Should we Pay for SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Services? – DSP 169

When opening any small business, you want to do what’s best to gain an edge in marketing and make sure that you’re doing your best for your flowering company. The new trends and changes can be daunting if you’re unfamiliar with technology or the marketing world.

Float centers are no exception. So when you get a call from someone claiming to be able to boost your SEO standing, it can seem like a really good deal. How do you tell if these companies are legit? And do float centers really need SEO help? Graham and Ashkahn break this down and simplify it for the uninitiated.

Listen to Just the Audio

Transcription of this episode… (in case you prefer reading)

Ashkahn: This is Ashkahn.

Graham: And I’m Graham.

Ashkahn: And we got a question.

Graham: It is, “I have an SEO consultant wanting to charge me hundreds of dollars a month to keep me ranked well. How important is SEO in a float tank center when there aren’t a bunch of other centers in your town?”

Ashkahn: When there aren’t a bunch of other centers in your town?

Graham: When there are not a bunch of other centers in your town.

Ashkahn: Okay, so first, just tip number one, is that there are a lot of scams out there. There are a lot of scams out there, specifically around these companies sending you emails telling you things like, “We’ll get you ranked number one on Google,” or “We’ll get you ranked number one on this,” or guaranteeing you that you’ll be ranked number one on Google.

Graham: Mm-hmm.

Ashkahn: Those are pretty much almost always scams. If people are saying very concrete language like that, that’s just not how SEO works. SEO is search engine optimization. I guess we should go over that.

Graham: Yeah, that’s what I was going to go into, too.

Ashkahn: SEO’s about when people type in something into a search engine, and almost always people are talking about Google. When people are typing things into Google, like how quickly does your thing pop up? Where are you? What number are you on the list?

Graham: This is an organic kind of placement as opposed to getting ads or something like that.

Ashkahn: Right.

Graham: These are kind of like two sides of search engine marketing in general is ads plus SEO equals overall search engine marketing, so right now we’re just talking about that, getting ranked naturally without paying for ads.

Often what those companies do, too, if they guarantee you a number one spot, is they’re just guaranteeing that they’re going to bid the highest on an ad spot or something like that, and they’re not actually talking about that organic placement. That’s the part where it gets more or less scam-y, depending on who you’re talking to.

Ashkahn: I even saw a scam once that was a company selling search engine optimization, so they were like, the more you spend, the higher they’ll guarantee that you be. What was going on was they were creating their own search platform that they were selling spots to.

Graham: Wow.

Ashkahn: So you’d have a really high ranking on a search engine that absolutely nobody uses, is what their company was doing.

Graham: We’re in the wrong business. We should sell floats to a float center that doesn’t exist or something.

Ashkahn: So, be careful. When people are out there telling you stuff like that, be careful. Part of the reason why concrete claims like that are very suspicious is that there is not a number one spot in a Google search. Google does things based off of your past search history, your location. They take information like that into account.

Graham: What you ate for breakfast that day.

Ashkahn: Yeah.

Graham: They know it all, so.

Ashkahn: Exactly. When you got a haircut. They’re keeping track of everything, and when you search something they use the context of everything they know about you to provide you with links they think are going to be the best for you, so it’s not like there is … If you were to type in “float tank” across a bunch of different people, you’d see different results based off of who was doing the search.

Graham: Even here in Portland, depending on whether you’re closer to The Float Shoppe, or Enso, or us has a lot to do with who pops up first in the rankings for “float tank”.

Ashkahn: Yeah, so the results are a lot softer than people saying, “We’ll make you the number one ranked thing”. It’s kind of just like you’re doing a lot, and no one exactly knows how Google’s algorithm works. We have some good ideas. Google puts out some information.

Graham: I don’t think even Google knows anymore.

Ashkahn: Yeah. There’s some giant robot brain somewhere that actually understands, but Google keeps parts of its algorithms secret so that people can’t game the system too much. They put out some information, rather, but they also change it all the time, and they change what’s prioritized. There’s also a bunch of ways that people still try to game Google’s system and do things that Google considers shady practices of trying to boost your SEO, and Google cracks down on those over time. As time goes on, Google figures out what those are, and they punish you if you try to manipulate their systems like that.

Graham: Yeah, so it’s also a good lesson if you do end up going with a company that’s promising to put you at the top of even organic search, chances are they’re taking advantage of some inefficiencies in the system, and sometimes those even can come back to haunt you if Google finds out that you’ve been doing something to artificially pop up your website to the top of ranks when you shouldn’t be there. They might just artificially lower it on their side to penalize you for that. There’s kind of this idea of being pushed into Google purgatory for some companies who are being punished when they shouldn’t be. But all of a sudden, it’s just they’re not showing up in any searches, and if that’s important for their business, it takes a huge dive.

It’s one of those reasons, in addition to wanting to be above board and be a good business, to not engage in those more shady gray hat or black hat practices, is often what they’re called.

Ashkahn: Yeah, versus white hat, which is the good, approved way of doing things.

Graham: Yeah.

