<p>Thanks for getting back to me.</p>

<p>Hi Gianluca,<br />Is that 100% confirmed that EMD hasn't been rolled out across outside of Google.com? I haven't found any other evidence to support, but in one particular vertical I work in we are seeing ridiculously poor quality EMD's still ranking.<br /><br /></p>

<p>Hi Tom, </p><p>Great post, however we hired you for more than your love of online gambling and poker play.. you were obviousoly a very bright chap, you were personable and had a great sense of humour.. to be a great agency that customers want to work with, your staff need to be two things, <u>really nice people</u> and <u>really good at their jobs </u>! you ticked both of those boxes and from my contact with distilled this is something that is also practiced over there. </p><p>looking forward to your next iteration.. does it happen doctor who stylee with lots of light and explosions?? </p><p>&nbsp;</p>

<p>it always makes sense to target the long tail.. but even just to stop the panic calls from the client when their CEO googles their main &#39;big head&#39; terms and kicks off when they arent No.1 you cant ignore the &#39;Big Head&#39;.&nbsp; It aint right, it aint logical but it is reality.. got to keep the ROI metrics strong but you&#39;ve also got to take into account the vanity terms if you want to keep the account!</p><p>So in my experience you always have to do both.</p><p>&nbsp;</p>

useful post rand, and helpful diagrams for use with clients.. however experience teaches they&#39;ll still want to be No.! on top keyword &#39;x&#39; I think its a impossible battle to win.

<p>Harsh thumbing there!</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>

<p>I would just like to add to my earlier comments that GA whilst I am addicted GA is really only accurate enough for trend analysis not absolute figures (for the reasons in my earlier comment, 6 month cookie lifespan though you can change this, reliance on 3rd party cookies where others use 1st party, flaws in ecommerce tracking). </p><p>Systems like omniture, tealeaf and so on offer in my experience greater accurancy and detail, they are hampered however by their absolutely terrible usability and in particular the lack of visual trend analysis over timewhich is an amazing feature of GA (or urchin as we used to know it). </p><p>The other flaw is it that it can only track up to 4 goals which is often a major issue for us requiring the need for multiple profiles to be joined to one account and removing the ability to see total conversions in one place.</p><p>another flaw is that on high volume sites when appying segments to a report it defaults to sampled data which is in my experience unusable. You can overcome this using custom reports but still. </p><p>I and most of my clients would be prepared to pay for a heavier version of GA if they could addres these flaws, we want omniture power in the GA interface and currently often run both on client sites to try to overcome this.</p><p>so Google if you are listening offer us the following and you coud put omniture out of business:</p><p>1. more (unlimited) goals</p><p>2. no sampled results (maybe this will go when it comes out of beta???)</p><p>3. Options on cookie expiration</p><p>4. options on cookie types (3rd party, 1st party etc)</p><p>5. wtf is going on with ecommerce tracking?</p><p>6. automatic detection of paid search traffic form at least the main vendors even without binding the GA account to adwords</p><p>rant over</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>Alex</p>

<p>Hmm I love GA mainly for the ease of use of its interface but there are a couple of concerns:</p><p>1. the GA cookie persists for 6 months! thats right 6 months see <a href="http://www.searchabilityinc.com/2009/03/25/does-referring-source-persist-across-sessions-in-google-analytics/" rel="nofollow">here </a>amonst many other posts on this, most others are for 30 days. this means that if a vistior visits via an organic result but converts via ppc 5 months later credit will be given to organci listings</p><p>2. Im not sure I agree with the 95-99% tracked against most client systems GA under reports by around 15% in my experience, particularly if your client sells to major corporates or the public sector most of whom block cookies</p><p>3.&nbsp; ecommerce tracking is a work of fantasy, i have yet to see a client where this is within even 50% of the real picture, usually over reports hugely (maybe we&#39;re missing something on the set up??)</p><p>Dont get me wrong, you dont want to be sat near me when I&#39;m having to use Omniture (its a constant stream of obscenity) and I really love the GA interface and I (Alex) am a GA addict. but it has its flaws and some of them are significant, the only real indicator of an order is the cash in your clients bank account and thats the only source you can trust 100%.</p><p>Cheers</p><p>Alex (Bloom Media) </p>

