Let me put an end to SEO vs. Paid Marketing For Once And For All

[Jerryll Noorden]

Hello my little Munchkins!

I wanted to show you all something pretty significant.

There is this eternal debate going on between SEO and ... well everything else. The best way of doing things is of course leveraging all methods where they fit and apply.

BUT were you to put SEO vs. paid advertising face to face... this is what you get:

I did a search for "We Buy Houses In Connecticut".. the highest bidding keyword in my market.

I found 3 competitors in the PPC section. 2 of them where ranking #1 (depending on the keywords) before well a "certain company" came along ahem ;)

Look at the competitors results...

The first company was in business for a LONG time: When I came along, they dropped from the ranks and the only way they can stay in business is PPC

Now they spend over $5K a MONTH to get leads!

Now let's look at the next competitor.

These guys (supposedly a woman is the lead here, I don't buy it!) were the other #1 ranking site before. As you can see they are constantly struggling with SEO. Now they recently got themselves a brand new (very pretty) little site. I guess they are now ramping up their SEO efforts. We will see how that goes for them. pffft

Now look at these guys:

Not much going on here. Looks like brand new group.

Not much to say here:

Now lets compare these handsome guys:

Now here is where you have to focus as this gets mind blowing.

Here, there is 0 paid advertising! Clicks are obtained for free, the competitors would have to pay OVER $6 GRAND a MONTH to match that! And keep in mind... this is totally free. And here is what is so mind blowing.

Remember that there is absolutely no paid advertising. It is not that we get the same amount of leads (while the only thing is that our leads are free and theirs are not)... no no, look how FAR that gap is!!

It would be impressive enough that this "certain company" gets all for free, what the other competitors have to pay a fortune for. But what is way more impressive than that, is that this company gets FAR MORE leads (for free) than what they get by paying for it. There is a gigantic gap between the leads between that certain company and their competitors.

SEO results in about 10 times as many organic clicks as they get PAID clicks.

Now does ANYONE still dare debating that your FB ads threatens SEO?!

No?

Didnt think so!

;)

[Jerryll Noorden]

Originally posted by @John Corey:

Love the post, Jerryll. Keep up the detailed sharing.

A tangent of sorts. Assume for a minute that someone understands what you are sharing. And they know that it is not a good use of their time to do the heavy lifting with the SEO and PPC. What is the best way to evaluate who they should be working with? Outsourcing quality control might be a label.

 That is a good question.

There are two parts you need to look at.

First never use an actual SEO company to do actual SEO work. Sure get a service to build you citations. Get a copy writer to write copy (as long as you enter your Keywords and LSI keywords yourself AFTER the copy is written).

Here is why. A company will not discriminate who they will help. If an SEO company helps 2 people competing with eachother, how is that possibly going to help you? 

Secondly an SEO company will not develop SEO methods unique to you. They have a list of SEO "tasks" to do and they will apply that to each and every website/customer they get. How will you EVER stand out. They will have far too many costomers to actually sit with you one on one to develop a unique strategy that focuses on your goals, out do specific competitors and take time to really dive into it with you.

Here is an example:

I see many investors use this guy called "Amit" for their SEO. BE CAREFUL. 

Be careful who you use period. 

Most "SEO companies" have NO CLUE what white-hat SEO is. This guy (Amit) uses every client he has and then he cross links all these sites together thus getting backlinks to everyone, from everyone, to everyone. This is called "Backlink Exchanging". This WILL get you penalized FOR SURE. It is not a question of "if", it is a question of "when". Not to mention he steels all my pictures and plagiarizes my website and puts it on his clients website. I have personally worked with Google to take all these sites down, and there are more on the list.

If you see a website that has this image:

and you are competing with them, I have good news for you. They eventually will be de-indexed. He uses all other investor carrot websites to link to each other and he does very questionable SEO. They will eventually disappear. So this is why you have to be very careful who you choose.

If you are the owner of a site working with Amit, do a simple backlink check on your domain name. If you see a BUNCH of other investor carrot websites linking to you... disown the links immediately!!

Then to see how to evaluate an SEO service,

2) Ask for websites they worked on. Do NOT ask for reviews.

Asking for reviews is useless because take Amit yet again. His clients have great things to say about him which goes to show, the clients have no idea what is good SEO and what is bad? They THINK he is doing good work so they will leave good reviews. Instead ask for the websites and then look for the key signs of at least decent SEO.

• Does the first 100 words use the prevalent keywords
• Is there just 1 H1 title tag?
• Are their pictures optimized?
• Do they have "We Buy Houses in.." clearly on the site?
• Is the structure of the site conversion friendly?
• Are the pictures Alt-tagged?
• Are they ranking #1, or #2 on Goolge?
• Are there links going from the site going out to reputable sites?
• Do they have a solid internal linking system?
• Is there an obvious use of LSI keywords? (answer should be yes)
• Is their content very generic or thin?
• are there dynamic objects on their site? (like text shifting in from right to left)? (answer should be n0?)
• Are their videos on their home page? (answer should be no)

These are just the super basics of SEO. This stuff simply puts you on page 4 of Google. Without this you simply have no chance in a decent market with decent competition.

A good SEO resource is someone that is known within their niche. They have the reputation of being THE authority. He is known for what he does and for what he is good at. That is the key!

Look, SEO IS expensive (why do you think I do it myself). It doesnt HAVE to take a lot of work per se (but it does), but the reason it is so challenging is that you need to come up with your own strategies for SEO to be REALLY powerful and effective> And THAT my friend, is difficult. You have to be very smart. Think outside the box, and be clever and creative.

If you find a company that charges you $300- $600 a month. Dude, don't do it. Chances are they WILL damage your rankings!