Ashkahn: The thing with SEO, there is definitely a technical side to it. There’s ways of linking things that affect SEO. There’s ways of putting keywords into parts of your website that you don’t think they’re supposed to be in, stuff like that. So there’s some technical know-how, but the biggest stuff that comes with SEO is stuff that you should be able to understand. It’s having good, robust content on your website. It’s having lots of people reference your website and point back to it.

If you’re hiring someone who’s doing SEO and they’re not able to explain to you some of the things they’re doing and what some of the bigger –

Graham: And they sound reasonable.

Ashkahn: Yeah.

Graham: Like, “Oh, you should have a blog post that goes out once a month”, or “You should try to get some other wellness places in town to link over to your site”.

Ashkahn: Yeah, exactly.

Graham: Those really basic, intuitive behaviors are what you’re looking for.

Ashkahn: Yeah, so if they’re not telling you any stuff like that, and they’re just telling you they’re doing all sorts of weird stuff behind-the-scenes, something probably weird is going on there.

Graham: If it sounds like tech black magic or something, and they’re just trying to obfuscate what they’re doing behind this screen of technical language, then don’t buy into it.

Ashkahn: Uh-huh. So none of this has really answered your question so far. So, let’s assume they are. They’re a great SEO company. They’re charging you money, and they’re doing everything well and legitimately, and you’re paying for a good service.

Graham: Yeah, so the question really is if there’s even five float centers in a town and people are searching for sensory deprivation, or float tank, or float center, probably all five of those are going to pop up on a search.

Ashkahn: Yeah. In a row, probably.

Graham: Likely, yeah. Just all above the fold, which means on the screen where you first start without having to scroll down to see other content. So how important…? For restaurants, spending money on SEO and being ranked at the top of restaurant searches in a city, given how many restaurants can compete. You’re competing for a huge portion of people who want to have dinner, and when they’re searching online, that’s a huge benefit if you can pop up at the top of those results. But for a float center when you’re not competing with hundreds of other people, I wonder how much it’s really worthwhile to invest in it, you know?

Ashkahn: The people who are doing SEO the hardest are companies that sell to the entire global market and exist on the internet. Then you’re competing with so many people that you really are trying to get yourself even visible because you could end up ten pages deep on Google searches.

If you’re not showing up at all, then something’s pretty wrong, but it’d be really hard. If you’re doing just some basic stuff, like you have your business listed on Google Places and you have a website that includes words like the name of your city and the words “float tank”, things like that, it’d be pretty hard to even screw up to the point that you wouldn’t be listed on that first page and probably decently close to the top. It’s probably just going to be a list of float centers.

There are better ways to tell with your own browser than just typing something into Google. Using an incognito window helps a little bit, but Google also has guest windows, which don’t take your previous data into account as much. They’re still going to know your location and stuff like that, but that’s going to give you a slightly more unbiased Google search than just googling through the browser window that you normally use.

Graham: Here’s what you do. You should reach out to a family member or a college friend who lives in a different city and have them google “float tanks” and the name of your city. And, preferably, you’ve had less contact with them, so call up someone you haven’t talked to in four years and be like, “Look, I have a favor. I just need you to hop on Google and do a search for this”.

You can also just go on DuckDuckGo, which is an alternate search engine that doesn’t take those things into account. So it won’t mimic Google exactly, nor could you because it’s a different search for everyone, but it gives you a little more of an idea of unbiased search results from DuckDuckGo, using that as a testing search engine.

Ashkahn: Yeah, but at the end of the day, is it worth a few hundred dollars a month?

Graham: I might pay a few hundred dollars when I was first opening.

Ashkahn: Yeah.

Graham: For review, to make sure my site is hitting all of the basic essentials, and maybe I have a game plan going forward to make sure that I’m staying on top of the SEO duties I need, but I wouldn’t pay something ongoing.

Ashkahn: No, and the SEO stuff does change, maybe once every year, once every two years, or if you’re making a big change to your website or something like that. Those are times when it’s good to bring in an SEO person. Sometimes when you’re making big changes to your website, Google doesn’t like stuff like that, and you kind of have to do the right steps to make sure you don’t get artificially punished for it. There’s moments like that where, yeah, totally pay someone with SEO to come help.

Graham: Yeah, and after you’ve been open for a year, you can just trade floats for it, you know?

Ashkahn: Yeah, which is what we do. But, yeah, especially in the context of this question. There’s not even that many float centers around. That does not sound to me like a great use of money.

Graham: And the fact that someone’s trying to actually pitch you on paying a few hundred dollars a month also makes me think it sounds a little scam-y. I just almost feel really good SEO people wouldn’t even pitch that out of the gate to a small brick-and-mortar local business.

Ashkahn: Here’s the best thing about finding good SEO people, you can just do a Google search and whoever shows up on top, that’s the person you should hire.

Graham: Yeah, like hiring a salesman or something.

Ashkahn: Uh-huh.

Graham: Like if you feel like you should hire him, you probably should because he’s very convincing. Alright.

Ashkahn: So, good. Yeah. There you go.

Graham: Done.

Ashkahn: Alright. If you have other questions, you can go to floattanksolutions.com/podcast.

Latest Blog Posts