<p>Hi Great post, </p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>We actually create a sub section in the project plan for the site launch, we find that simply listing the actions still leaves too much room for oversight or last minute changes breaking previously checked items.&nbsp; </p><p>As the launch &amp; test team includes both agency and client it is important to identify the tasks that must be completed, their logical sequence, interdependance and what can be carried our consecutively to save time.&nbsp;</p><p>Pulling this all together into a project plan clearly identifies who must do what and what collaboration is required, task by task, this is converted into a test plan that references not only to the items listed here but also to the agreed specification, a site that doesnt throw back a 404 but doesnt actually perform as specified is just as broken.&nbsp;</p><p>Once the testing has been completed both the client and agency sign off the site, noting any exceptions which can be addressed post launch and the site is site live.&nbsp;</p><p>So in addition to the list here I would add:</p><p>1. Create a test plan (usually a check list in excel)</p><p>2. Create a launch plan (in MS project or similar)</p><p>3. Present both the test plan and launch plan to the client ensuring everyone knows what is expected of them and when and how the process will work.</p><p>4. Execute the testing according to the plan and take physical sign off from the client</p><p>5. launch!</p><p>Hope that adds some value</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>Cheers</p><p>Alex </p><p>&nbsp;</p>

<p>Hi Sam, </p><p>Great post. I think one other thing that is often missed is the brand promise.. often the inner pages drop the messaging that shows the visitor why this product/service is different, its USP&#39;s and fail to quickly communicate that the site the visitor has landed upon is a) relevant to their search b) is cheap/high quality/whatever their USP&#39;s are and sells the benefits of the product / service, often these mesages are on the home page but presumed to have been read and understood once on inner pages. </p><p>Great first post</p><p>Cheers</p><p>Alex&nbsp; </p>

<p>Great post!</p><p>I&#39;ve had good and bad experiences with funding..and I think you highlight a critical point here.. some VC funds come with very little other than the cash and a focus on when the return will come.. as a young entrepreneur what I really needed was cash + mentoring not just the cash.. the rapid growth we delivered was a chaotic and stressful experience.&nbsp;</p><p>Just at the point we parted company with our funders I gained acces to a business mentor whom we later invited onto our board and who now acts as chairman. This has given me many of the things you mention.. a boss, access to experienced busienss advice, someone to &#39;hold your feet against the fire&#39; all of which are vital to sucess and to the person running/leading the operation.. so I&#39;m not sure that VC funding is the only solution/way to gain access to the list of learnings you provide here.. if you can find a bank willing to support (which we now have) and bring on experienced board members (you&#39;ll need to incentivise them with equity to get full commitment) you can access both funding and senior expertise without going the VC route.&nbsp;</p><p>Just thought this might show readers that there is more than 1 way to fund growth and get access to a more senior board to help you to manage that growth but even this route isnt without its challenges.</p><p>Thanks again, Rand. Really, really interesting post. </p><p>Alex </p>

<p>Thanks Rand.. would be great to see the results of the tests you mention.. wow what a change for SEO.. the industry remains anything but boring.</p><p>I guess very careful attention to site structure and hierarchy is required here, its going to push SEO&#39;s to demand some significant site design changes and we&#39;ll have to be very carefulwe dont harm site usability in the process.</p>

<p>just like to echo the sentiments of the others here.. you&#39;ve got to empathise with Google a bit here... its a logical if slightly harsh way to enforce the unenforceable!</p><p>&nbsp;</p>

<p>yeah could be a problem for clients where the vocal minority choose to take digital umbridge.. </p><p>equally a golden opportunity for clients that are able to motivate their customers to evangelise about their brand.. an interesting challenge for the client/agency!</p><p>love this industry, it is never ever boring:-) </p>

<p>I agree, it looks mainly like the evolution of Google, they cant stand still, nor would we want them to. I do wonder how sucessful some of these ideas will be though.</p><p>Guess they&#39;ve got to try them to find out!</p><p>&nbsp; </p>

<p>hi there, </p><p>I&#39;m not sure how the logic of this flows.. partnership is surely about listening to each others point of views above all else!? Surely your point &quot;we need to listen to them at least as much as they listen to us.&quot; is supportive of the partnership approach?&nbsp;</p><p>This partnership is one between client and supplier, and those roles remain clear and of course the person paying the bills has the ultimate decision whether or not to commission work. I&#39;m not suggesting partnership means you have to agree all the time, just that you all have equal seats at the table, all be it in different ways with different roles.&nbsp; </p>

