. The difficult part was finding a company that “got it”. Listings where they would want the SEO to do SEO, PPC, Metrics & Analytics and pay them under $100K a year got a “Are you out of your mind?” response from me. Because they obviously didn’t get the amount of work involved. And I thought, the person who takes that position must really be a masochist… or so new to SEO that they don’t “get it”.

That sounds right on, but not too different from most other jobs. Isn’t it typical that the employer doesn’t “get it”, asks for too much, sets unrealistic goals based on the wrong outcome metrics, etc? Isn’t it typical that a qualified candidate has to wade through the lesser-quality job offerings? Or is it different for SEOs because SEO is one of the few truly performance-based endeavors out there, and also one of the least understood? Employers “get” the sales department. They pay salepeople that produce, and churn the ones that don’t.

The difference for SEO is the technical nature of it. SEO rocks boats. It makes waves. And it backs up the “I’m telling you” with the boldest form of “I told you so” there is - measurable performance.

I know a few web people. I know designers, coders, and programmers (and yes, I know the difference). They all have their own special talents and areas of exceptional talent, knowledge and/or ability. But when they get together they don’t usually show each other up. A top designer isn’t usually going to be so highly skilled in coding to debate a coder about some scripting technique or Apache server issue. Even a great web developer doesn’t usually know enough about website accessibility or CSS validation to engage the CSS person in a high level “collegial” discussion. That’s what makes them so team-worthy. They have high levels of expertise that contribute to the success of the project, without threatening the other players on that higher plane of “personal worth”. Nobody could do it without everybody. They need each other, and benefit from each other’s abilities.

Enter the qualified SEO (let’s say, Natasha Robinson joins the “team”). Now I am sure Natasha has better people skills that I do but from the get-go Natasha, as SEO, is threatening to the rest of the players. The SEO knows a helluvalot about CSS as it relates to WHAT MATTERS. When the CSS designer wants to implement a new idea, the team used to defer to the CSS person for that “judgement”. But now the SEO has an opinion, and that opinon is either supported by observations or can be demonstrated (there is anecdotal or empirical evidence). It’s not just talk. The SEO can hold a candle to the CSS designer, on topics of CSS and web site performance.
Now when the Apache person makes some server configuration changes in order to streamline maintenance or harden the network, the only person who used to care was the CTO. Now, the SEO also has a professional stake in server configuration issues. As long as the web server appears to be working, the others are fine. So the SEO becomes a P.I.T.A. for the sysadmin. Since when did the all mighty sysadmin have to clear her server adjustments with anyone other than the CTO?

And when the PHP coder wants to deploy a custom templating system and is able to do so in a way that is helpful to the designer and virtually transparent to the end user or browser, he already has the necessary buy-in from the team players. It is the SEO who still may have something to say about it. Not hostile, and delivered with excellent people skills, but based on outcome metrics and not professional development or intellectual curiosity. SEO certainly “gets in the way”.
It just got harder and less interesting to work at Company X, for all those who thoroughly enjoy their own niche areas and have become accustomed to certain freedoms in the workplace. Does anyone else recall the late 1990’s when “management” of dot coms was all about understanding and handling “primadonnas, know it alls, greasy pigs, and TheWickedWitchOfTheNorth”?

It’s no fun to be “the SEO” in a typical corporation. Nobody likes a know-it-all, or a Quality Assurance person looking over his shoulder and second-guessing his decisions. Unless it is a quality company that engages employees in success metrics and profit sharing. Unless it is a team that truly desires to achieve collectively defined goals that align with the goals of SEO. Unless the position has sponsorship from upper management. Unless there is a communications channel to the CTO *and* business unit managers. Unless it is a learning environment. Unless… yeah. What Natasha said.

The Business.com ad is here. Check out the list of duties and requirements. Geesh. The very fact that they posted this as a Monster ad suggests they don’t get it, regardless of their recent SEO history. These jobs should be recruited, and that SEO should have staff.