When you’re running your own shop, it’s easy to be afraid to open up about just how small your operation is.
Maybe you’re the one handling customer service and billing – and sales, fulfillment, bottle washing, dog walking, etc. So instead of saying that, you vaguely mention a “billing” department and use “we” instead of “I” a lot of the time.
“Our technicians are trained…”
“Our offices are located at…”
“Email our Customer Service department at customerservice@…”
All marketers tell stories.
Stories are how we convince people to take that leap of faith – to give us their attention, subscribe to our content and, ideally, buy from us at some point.
That may sound a little slimy and manipulative until you consider that not everyone who tells stories is making stuff up.
Third Tribe Marketing* is about telling the true story of the benefits brought on by what you’re selling in a compelling and transparent way. It’s about teaching and providing value first, asking for the sale second.
In September of 2008 I walked out of an SEO job at a web marketing agency. I’d had enough.
The fact that this was also just when the U.S. economy was taking a big crap in its pants was just a fun coincidence. Here I was walking away from a paycheck when thousands of people a day were finding their own stripped away.
A lot of people asked me whether I had another job lined up. When I told them I didn’t they also crapped their pants.
What the hell was I thinking?
It’s been about 17 months – plenty of time to reflect on that decision, and the following decisions to turn down well-paying jobs at other agencies.
I still don’t know exactly what I’m doing.
But I have a better idea of why I’m doing it.
SEOs fall into four basic roles:
The fourth role here, entrepreneurs, can stop reading – you run your own show and don’t have to justify your work to anybody (unless you’ve been neutered by VC).
For the rest of us demonstrating the value of our work, even when we think it should be obvious, is a fact of life.
If the question makes you nervous you’re probably unprepared to answer it. Either that or you pretty sure your has generated zero value – in which case you might want to reevaluate your strategies (and maybe your skills while you’re at it). Thankless situation either way.
Usability and SEO are not mutually exclusive.
There’s no reason you can’t have a website that both A) brings in high amounts of relevant search engine traffic and B) gives those users a great experience.
But we all know the story about the guy with a hammer. Everything becomes a nail. And sooner or later he’s broken all the windows.
So when your hammer is SEO the tendency is to think most problems have SEO solutions. The result, unfortunately, is often a website that is optimized to the teeth from a search standpoint but ugly as sin and with an awful user experience.
Here are 11 mistakes SEOs make that sacrifice usability – and what you can do to avoid them: