One of the biggest problems we face as an SEO company is a client having unrealistic expectations about what SEO can achieve. There are a lot of cases where it feels like clients seem to think SEOs have a direct line to Google and when they pay for work done we will get on the phone to Eric and Sergey and inform them we want X site ranking in X position.

As much as we wish this was true it is unfortunately not the case. The reality of the situation is Google is trying to provide the most relevant results for specific searches and in theory as an SEO company we aim to try and make a website selling “Blue Widgets” be as relevant as possible for the term “Blue Widgets”.

Unfortunately it is not always as simple as just making the site relevant for “Blue Widgets” there are quite frequently a LOT of other  website targeting the same term, so we need to somehow make this site more relevant that everyone else. This is then quite frequently accompanied by a client not being satisfied with ranking for “Blue Widgets” but they want to rank for “Widgets”. This can make things considerably more difficult.

If we take a more realistic example, let’s say we sell SIP Voip Phones, it would be a realistic expectation to be able to rank for SIP Voip Phones. Seeing as that is what we specialise in, then someone searching for SIP Voip Phones or SIP phones may find us in the top ten of Google and they will be content with the fact a relevant result.

However if the person searches for VOIP Phones and we rank in the top ten then does the site really deserve to be there? There are all sorts of VOIP Phones out there and I am assuming that the average person searching for VOIP Phones is more likely searching for a traditional VOIP phone or a SKYPE Phone, therefore having a site specialising in SIP Voip Phones ranking in the top ten of Google is NOT a relevant result.

This problem is them amplified if we wanted to rank for “Phones”. Yes we sell phones, but it is just not relevant at all to rank for that term, there are hundreds of types of phone, and SIP phones are a very specific niche so why would Google want our site ranking for phones? And the answer is they don’t want the site to rank for this term, and this is exactly what they are trying to stop.

Obviously this doesn’t mean we wouldn’t target “VOIP Phones” (we might not bother with just “Phones” though) but in reality it could be very difficult to rank for this term, and to some extent you end up playing a cat and mouse game with Google.  If there is a technique that improves rankings and SEO Company will likely use it (obviously) however at some point if Google feels people are using a technique to manipulate the search engines they will likely devalue the technique. This has happened with dozens of techniques over the years including directory submissions, mass article syndication, reciprocal links, selling links, along with various on site techniques such as having a high keyword density.

A more realistic and profitable approach is to spend less time obsessing about ranking for unrealistic terms and more time concentrating on improving sales, and specifically improving the conversions from search engine traffic to a certified lead or sale.

While getting the example site that sells SIP Voip Phones ranking for Phones may generate a lot of traffic is it likely that this traffic will really convert into a sale? Ok, yes a small percentage might, it would be more fruitful to spend time trying to improve the people searching for “SIP phones” into sales than it is spending time getting the site ranking for “phones”.

Unfortunately the drink and debauchery has had to come to an end and we are now back at work, though not at full capacity until Monday.

First of all I will apologise for the lack of posts recently, December is a bit of a hectic month at the best of times but we have also taken on 3 new clients, and been looking for new larger offices.

I will be trying to spend a little more time blogging over the next few weeks.

Hopefully we can also have the new offices sorted by the end of this month, but we will be keeping the postal address the same in order to avoid confusion for our clients.

I hope every one had a good break over Christmas and hope we all have a profitable year!

Ok it has been a long day and I am tired so I may be chatting rubbish, however I was just checking some stats for some clients when I did a search for the term liquidation. The number of results it returned was 3,280,000, I took a screen print of it incase I am actually spelling it wrong or something equally stupid.

Now I made a post on the 10 of October with some of the SEO Results we had recently achieved for some sites. At that time the search term Liquidation returned 29,100,000 results. Er so what happened to the other 25,820,000.

I am not going to do any more screen shots because I am too lazy but some quick comparisons of numbers that are showing for me now.

I presume this is just a glitch in Google’s information though a few my keywords have jumped from page 2 to page 1. Again I can not be bothered looking into detail if all my sites have been affected and I am sure everything will be back to normal by tomorrow!

One of the worst part the worst parts of my job is having to invoice clients and do our accounts. I am not sure why really, you would think invoicing someone should be a good job, it means that people owe me money and that is always good. I always used to use Sage Accounts, and while I am sure its a brilliant piece of software for my accountant I can’t bear it!

The past 2 months I have been trying out FreshBooks as an alternative method of invoicing. It is basically an online invoicing and time tracking service which simplifies you client and invoice management.

Some of the features it includes are:

1. Easily create, send and manage invoices
2. Track time (for you and your staff)
3. Send invoices by snail mail or email
4. Accept payment with PayPal, Authorize.Net, & more
5. Automatically send invoices & late payment notices
6. Create robust reports and import/export your data

Click here to go to the FreshBooks site.

The main aspects of FreshBooks I like are: (After the jump)

1. Client management – all my clients and their details are stored on the site, including company details, Primary and Secondary contact details. I realise this isn’t exactly a groundbreaking feature but I suck at keeping track of things.
2. Very easy invoicing system – Probably the whole point of me moving away from Sage was to simplify my invoicing. I can add items which are basically pre-defined billable items for example I have .co.uk registrations, yearly hosting etc. For individual/unique invoices you just input the detail as you go. While it doesn’t specify VAT normally the system lets you input 4 custom tax details with either a numerical or percentage value. Each invoice you create can have up to 2 sets of Tax applied. Not entirely sure why I would apply 2 lots of tax but I guess it varies per country.
3. Recurring Profiles – While things like Web Design are invoiced as and when, my SEO and Hosting clients are invoiced regularly with SEO clients being billed monthly and hosting yearly. You can set up recurring profiles to bill a clients automatically as frequently as you like. You can also set it up to continue billing indefinitely or for a set number of invoices.
4. Emailed Invoices – When you create an invoice, or the system auto creates one for a recurring profile the invoice is automatically emailed to the contacts you have stored on the system. Again, while this is nothing groundbreaking, it is a great help to me, it means all my monthly clients get billed on the same day every month, and they receive an email copy of the invoice every month so I always know they have received at least one form of the invoice.
5. Each client receive their own User Name/ Password to login to my control panel. This allows them to see all invoices they have received. Including all paid and unpaid invoices. I am hoping this will help my clients keep a track of all the invoices we send out, it will also help resolve any disputes etc that may come up as both the client and myself have detailed copies of what has been invoiced etc. The client control also includes a Dispute Invoice option. While I am not entirely sure how that works as, touch wood, it has not happened yet but I assume I it will inform me of the dispute and update my own records accordingly.
6. Enter Payments – Again due to my awful lack of organization this has helped out a lot. As I receive each payment I can enter the payment which includes the Method, Date, Amount and notes. I generally try and use the clients payment reference in the notes which allows us both to keep track of what was paid when.
7. As each payment is entered it updates all my Accounts informing me what has been paid and what’s outstanding, this can be per client or overall. The system can also email the client confirming and thanking for payment.
8. Reporting – I haven’t tried out all the reports yet just the Invoice Details report which allows me to select individual clients or all clients over a custom date period and the invoice status (All, Sent, Paid, Disputed). Again this saves me a lot of time as once a month I print this off and give it to my accountant! Other reports you can do include:
   • Tax Summary based on date range and invoice status (that’s my next VAT bill sorted then!)
   • Item Sales based on date range and invoice status. Useful to find out how much you earn for a set item etc. For example I will be able to easily check my Hosting profits.
   • Payments collected, based on all payments made in the specified date range. Displays the payment notes, date and method of payment for each invoice.
   • Revenue by client for chosen year.
   • Recurring Revenue, Annual by individual or all clients. Displays a forecasted recurring revenue for each client in every future calendar month of the year.
   • Recurring Revenue, Detailed, shows forecasted recurring revenue for each client and recurring profile for every date of recurrence over the specified date range.
   • Accounts Aging, summarizes the outstanding invoice total by client. This report can be shown by the outstanding amount or by number of invoices and can be selected by client.
9. Online Payments – You can use one of a range of payment gateways to allow the clients to pay online when they receive each invoice. This is a great feature which allows you to accept a wide range of credit cards as possible payments. Some of the Gateways also allow you to Auto-Bill clients on a recurring invoice. There are some problems for UK based users such as myself which I will discuss later.
10. Snail Mail Invoices – Ok so this isn’t a feature I use/like yet which I will discuss next, but it is possible to have all the invoices sent out via traditional mail. Snail Mail Invoices are printed on perforated paper and include a payment stub that can easily be torn away and included in the return envelope. The cost of this is 1 or 2 stamps and each stamp costs $1.39/£0.66 so each stamp is about twice as expensive than a 1st class stamp (£0.34 is think?). If you are sending out an invoice for £100+ I suppose it isn’t that expensive really especially if you send a lot out. I also find that all/most of my clients want a paper invoice, while the invoice is the same as the printable online version I still post a copy to my clients.

