14 May I Thought Everybody Did SEO
Well. I Was Wrong.
A few months ago, I realized a few things while transforming my software company Take It National Inc., (“TIN”) from running thousands of events for clients into a Search Engine Optimization “SEO” Lead Generation Marketing Funnel platform. That means we are introducing a disruptive way to get your “technical” SEO in place that is unique, fast and effective.
Just to make sure, you need to know that SEO means getting found well on Google and Bing searches and how high you show up in the listings you see when you search. Good, great to know you know this stuff!
Probably the most important thing I figured out in working on TIN, my software platform, was that I actually knew a lot more about SEO than most SEO experts. That’s because of my background and my tech skills and having done it well for a good 15 years. I’m not knocking SEO experts. They do a great job, but they can be non-technical. My background is both tech and online marketing and like I said 15 years of experience. In today’s world, SEO is as much tech as marketing. I also have a saying that “technology is now cheap, but experience is not”.
Saying you are an SEO expert in the web world is now like saying you are an expert in everything web, because it covers so much from marketing through technology and everything in between.
Being an SEO expert has gone from making a web page title, Meta Description, H1, H2 tags and content changes using Yoast to being an expert at mobile-ready, website speed, download caching, back-links to Serps to Google Analytics and beyond. I think most SEO experts don’t understand the basics of .htaccess and mod-rewrites or the Linux command line, but maybe they do, well at least they will understand permalinks (“URLs”) well. There are just too many disciplines to be an SEO expert to get found at the top of Google these days. You need to be an expert at everything! But you just can’t do everything.
And then within SEO, there’s a subfield of “Local” SEO, which is Google My Places, Google Maps and Google Business with pins on maps, reviews and directory listings. Essentially this is the art of getting found on the map on mobile searches, which is by far the most important SEO thing that a local storefront or restaurant can hope for when people search on their smartphones. Just the work to get that right can be overwhelming and take up a lot of time.
So, don’t take it personally when I point out that your website is missing something important for getting found in SEO, because we can’t know it all, and we can only be good at one thing at a time generally speaking. And it is easy to miss a small detail, a detail that may mess up your getting listed well on Google. Over time what is important to Google is constantly changing, so if you have not changed the website lately, you are already in the dustbin of web technology.
That is why I see the need and product-market fit for our Take It National products. And as things need to be more technical to get the job done, we all need tools to do the job. The fact is if you really want to create a great solution for internal SEO purposes you either have to work tirelessly as a web developer, content writer and know what you don’t know or hire a programmer or hire an SEO person or do both. The programmer can charge you $3,000 to $10,000 to write a solution if you know what you were doing. The SEO person can charge you $3000 to $12,000 over several months to do the SEO content work. So, it costs money to do SEO. That’s not even covering acquiring back-links. And you may be asking what is a back-link.
So I am not being critical of SEO professionals, just the concept that they can do it all makes no sense. And they are paid to get you traffic. It makes sense. What does not make sense is paying $$ of dollars and not getting results. It happens to many, many businesses we meet out there. And it is not the fault of the SEO pros, they are doing what they are told is the best way and they all have limitations. At least they should be able to do the most important items for you. And when I look around at more websites I just see weird issues, where the SEO basics are not being done at all. The game of being an SEO expert is consistency, content, and communications. And if you are managing over 20 accounts, this can make life tricky. Many websites are set up without Google Search Console XML sitemaps. That is an issue. Many websites have no Meta Description, which is critical to the description that shows up on Google. Many websites just rely on Pay-Per-Click alone…
Why can I easily see these problems on client sites?
It’s simple. I worked on a successful SEO project for my own company, a local dating event website for the past 15 years, and also because I have taken on a dozen SEO clients recently.
And why am I taking on SEO clients?
It’s pretty simple. To offer a good software solution, we have found it is good to know the industry and live within the industry. It is also great to offer consulting services at the same time we offer a software solution. So, if we want to install our back-end SEO Automation tool, it definitely fits well with doing the SEO work. And our SEO services are not traditional. They are as technical as they are guerrilla marketing.
When, or if your current SEO firm seems to be failing to get you well listed on Google. then turning to our specialized company makes sense!
In fact, our goal overall is to offer an agency version of TIN that allows other SEO service providers to have a tool to use to make a dent in the SEO Automation Lead Generation needed for their clients. So we are not your competitors, we are your back-end. But to know the biz, we had to get into it!
So, a lot of people who know me as the Startup Guy, because I ran 27 Startup Pitch Events with over 300 companies pitching over the past 4 years. You are now learning that I am not just an event guy (though remember I am a partner in Pre-Dating Speed Dating, the largest dating event company in the US), I am getting deep into the Cloud-based software as a service platform market. In fact, Take It National Inc. has recently filed a Reg. D with the SEC. That allows Take It National Inc. to raise and accept capital from investors. We are currently raising capital, under $100k to assist us in sales, tech, and the costs of going public. At some point in the near future, we are going to switch over to a Reg. A+, which will allow Take It National Inc. to raise capital through equity crowdfunding and trade as a public symbol. So, very interesting details on my company and where it is heading.
So, if you are interested in learning more about getting more traffic, getting more leads, using disruptive technology to achieve these results, then ask me more about TIN?