SEO Questions I hate answering.
Posted Thursday, May 18th, 2006. Filed under Internet Marketing Tips, Jim's Crazy Ideas, Link Building, SEO FAQ's, Yahoo Marketing.
Today I got an email asking "for the investment, what kind of return can we expect?" My answer: I have no idea. Here are some other questions I hate getting, and my common answers.
What Pagerank should I expect? I don't know, and it doesn't matter anyway — what's the PR of the top 10 sites for your target phrases? How many links each month will you get for me? As many as we can by hand for the time you're paying for; it's not a numbers game, it's a quality game.
Can I spend a smaller amount now and raise my budget later? If you start low you might never get anywhere, and then never have the money to pay more. How about a percentage of my business instead of payment? I have employees and a family to feed, so credit isn't an option — just keep paying the monthly bill.
How long will it take to be in the top 10? I don't know. How old is your site compared to the top 10? How many backlinks, and what quality, compared to them? Can your site attract natural backlinks, or are you 100% relying on SEO? An SEO is only part of your solution — how much are you helping?
May 18th, 2006 at 5:49 pm
The one I get is… I won’t pay until I rank on top for my keywords and not before. I could say.. good luck! I am sure a black hat guy can do it for you, but don’t email me when you get banned.
Or, I don’t need SEO anymore because my site is indexed! WOW! No shit! Ok, well what key phrases are you ranking for? Hmmm..you don’t know, do you? How much traffic have your brought in and converted? Don’t know either huh? Well, good luck with that! Indexed doesn’t mean you are ranking!
People think they read an article or two and they are experts. I have gotten to the point where I can trun down small jobs that require a lot of hand holding and question answering.
May 18th, 2006 at 7:42 pm
I confess, I’m the guy who submitted the question that Jim listed first among those he hates, “for the investment, what kind of return can we expect?” I just sent him a reply to his email with a bunch of other questions that he’ll probably hate as well. I’ll tell you this, while this post may be ‘bitter’ his personal response was ‘nicer’ and appreciated. I like a guy who cuts to the chase, who displays a necessary arrogance born of compentency and certainty. A lot of ‘consultants’ would respond, “Well, I can’t guarantee you’ll experience these results but typically we generate 303.25 links per 6 month engagement.” Not Jim, he says, “I have no idea.” It’s the right response. He doesn’t know me–yet–or my market or the receptiveness of the individuals who pay attention to this market to providing links or our commitment to making a program work over the long haul. What he was kind enough to provide was a lot (I mean really a lot) of information for me to make the decision. He took away the certainty I sought and, by doing so, assured that whatever decision I made was made for the right reasons; because I drank his Kool-Ade and made the necessary commitment to be an effective partner in the process. Ya gotta appreciate that…
May 18th, 2006 at 8:08 pm
>How about instead of paying you, I give you a percentage of my business?
Not having employee’s I have a different situation than you, but I’m really thinking about trying a few performance based jobs. Either working with a visibilty metric or a CPA basis.
May 18th, 2006 at 9:29 pm
Great answrs Jim. It’s almost scary, but your answers were almost identicle to some I’ve had to mutter!!
- Rob
May 18th, 2006 at 10:33 pm
Jim… you have a right to be cranky! I can totally relate to how you feel when you get those questions. I feel like there should be a pre-qualification video we should record and then make each of our new prospects watch before they hire us. This would eliminate a ton of time we spend answering the same questions over and over. :0)
May 19th, 2006 at 12:58 pm
When i look at this i try to see it from both positions. I can see why Jim might get frustrated with questions like this, I think, When you offer a service that is of HIGH Quality and not cheap btw, you should answer questions like this. This is an investment that many of us have made before with companies that do not have hight standards as it seems Jim has.
When i first looked at Jims prices i said to myself “Holy Crap”
Myself, I have come to realize (by reading this blog and Jims site) that Jim does do things different, so it goes to show that no one should compare what Jim does to anyone else.
So now when i look at Jim’s prices i don’t compare it to other services i have seen on other sites and forums.
May 20th, 2006 at 7:41 am
How about any questions that start with;
Hi,
I don´t have any money but I was wondering . . . .
May 20th, 2006 at 3:04 pm
How much will it cost to get me to # 1 on Google?
How long will it take to get me to # 1 on Google?
How come I’m not in Google?
May 22nd, 2006 at 4:57 am
How about the enquiry that goes “I want to get to the top of Google for ‘casino’ and I’ll pay for performance”. Yeah, right, I’ll take that contract!
May 22nd, 2006 at 10:12 am
I got a potential client today that offered me a % of the website’s revenue in return for a discount, I totally hate clients that send in SEO projects tageting web hosting or home business as the keyword while they have a new website.
Another questions would be why are you charging this much?
June 11th, 2006 at 9:26 pm
Or the ones when they say “that’s easy - I could have done that” when you explain how you changed their title to say “Search phrase | Company Name” instead of just “Untitled Document”.
Sorry, you gotta get the basics right before you can start on the tricky stuff.