Like most questions in life, determining the importance of SEO is never really black and white. It depends a lot on who you ask. Here at Best Rank, we’d probably rate the importance of SEO right up there with the birth of a child and breathing. Ask a dairy farmer in the Midwest, and you might get a response along the lines of, “I don’t speak Chinese!” So, how do we determine the true value of SEO in the business world? The key is determining which businesses really need SEO (or who can benefit the most from it), and what SEO can bring to those businesses. This may seem like a no-brainer, but you’d be surprised at how many business owners we talk to who think that because they just dropped $10K on a new flash site, they’re going to dominate in Google and see thousands of hits a day.

All sites on the web stand to gain something by implementing SEO strategies. Whether it be rankings, traffic, exposure, sales, or any other benefit of optimization, nearly all sites can improve their web presence using SEO tactics. Putting a dollar amount on these benefits, however, can sometimes be tricky. For an ecommerce site, it might be pretty straight forward as to the worth of SEO- if online sales increase, then SEO is working. For an informational site or free directory, SEO’s worth cannot be determined by dollars earned. Instead, we have to look at things like traffic, search engine rankings, amount of new visitors, time on site, bounce rate, and several other areas to determine the worth of SEO to those sites.

Knowing a client’s ultimate goal is an important aspect of carrying out a successful SEO campaign. Driving tons and tons of traffic may be nice, but if none of those visits convert into sales for an online retailer, than there is no real benefit to the client. A brand new site, on the other hand, may do backflips over the huge influx of visitors and increased rankings because it helps get them established on the web.

In the SEO industry, the value of our work is determined mainly by the clients we serve. Obviously, mybrandnewsite.com stands to gain much more from SEO than, say, Google. The end result that each client is looking for also plays a part in determining what SEO is worth. There isn’t a solid, fool proof way to determine the true value of SEO for every website because every website is different. But, if SEO can bring some sort of significant benefit to your site that you were lacking before, be it sales, visits, or rankings, then SEO is worth every penny…or visitor…or contact…or…

Before I got into search marketing, I developed web software for a few different companies here in San Diego (I still do a bit for the time being).  Along the way, I’ve found several different tools to be invaluable when it comes to helping me complete my tasks and making my work life easier - I seriously don’t know how I used to develop before some of these tools were around.  There are other tools not mentioned here that I’m sure are helpful, so if you know of something significant that I’m missing feel free to leave a comment.

Command Line Interface (CLI)

The command line interface or shell, depending on the operating system (OS), is a text input program allowing you to enter text-based commands that control the OS.  The CLI is great for web developers because it allows us to, among other things, quickly search or modify a large number of files, run and administer programs, perform automatic updates and patches, etc. all at the control of our fingertips (no point and click necessary).  Here is what a typical command line looks like:

So all you really do is type in text commands and receive text output, seems pretty simple right?  Don’t let it’s simple interface fool you as this tool could be considered the most powerful tool of them all.

I really can’t stress enough how important the command line is - most all computer geeks worth the glasses on their heads know and love this tool.  You can even build shell “scripts” (files containing multiple shell commands) to perform complex, automated tasks - making your life very easy.  There are even whole books written on the command line interface, so unfortunately I won’t be able to do it much justice right now.

SSH (Secure Shell)

If you’re any web developer worth a hoot, you’ll know what ssh is - a network protocol which allows data to be exchanged between two points in a secure fashion.  You’ll need this to remotely and securely login via a shell and administer your web server or web apps.  SSH is a nice upgrade from the old, insecure telnet days.

A really nice and easy SSH tool I use all the time is Putty for windows, just download it, run it, enter your target host and away you go!  If you’re on a Mac or Linux box, you can just open up your pre-existing shell program and use the “ssh” command to start logging in to a remote host.

FTP (File Transfer Protocol)

FTP is pretty standard stuff in web development but is worth mentioning for new or aspiring web developers.  FTP is the protocol used to transfer files over the internet, period.  So when you transfer a new site or app you just built from your stagging server to your production, FTP is often used to do this.  A nice FTP client I use is firefox’s FireFTP pluggin, runs right in the web browser.

