websense

There was good attendance and good response to the session, which tells me the market is ready to hear the advantages of getting SEO and Development under one roof. As I mentioned in my last post, the presenters were coming from 2 different perspectives; integrated web shops and specialized SEO shops. It would have been great to have a panelist coming from the perspective on an internal corporate SEO, maybe next time…

Chris Boggs of Brulant was our moderator. He did a great job of facilitating good questions and guiding us in a useful direction.

A brief overview of what each speaker said in their 5 minute presentation, listed in the order they presented:

Geoff Karcher

• SEO and Dev need to work together in 1 consistent effort
• Traditional challenges of working with artists and programmers are similar to challenges between SEO/Dev/Design
• Each group (SEO/DEV/Design) have their own interests and agenda
• Client’s best interest is a combination of the 3.
• All groups need to learn to focus on the user!
• Client should never have to deal with the headache of managing these groups.

Common issues that result from focusing on their own agenda rather than the user’s:

• Flash only pages and sites
• Query strings & session IDs
• Overuse if image based text
• Lack of usability (programmers too focussed on server performance, code efficiency etc. rather than the user’s experience)

Colton Perry (NetPlus Marketing)

• Full service shop allows for easier integration and implementation of efforts.
• Coordination with all forms of marketing (traditional and online) is key.
• SEO team needs to know about off line campaigns and marketing efforts.
• Ability to integrate these efforts so your PPC and SEO campaigns can support offline advertising is huge. An integrated shop makes this integration possible.

He gave some barriers to SEO that can result if teams operate in silos:

• Duplicate Content (resulting from session id’s, cookies etc)
• Indexing Issues
• Critical content only being accessible via forms or pop-ups.
• Lack of a sitemap
• Poor, vague or no title tags.
• Ugly URLs

Sage Lewis (SageRock)

• It’s better to buy separate specialized components rather than 1 unit. He made a creative analogy using an image of a tv/vcr unit as compared to a component based audio video system. The first image stated “All in one shop: If one part breaks the whole thing is junk”. This slide was followed up with a graphic of an AV system with about 14 different components, which read “A specialty Shop, if it matters you buy components”. The message being that several, specialized, vendors will perform better than an integrated shop.
• SEO-only firms offer more specialized services; they are focused.
• Coordination & communication between the SEO firm, development shop, site host, other marketing/design firms and the client is key, but can be challenging.
• Referenced the Clash of the Titans to illustrate the challenge in trying to coordinate different specialists, but stressed how important it is to manage this effectively.

He mentioned some of the differences in opinion that specialized shops might have:

Specialized Development Shop may think:
SEO will turn your design into stone.
There is no value in SEO.
Some SEO requests are not possible.

Specialized SEO Shop may:
Often be belligerent and inflexible.
Have extreme all or noting attitueds.
Often recommend you destroy everything and do it their way.

Sage also listed some common Developer Values and some Common SEO Values:

Developer Values: Design is Job 1. Portray the brand beautifully. User Experience.

SEO Values: Ranking is Job 1. Optimize for user and algorithm. Focus on experience and conversion.

In summary, Sage said that hiring specialists can create a highly advanced website. Though, it’s up to the client/site owner to promote intense communication between what he called “warring factions” to build a successful site.

I have my thoughts about whether or not a client should have to manage vendors with such different agendas to try and achieve success; but that’s a topic for another post!

Second post coming soon to cover Q&A. Some great discussion came out of this!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 5th, 2007 at 2:13 pm and is filed under Events & Speaking. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.