websense

Last year, based on the number of requests we got for help, we built an SEO RFP template and made it available for free download on our site. We’ve updated the template to reflect the increase in demand for the following things to be included in a SEO RFP.

• Social Media Consulting and Optimization
• Online PR content development and distribution
• Advanced Link development strategies and implementation

So, if you’re in the market for any of these services and are looking for at least a place to start in terms of developing your marketing RFP, download this template. Of course, if you contact us, we’ll be happy to help you tailor the rfp template to your business. It’s never our recommendation to take a boilerplate RFP for any professional service and “fill in the blanks”. Thats a quick way to guarantee that the request for proposal won’t help you find the right search marketing vendor.

SEO has proven itself as effective. There are any number of studies dating back a number of years that prove that SEO is no longer a theory, but a science. Research as far back as 2005 gives a definitive answer in the discussion on whether it is a viable marketing tool. With the global economy in a downturn that many economists think won’t begin to turn around until 2010, many businesses are looking at trimming their marketing budget. Unfortunately for many of them, I fear that the first thing to take a cut will be the SEO budget. (Marketing Sherpa has a great article on defending your budget from cuts!)
It’s hard to know exactly how much to spend on any marketing budget. Some smaller businesses spend as little as 2% of their annual sales on marketing, while a medium sized business might spend anywhere up to 10%. No matter what your budget, you need to make it work hard for you. SEO has a proven track record of turning that investment into leads or sales at a higher rate of return than traditional advertising.

Think about it this way, traditional marketing blankets the market, it saturates it, if your budget is big enough. How many times do you fast forward through a commercial, or just flip channels? Do you ever look at the Sunday sale ads? Do you hear the ads on the radio? I’m sure you do, to some extent anyway. How many of those ads even appeal to you, personally? Very few, I’m guessing. They are launched at a broad audience, in hopes that a small fraction of the people receiving the message take the bait. On the other hand, SEO presents your product TO THOSE WHO ARE SEARCHING FOR IT! SEO hands you potential customers, people who have searched for your product and are more ready to purchase than the guy who is trying very hard to ignore the noisy commercial on the radio. I hate to say it, but as our current population ages, and the kids who hog the computer are turning into consumers, SEO is a vital link between your product or service, and the customers who will go to the internet FIRST, to find what they want. They’re smart, too, they will check blogs and forums for reviews, opinions, best prices, etc. before making a purchase. These are the smartest, most well informed consumers in history, so you better be able to show them your product, and why you can provide the best value.

These are simple principles, and many in the SEO industry have been preaching it for years. Amazingly though it’s not being heard. SEO still gets a tiny share of the average marketing budget.

Don’t make the mistake of cutting SEO from your budget. Double it.

Back again with another post about some small steps many Fortune 500s are ignoring in their web site optimization, or lack thereof. Alt attributes, often mistakenly referred to as the “alt tag”, are assigned to images, presented to the user when the image is not available, and optionally, in some browsers when you mouse over the image. Their core purpose is accessibility for browsers that don’t display, or users who cannot see images. See the image below for an example:

Alt Attribute Example

The image displays an alt attribute, but when you scroll over the image, one pops up in real time as well.
They can be one more way to show the SEs what your page is about, give it a little added weight for those terms, and on the user side, it allows the user to know what the image was if it is missing, or can act as a caption of sorts in the browsers that show the attribute when the image is moused over.

Valero, an energy corporation, has one unoptimized ALT attribute for the image on the homepage, with the images through out the site missing the ALT attribute entirely.

General Motors, one of the Big 3 recently receiving a government bailout, uses a lot of flash, which is fine, but the images there are do not have ALT attributes.

Ford Motor Company, like GM, uses a lot of flash, and not too many images, but the ones they do have are missing the ALT attribute.

Here’s an interesting one, Fannie Mae, the much ballyhooed mortgage company, now in a state of disaster, does not use the ALT attribute, or any SEO techniques for that matter.

I know it’s a small thing and can be easily overlooked. But now is the time to be making every effort on behalf of your company, and it’s web presence. It means more now than ever. These optimization steps can be vitally important, especially when combined with a clear strategy in mind. So, take a look at your Alt attributes and take a little time to use them.