<p>Hi Yoshimi, </p><p>I&#39;m not sure I agree with your comments here, if I could address your points one by one... firstly clients choosing to pay for initial work on a tender isn&#39;t unheard of and I have been in several tenders where this was a decision made by the client without our suggestion. It is most relevant where the project is particularly large or complex and a considerable amount of time is required to understand things like the clients existing systems in order to enable the agency to make suggestions that are a) possible and b) delivered with a meaningful cost estimate.I guess this is usually only the case for larger organisations which is where most of our experience lies perhaps you arent so familiar with this scenario?</p><p>Your second point is about travelling to the agency, again this is something I have seen stipulated by clients as part of the the tender process, not an agency suggestion. In my experience the best run tenders always make this a mandatory stage of the process. My point is that I as the MD of my agency am not likely to be part of the actual team that will work on the client project, yet in the service sector and in particular the digital sector the product is the people in the agency, it is imperative that the client see&#39;s what they are actually buying not the &#39;slick sales guy&#39; or the extremely experienced team member that wont actually touch their project. I really do think this is invaluable fo the client decision making. Also it is easy to project an image of your agency in a pitch that may in fact be wildly different form the reality, only a site visit will give the client the true picture. I could give you lots of examples of claims agencies make that would be dispelled by a visit (team sizes, for instance). </p><p>Finally you make apoint about partnership and frankly this saddens me. We aim to strike relationships up with client that last for years, we undertake complex and challenging projects which drive millions of pounds in revenue for our clients. To me this can only be sucessful if the relationship is seen as a partnership, the client needs to be aware of and sensitive to the needs of the agency, the levels of commitment, cash flow requirements etc that will enable the agency to properly support them. In return the agency will go the extra mile to service the client and deliver or over deliver against the desired results. Our most sucessful relationships involve board level representation within our clients organisations enabling us to see their business challenges through their eyes, we are therefore able to add maximum value in our recomendations to our client and ensure we deliver the best results. Clients should be choosy about who they select to work with but it is just as important for agencies to also make sure that the clients they choose to work with share their values otherwise you undertake a lot of hard work for little if any reward. I am in partnership with most of my clients (I admit not all) and they would be proud to describe our relationship in these terms.</p><p>I doubt I will persuade you to see this from my point of view here, but I would like to make the point that I am not alone in this point of view and many clients and agencies do run tenders according to the principals I outlined in my original post. I am not saying every tender requires paid consultancy but some do, I am not saying every contract requires genuine partnership but I would say most would benefit greatly from this.&nbsp; </p><p>&nbsp; </p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp; </p><p>&nbsp;</p>

that would be great, would love to see those notes

totally agree.. and a well run tender process should be about finding an agency with whom that relationship can develop.. it is as much about the relationship as it is about the products/services..

<p>i think thats a great idea.. its partly what i was alluding to when i said the pitches should be held at the agency no at the client but you are right an earlier meeting could help sort any issues out earlier in the process.</p><p>&nbsp;</p>

<p>Rand i think this is a fantastic post, I&#39;ve read through some of the comments below and I cant understand any criticism levelled at this type of contemplation.&nbsp;</p><p>We all have to take time to be introspective, if we fail to analyse our past actions, emotions, points of stress we cant process those experiences and learn from them. I think your post poses some interesting questions about the pervasion of social media into our lives.. particularly someone like yourself who is so deeply immersed.&nbsp;</p><p>I think you could almost view your experience as an experiment into the affects of technology on the modern psyche and in particular the invasion of scoial media... of always being at work. </p><p>I wonder what retirement will mean to you.. is it the day you turn off your twitter, facebook etc? and free yourself of these responsibilities..? &nbsp; </p>

thanks will.. we&#39;re going to try all avenues so fingers crossed

<p>great post Tom, would be great to see Matt Cutts&#39; thoughts on this. As you know we&#39;re battling with what looks like an algorithmic penalty.. we&#39;re mid clean up and will let you know when the re-inclusion request has been submitted and the consequential results.</p><p>I&#39;d be interested to know if anyone has any experience of sucessfully removing links from the digital point network now that it is closed.. or other spammy link sources that ignore the more obvious means of communictation, do cease and desist orders work with these types of spammy networks or do they just ignore them?</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;&nbsp; </p><p>&nbsp; </p>

yes its often a c&#39;*k on the block moment.. you can do all the forecasts you like but ultimately its often a leap of faith for the client until you have some real data to refine the model

<p>You are of course right, but I think the point here is that whilst in past digital could sit on the &#39;outside&#39; of marketing, this is no longer the case, to be a digital marketeer is to understand all of the channels you mention and the marketing mix. </p><p>Almost every peice of offline marketing communication has a digital consequence (just look at a clients web stats when their TV campaign is running). The question is whether you want a marketeer with a bit of an understanding of digital or whether to be a marketeer in the future and lead Big Co you need to be a digital marketeer with the understanding of offline marketing I mention above. I guess its all about balance and how important digital is (or should be) to that particular Big Co. Increasingly Digital is moving up the pecking order but you are right that wont suit every business. </p>

totally agree Tom, we&#39;re seeing clients recruit for positions in reputation management, blog management and making major changes to their business processes to enable them to react to the information we are feeding in to their businesses. Increasingly their back office systems roll back MI that clearly evaluates the ROI we contribute to the business.. it is still rare with only a couple of our clients really cracking it and letting us &#39;break in&#39; but those that have are seeing huge returns.