Ok so now you know I love FreshBooks, but there are a few weaknesses. The main reason for most of these weaknesses is my location. I am in the UK not the US. The issues involve:

1. Auto-Bill Online Payments – All the Auto-Bill capable gateways are US only so while this is a brilliant feature I am unable to use it. All is not lost yet however as I believe the development team are looking into a UK/EU based payment processor.
2. Other Payment Gateways – FreshBooks has a list of other Gateways that you can use but don’t support the Auto-Bill feature. The main problem I have here is that the only UK capable Gateway is PayPal, and I loathe PayPal. I also think people would be a little judgmental with me using PayPal(or I would be if I was the client), I cant help but think that Ebay users/Soletraders/Individuals are the only people that use PayPal as a payment processor and to be view as professional/larger a more advanced system like WorldPay/Protx etc would be better. It is probably just me being judgmental/opinionated though. Again the FreshBooks team are looking into UK/EU Gateways so this should be resolved one day.
3. Snail Mail – Ok so I said I liked it above, and I do in theory. Unfortunately the company that process the Snail Mail is US based and therefore FreshBooks charge you 2 stamps for international delivery ($2.78/£1.39) which is really quite expensive. The length of time for delivery is also vastly increased, I am unsure of exact time but its about 7 days for the US so I expect at least 14 days for the UK.

While the above 3 problems are quite big for a UK/EU customer I only think it is a problem because the US customers have it. If they did not have these functions I would not notice and still find the service is worth the money.

Other features FreshBooks uses but I haven’t tried so can not comment on include:

1. Members of Staff – Separate logins for staff, they can access/do as much or as little as you want including Client, Invoices, Estimates, Time tracking, Support, Documents, and Reports
2. Staff Time Sheets/ Projects – Clock on, Clock off, Select which project and task you are working on. I imagine we will start using this feature as I expect it will be excellent for keeping track of work and billable hours. It is more a feature we will use as we expand.
3. Document Sharing – Share Documents with Clients and Staff
4. Support Ticketing – Manage your clients support tickets. I admit I haven’t even looked into this until I just checked it, I think it could be quite useful.

Finally, the FreshBooks team are constantly developing the service so the features will continue to grow. One area I would love them to work on (and I think they maybe based on forum discussion) is expense tracking. The main reason I joined up to the company was to simplify my accounts (or recording all the things I need to for my accountant). It would be the perfect service for me if I could add monthly and individual expenses along with reference numbers/details etc then incorporate that info into the reporting etc. Each month I could just print off a report and give it to my accountant and that would be it. My main paranoia is the Tax man and Vat so while the current service allows me to keep a track of what I owe the VAT, keeping track of expenses would be great for keeping track of what I can claim back!!!!

If you want to try out FreshBooks then you can sign up to a free account which allows you to manage 3 clients for as long as you want with as many invoices as you want. Paid packages cost (£’s are not exact):

$14/£7 for 25 clients 1 member of staff unlimited invoices.

$27/£14 for 100 clients 2 members of staff unlimited invoices.

$39/£20 for 500 clients 3 members of staff unlimited invoices.

$89/£45 for 2000 clients 10 members of staff unlimited invoices.

$149/£75 for 5000 clients 10 members of staff unlimited invoices.

Personally the system saves me a couple of hours work invoicing and logging payments a month which makes £20 a bargain.

And yes they are referral links by the way. I may as well try and save a few quid if I am gonna big FreshBooks up.

Technorati Tags: FreshBooks , Invoicing , Web 2.0

At Dolphin Promotions we pride ourselves on the results we deliver our clients. We happily provide case studies on the Web Design and SEO work we do. We also do our best to ensure we focus on keywords that provide the maximum return on investment for the client. We realise these keywords are often also the most competitive and other companies may shy away from targeting them. We typically target a combination of highly competitive and medium competitiveness terms along with giving the client an approximation of how long these terms will take to rank well.

Some examples of Top Ten placings we have achieve recently include (as of 10/10/07):

Finish short messaging and microblogging service Jaiku has been acquired by Google, the company says. That Google bought this competitor of Twitter, the service founded by Blogger founder Evan Williams, instead of Twitter is notable. Jaiku may be stronger on the mobile platform than Twitter and probably came at a much lower price. Google has been buying up no end of very young mobile services in order to improve it online dominance further. With the aid of Google it is likely that Jaiku will be able to outgrow Twitter.

Dolphin Promotions frequently come across clients that have been spending money on automated solutions from other SEO providers or who have paid out good money to a company to teach them about SEO. Now the question is are these services really worthwhile and if so why would you want to hire an SEO?

I personally think anyone is capable of doing SEO on their site and achieving positive results from it, while I do not think an average user would be able to achieve the level of results as many of the professionals they should be able to improve the rankings for their sites. It generally requires a user to sit down, do some research into SEO, be reasonably confident with computers and be willing to spend as much time as they can afford on it. Therefore companies offering to train a user for a fee are perfectly reasonable, however I feel that most of these companies have very little experience in the form of teaching and therefore I would suggest it is a wiser idea to read forums or read an SEO guide. Guides such as SEO Book are generally regarded as an excellent source of information for a beginner at SEO and the $79 to buy it would probably be a better investment than paying a company to train you. While this is a good start to learning it is important to constantly keep updated with the latest trends within SEO, one of the major trends at the moment used to help boost rankings and traffic is Social Media Optimisation. SMO is basically where users use blogs and articles to help generate links and traffic from websites such as Digg/Reddit/Netscape etc (though this is a simplistic view) and these techniques are not likely to be discussed in older SEO books.

The second self SEO technique we come across is companies offering systems to help control the promotion of your site, or even automation of the SEO. Sometimes these companies will charge a one off fee; others will charge a monthly fee. Unless the system used is something along the lines of a blog and the user is being charged a one off fee then I would be quite wary of the system.
If the system sold to use is some form of Auto SEO tool I would advise a user to stay well clear, software that automatically generates you links, auto generates content or even does some form of auto submission can quite likely get a website banned from Google.

If the system allows a user to add content to their own site (CMS,Blog etc) then the user should only pay once for this, or for it to be included in part of the development of the website. There is no reoccurring cost for a company to allow a user to add content to their own site once a system like this has been put into place.

If you wish to carry out SEO by yourself it is also very important to realise that building up links to your site is vital, these links ideally should be one way and relevant to your site and can be one of the hardest areas of SEO to work on.

All client enquires Dolphin promotions receive we research into how much the client will benefit from out SEO services. We have frequently turned down sites if we feel our techniques may not help(specifically adult sites) and we also provide as much advice as possible for any enquiry we receive.

Some of the techniques we will typically carry out for clients are:

1. Fundamental Home Page Changes
2. Page Additions leading into product areas.
3. Expansion of text throughout the product range.
4. Optimisation of tags throughout all pages within site.
5. Optimisation of ALT Tags(Image Descriptions).
6. Optimisation of page titles
7. Monthly updates of content within your site to focus on revised keywords.
8. Writing articles based on your industry that will either be used to develop the content of your site or submitted to article directories to improve the number of back links to your site.
9. Link exchange with relevant websites within your industry.
10. One way link building with anchor text based on your chosen keywords.
11. Directory submissions.
12. Social Media Optimisation, involving submitting articles and images from the site to popular Social Media sites, baiting people into naturally linking to you (Link Baiting)
13. Installation of a Blog, and content generation within the Blog (if required)
14. Reports on the work carried out and the performance of the keywords are carried out every 2 months.

We also spend a large ammount of time each month reading blogs, forums and SEO websites in order to ensure we are always up to date with the latest SEO techniques.