Subversion (SVN)

I’ve recently discover this wonderful, open source, code versioning control program.  I don’t know why but I really like the name too: Subversion allows you to track what changes where made to which files over time.  This can be a great way to develop on a test machine and then automatically migrate changes to a live, production machine so that customers experience instant updates (rather than seeing buggy web pages or error messages as you hack away).  You can also track which of your employees made which changes to which files, kind of nice when you want to know who screwed up and where.

Most linux installations have a form of subversion installed and is a pretty standard way to manage code/file changes.  The nice thing about subversion is that it’s not limited to tracking just programming code changes, you can manage any type of changes to any type of file.  I’ve also used perforce at my last employer before starting my business, although perforce is not open source and requires a license to run.

FireFox’s Web Developer Tool Bar extension

FireFox is a popular, open source web browser that is gaining market share - it’s a really good browser, mostly because of the many extensions that are available for the product.  One of these great extensions is the Web Developer Toolbar.

If you’re dealing with CSS then you will really want to have this tool.

The pluggin allows you to view CSS styles of a web page in real time, so you know which piece of code is causing which styling to appear on the page.  You can even edit CSS code to have changes appear to your page in real time.

IE 7’s CSS Tool Bar Plugin

To be honest, I really don’t like Microsoft’s Internet Explorer web browser all that much, but since the majority of internet users are on it, we as web developers need to take it into consideration.  The browser is notorious for not following web standards and trying to re-invent the wheel when it comes to interpreting web page code - that means code that displays a certain way on all other browsers might not display the same way on IE, making things difficult for web developers.

Go ahead and download the IE CSS extension, it’ll shed light on those pesky IE CSS bugs.  Another tip that has helped me a lot is to utilize CSS conditional comments in your web page code to import IE specific style sheets whenever an IE browser accesses your web page.

Photoshop

I’ve been using Adobe’s Photoshop since the late 1990’s, around 10 years now (has it been that long?), and must say that I can’t live without this one.  Photoshop is available on windows or mac, while linux has it’s own open source version call Gimp.

One of the single most useful tasks I can do with Photoshop is check to see how many pixels wide something is on a web page.  So if I’m modifying a banner ad or looking to fit a new image onto a page and make everything look exactly right and in place, I can take a screen shot (print screen) of the current web page, import the image into Photoshop, highlight the area of interest and check to see how many pixels I have.

I’ve also designed countless logo concepts and modified countless more images to fit my perceptions.

I’m only scratching the surface of Adobe’s wonderful program, read more about it when you get chance.

Dreamweaver

Even though I’ currently looking for a replacement program, I use Adobe’s Dreamweaver almost every day to modify web page code.  It’s a pretty easy way to open up files via the FTP protocol and just do some straight code edits, or download a complete file set, perform local edits and then upload changes to a remote host.

A lot of experience web developers will cringe at the sound of “Dreamweaver” because sometimes the program can create extra, hidden, unwanted code in your files (which I am still unsure of why).  Not to mention Dreamweaver’s FTP saving featuring is painfully slow….wait….wait…….wait…FTP error occurred…. try again…. wait….wait……success.  Seriously, an FTP file transfer doesn’t take much overhead to run and Dreamweaver has some obvious problems to solve before we see an excellent product - but for now it will have to do.

I’m actually on a trend right now to avoid Dreamweaver and jump into more command line editing or CMS editing if I can as those would be cleaner ways to modify code.

Drupal

The Drupal framework is a very powerful and customizable open source content management system.  In laymen’s terms that means it’s like an instant website in a box that you can customize to your liking.  Drupal has many different software modules with the purpose of extending it’s functionality. - so you could bolt on a newsletter module, or an image upload module, or an e-commerce module to sell products, etc.  You can even create your own custom modules.  There are other CMS frameworks out there for web development purposes but none so far that I’ve seen which have such an easy hook system for custom module programming.

Any good business owner carefully monitors all company expenses. Business owners must make decisions on a daily basis of whether or not to “invest” (aka purchase) stuff for the business. This “stuff” can range from simple office supplies to marketing and all the way to sending staff to industry conferences.