<p>Spot on Will! and i totally agree with the sentiment of this post. I think if you take a step back even further, this rolls into the cycle of Big Co board being led by Marketeers/Sales Directors in times of growth and then reverting back to &quot;money men&quot; when the growth needs consolodation and restructure. </p><p>I think in this context it is inevitable that the when the company looks for growth and in turn to individuals that will position the buisiness as &#39;market led&#39; (another big change from the &#39;product led&#39; businesses of yester year) that in the rise and rise of digital, a background in our indusrty will be seen as essential. How else will Big Co position itself in its market when its route to market is increasingly digital. However I would argue that in the same way Big Co didnt set up inhouse TV advert production teams, they will recognise that the best place for ideas to flurish is in their agencies, but they must be competant in this sector to make the right choices about which agencies they work with. </p><p>&nbsp;You&#39;ve fuelled my own thought process about this again and i feel a blog post coming on ;-) </p><p>Our industry is coming of age and this type of post and this type of discussion is a sure indicator of the challenges and opportunites that lie ahead for us! bring it!&nbsp; </p>

<p>Hi Rand, </p><p>We sometime see something similar, i find if i omit one or two of the sites i am trying tocompare it usually works. Might be a load issue?</p><p>Cheers</p><p>Alex </p>

<p>Hi Rand, </p><p>Just wanted to say how completely amazing this tool is. We work with some fairly major brands in competitive sectors and the insights we are gaining from this data is helping us no end. We have already been able to track the impact of our link building work, show our clients competitve benchmarking summaries and win new busienss on the basis of the data we are leveraging to acheive top results for our clients.&nbsp;</p><p>You have made our agency stronger and better at what we do!</p><p>Thank you</p><p>Alex </p><p>&nbsp;</p>

<p>yeah I guess it isnt really a valid description any more, I suppose we describe ourselves as Digital Agencies now?? my thought being here that the majority of the manhours required are typically in &#39;development&#39; tasks. I&#39;m certainly not thinking about a &#39;technical&#39; agency but one that combines the creative, technical, useability, seo&nbsp; and strategy skills.</p><p>I hestiate to use the phrase &#39;full service digial agency&#39; but I do increasingly find myself using it..&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp; </p>

<p>Hi All, </p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>Ok so here is how I see it. My post poses two initial questions:</p><p>1. Should SEO Agencies Exist?</p><p>2. Are their days numbered? </p><p>And asks where we all feel it sits best as a service.. So I&#39;ll start with the first question.. should SEO agencies exist?</p><p>1. I think Kenneth Dreyer hit it on the head here, clients want a digital strategy, they want results! the problem is that until recently they havent known how to ask for this and agencies haven&#39;t known how to provide it. I guess this is a quirk of the fact that we sit somewhere between marketing and technology and also that by enlarge the managers of agencies have been young entreprenuers (I was 23 when I started Bloom.. what did I know??)</p><p>Consequently clients asked technical agencies for websites, they didnt know what SEO was so didnt know how to ask for it, were disapointed when their website didnt make them a .com millionairre and then started to ask their agency why they werent getting more traffic etc.&nbsp;</p><p>The development agency often saw their job as done with the launch of the site.. so the response was to send the client to someone who could help.. and the SEO agency landscape was born.</p><p>(Ok that&#39;s a bit over simplified but essentially I think it is true, you also got similar things happening from creative agencies etc.)</p><p>The problem being here that the client asked for a website when what they meant to ask for was a sucessful digital marketing strategy and its implementation, and the agency being asked to provide the website didnt have the breath of skills or experience to identify and serve this market.&nbsp;</p><p>So in conclusion, I dont think they should exist, if things had been done properly at the outset we would have sold our clients digital marketing strategies and implementation from the outset. This would of course have included not just the website but the marketing elements such as SEO.&nbsp;</p><p>However by enlarge this wasnt what happened (and in many cases still isnt) so the SEO agnecy world does exist and rightly so given this background.</p><p>My second question asks if their days are numbered?</p><p>2. This I think is more difficult to answer, I think that the market space <u>is</u> being squeezed as i outlined in my original post, but I guess a certain comfort has been established with the status quo.</p><p>I also think that the fast pace of our sector always creates opportunities for those quick enough to react to carve a space at the bleeding edge, a place where most agencies dont have the time/will to go until things are a little more settled and proven. </p><p>So in conclusion no I think SEO agencies are here to stay. </p><p>Finally i ask where it sits best.. and this is probably the most controvercial element of my response.. I will talk about an ideal world here so Im not suggesting this will be the future. </p><p>I belive passionatley that SEO Sits best with a development agency, but <u>only</u> if that agency is able to provide the digital strategy for the client. The perfect website project pulls together user experience, creative, technology, SEO, back office integration etc, within the context of understanding why the site is being built and the market place in which it will operate. Critical to its sucess is the ability to rank highly and to pull in relevent traffic which then converts.&nbsp;</p><p>In an increasingly competitive market, the site must be designed to rank, retrofitting SEO to an existing website is always less preferable, and whilst SEO teams can consult on a build, my peronal experience is that opportunities to find innovative and creative ways to provide the SEO design and tools required are missed unless this is an integrated part of the development team. When you also take into account the use of content management systems, blogs, link bait ideas, PPC landing pages etc etc. unless your client is an expert in digital, a lead agency needs to assume responsibility for coordination of all of this to achive the best results.</p><p>I&#39;d be interested to hear your thoughts.. </p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>Alex&nbsp; &nbsp; </p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>

<p>Hmm.. in house. </p><p>I&#39;m not so sure about that one...I think that very much depends on the client and whether they want to become experts in digital as well as experts in what they do. Most traditional businesses do not and prefer to focus on being better at what they do and therefore outsource their marketing, digtial etc. The notable exception to this are of course .com businesses. </p><p>In my experience in house teams struggle to attract and retain the best talent as the rising stars of our sector want the agency kudos on their CV and the range of big brand experience that comes with it. As an agency owner I am of course aguably biased here but I do think most clients also appreciate that the range of experience individuals gain by working at an agency benefits their account. You just cant gain that range of exposure within an inhouse team.</p><p>So I guess I would agree that within online businesses you are almost definitely right, as their website is often what they sell and is their only route to market, but within the more traditional business arena I think it will always make sense to outsource.</p><p>I&#39;ll give this some more thought and I&#39;ll pick this up again in my full response.&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>Thanks Will</p><p>Alex </p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp; </p><p>&nbsp;</p>

<p>Hi all, </p><p>Thanks for the considered feedback and debate so far. There seems to be a trend emerging for options 1 &amp; 2 (perhaps not unsuprisingly). I&#39;m going to let the post run until the end of the week and then put my own thoughts forward. </p><p>Have to say that already some of my original thoughts on this have been challenged. </p><p>Cheers</p><p>Alex&nbsp; </p>

<p>Hi Tom, </p><p>Great post!</p><p>I think it highlights the problem with clients struggling to see that SEO is a marketing solution not an IT problem. I regularly hit a brick wall when trying to get the marketing manager to act on this knowledge, their own lack of confidence in their understanding of the issues makes them scared to confront the IT decision makers. </p><p>We often find ourselves stuck in the middle of a power struggle between these two functions and of course this isnt suprising considering what we do is use technology to solve marketing problems.&nbsp; </p><p>I think the digital age is forcing these two functions of a business to work together in ways in which the people involved find uncomfortable, the personality types are often so different from each other it is hard to foster a team spirit and get them to work together to solve these issues. At the end of the day IT is a support function but often they hate to see it that way.&nbsp;</p><p>The consequence is that IT implement an ecommerce system that solves the busienss process issues but fails to deliver the marketing potential.&nbsp;</p><p>I remember having this discussion with the upmarket super market chain you havent mentioned in your post soon after they launched a site based in frames running under a sinlge URL! the look on the face of the head of the development team was priceless as i expalined the limitations of the system he had deployed.</p><p>keep up the good work! </p><p>&nbsp; </p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>

<p>Hi Rand, </p><p>You ask how we can fight this perception and i think you have already identified the solution. All &#39;decent&#39; SEO&#39;s know what they are doing is right and whilst it is upsetting to see others tarnish the reputation of our profession the only course of action is to just keep on doing what we are doing and keep doing it better and better. </p><p>If we were to do as this blog suggests and give up the term SEO we would just be admitting defeat and anyway whatever we subsequently decided to call our profession would just suffer the same fate.&nbsp;</p><p>I think we keep the faith and eventually these guys will fade away.&nbsp;</p><p>Also i think Google and the other SE&#39;s have got a role to play here by improving their own systems to become better at identifying black hat techniques they can help us regain our reputation.</p><p>Finally in my experience its about finding clients that appreciate a good SEO and are willing to pay a premium for the service, a small number of high value clients that appreciate you means a happy agency!&nbsp; </p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp; </p>

Well done Distilled! It&#39;s great to see you doing so well.