SMX Advanced Preview, SEO Sales & Safe CRO

June 2, 2010
 

With SMX Advanced fast approaching, Bruce, Susan and Virginia take a preview look at next week’s conference in Seattle. SMX Advanced is a significant conference every year, often the staging ground for major announcements by Internet marketing companies and search engines alike. For those who won’t be in attendance, Susan will be providing front-row access to select sessions with liveblog coverage of SMX Advanced, posted on the Bruce Clay, Inc. blog shortly after each session. Those in attendance can pose any variety of questions to Bruce at Wednesday’s session SEO Vets Take All Comers and at Thursday’s one-day SEO training.

Then Virginia, Robert Esparza and Alan Lamb consider the challenges and considerations of selling an SEO project that meets the client’s goals and needs. Expectation management is a key factor of a project that can end in success and client satisfaction. If a client expects rankings, traffic or performance beyond what is possible within realistic constraints of time and budget as determined by a feasibility review, it’s often best that the project doesn’t go forward with those two parties. One difficult challenge of setting realistic expectations is the fact that performance can’t be guaranteed in light of shifting search engine algorithms and guidelines. A shift must be taken away from rankings and traffic, as the focus must be an improvement on the bottom line.

Finally Virginia, Scott Fowles and Daerick Gross discuss a discipline that is primarily linked to improvements on the bottom line: conversion rate optimization. Scott is an SEO and CRO specialist, and previously came on the show to talk about CRO best practices and tools of the trade. This week he expands the conversation by warning about SEO complications that can arise through CRO testing and how to avoid them. Wider Funnel provides a PowerPoint presentation on avoiding the risks of A/B testing for SEO landing pages that may be a useful guide.