Recently, here at Best Rank, we’ve been wrestling with the decision of whether or not to send ourselves and/or our employees to the Search Engine Strategies (SES) conference in San Jose this month. I’m even thinking about attending the Search Marketing Expo (SMX) East event in October. Part of this decision process is to evaluate whether or not sending myself or an employee was really valuable to our company and could we see a positive return on investment (ROI) from this activity.

For those of you not aware of these conferences, I’ll tell you that they aren’t cheap. The admission cost alone, for a full-conference pass, is roughly $1795 (for SES) and $1195 (for SMX) if you purchase before a certain date, more if you procrastinate. Plus there’s the cost of travel, accommodations, and food. Oh…and let’s not forget the opportunity cost of attending a conference vs. doing your normal work routine; it’s inevitable that you will miss some work and either have to give it to someone else or let it slip and then catch-up later.

So, what’s the value of these conferences? Is it worth me spending ~$3000-4000 per attendee? If I send myself and 2 employees, can I make up the ~$10-12k in expenses?

Let’s look at the positive aspects of search marketing conferences for a minute. What kind of value can a search marketer get out of attending a conference?

Networking

Networking with search marketing colleagues/peers and potential clients can be invaluable. You never know when you’re going to make the right connection at the right time. Not only do these events attract the most well-known professionals in our industry, but they also attract your more under-the-radar search marketers…who can prove to be very valuable connections. Rand Fishkin, over at SEOmoz, wrote a good post about the benefits of search marketing conferences. Check out what he has to say about Community Building, Meeting People, and Securing Relationships.

Learning the Tricks of the Trade

We get so engulfed in our every day work that it’s tough to keep up with reading and continuing education. Going to a conference and attending educational sessions is a good way to force yourself to learn the latest and greatest. Some of the most useful tools and tricks that we currently use were gleaned from sessions we attended at last year’s SES events. Staying up to date with the latest trends, tips, tools, and tactics (the 4 T’s) will keep your business valuable and on the cutting edge of search.

Speaking

I normally take every opportunity that I can get to speak in front of an audience. While I haven’t had the opportunity to speak at a search marketing conference yet, I do know that speaking can be a significant boon to your business. Best Rank is regularly asked to speak at local business and networking events; every time that we speak we always get a fresh new set of hot leads to follow-up with. After every session at search marketing conferences I see the speakers getting swarmed by people. I imagine many of these people turn into quality leads. Speaking in front of a large audience automatically gives you credibility (deserved or not) in the eyes of the audience. They assume that, since you’re in front of a large group of people, you must be an expert…thus able to handle their project. I would encourage anyone to take advantage of speaking opportunities and of the assumptions that audience members make about you, the speaker.

So, how do all these positives translate into an ROI for my investment dollars? The real answer is that I don’t know. If I were to go to SMX East in October, and if I were to make one good connection (client), then I can justify spending the money. However, there is no guarantee that I will get a new client simply by attending this event.

But, what about the educational aspects? If I go to this event and learn some great new tactics, that I turn around and apply to my client’s campaigns, then maybe my client’s site gets an extra boost in traffic and they decide to expand the campaign, thus more money in my pocket.

I have to echo the same sentiment from Carsten Cumbrowski, who wrote a post about this topic over at Reve News (click here for the post). She states that:

“The single most important reason for me to attend real-life conferences is to do something that cannot be replaced by the best communication technology available: human interaction, meeting people face-to-face and getting to know strangers across different verticals that you would not have “bumped into” otherwise.”

Carsten is right!! While I can’t directly tie an ROI to meeting people, it’s obvious that making the right connections at these conferences can significantly outweigh any direct costs involved in the effort. I’ve made connections at search conferences that are worth 5x more than I’ve paid to be there. Plus, I’ve implemented strategies that I’ve learned at search conferences into client campaigns; campaigns that I’ve gotten great results for and ultimately expanded.

I’m probably not going to SES in San Jose this year…but I’ll most likely be at SMX East in October. Hopefully I’ll make some great connections and be able to positively impact my company’s bottom line. Happy conferencing!!

Here’s another good article about the value of search conferences.