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Should SEO/M Companies Display Case Studies? 
By: Solomon Rothman 2006-12-11 We recently launched a new SEO company called Acclivity, comprised of a group of individuals who were previously working as freelancers in the SEO / Web Design industry. Due to the new nature of our website we wanted to display some concrete examples of some of the successes we've achieved for our clients, like the public relations firm SS | PR. So this raised an all important question: should SEO / SEM companies publicly display case studies and what would be the potential ramifications for doing so? Most SEO companies currently don't list their clients or if they do its years after the work has been completed or in a non-informative way, like a simple testimonial. They are worried that giving away even minor details about their SEO / SEM strategy could potentially comprise their clients campaigns and make it easier for their competition to rank or employ similar methods. In certain, and I mean certain, situations I believe this traditional reasoning can be correct, but for the majority of SEO / SEM success stories, giving their website and companies the additional exposure of being promoted as an online success story will help them build links, find new customers, and can be worked into the SEO / SEM strategy itself, effectively making it even harder for other companies to compete. Any SEO consultant worth his salt can already obtain very detailed information about each aspect of your campaign, including every link you have, what the anchor text is, how you got it, how much comparative traffic your site gets, who owns your domain name, where you're located, what bookmarking services you use, your blogosphere influence, if you're using social media-the list goes on and on and on. So who are you hiding from? Competing SEO firms already have all the information they need to try and reverse engineer your work; thus, by hiding, you're keeping yourself from additional exposure, potential new customers and from acquiring even more links that could make it even harder for your competitors to beat your rankings. People should stop treating SEO and SEM like it's some type of black art, full of voodoo secrets. Boiled down, it's simply a blend of technology and traditional marketing all oriented around the search engines. I could give you step by step exactly what I planned on doing for a client, but this information would probably not help you compete against my efforts. Why? Because it's about the execution, the delivery, and a lot of hard work; not the raw techniques. Also, by the time the information has been released, the work has already been done and the campaign has progressed. People trying to compete will be copying or trying to improve upon your work, already finished and hopefully moving on to bigger and better things. People that only examine individual tactics think about SEO & SEM incorrectly. So what about clients who are still in the process if implementing your long term suggestions, but have been fairly successful in spite of those limitations; should you put their site up? Yes, because unless you're spamming or spoofing the search engines, you have nothing to hide; their competitors will already have the information. Thus the only people you're holding out on is new customers, additional exposure and links which could greatly benefit both their business and yours. I say showcase both your SEO case studies and your SEM case studies, promote and get links to them by adding real informative content and both parties will ultimately benefit. Comment Tag: SEO Add to  Del.icio.us |  Digg |  Reddit |  Furl
Have a bookmark! -  About the Author: Solomon Rothman is the CIO for Social Media Systems; an online marketing company that helps its client succeed by providing web development bundled with search marketing. He authors numerous blogs including 3net Search Engine Marketing Blog and loves the ongoing challenges of the online marketing world. Besides technology, Solomon's other passions including filmmaking & screenwriting. |
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