Interview with Boostability 2016

Please describe your role at Boostability.

I am the director of SEO strategy at Boostability. I’ve been working with the company for a little over five years. My role is to strategize our SEO product for SMB customers. I’ve previously worked on teaching SEO concepts to small business owners. I’ve been involved in this field for seven to eight years, always with a focus on small businesses.

Many small businesses in the US do not engage in SEO for their websites, which can have large consequences. What is your impression of this?

The statistic that surprised me the most was that nearly 50% of small businesses don’t even have a company website. All digital efforts for those companies are lost. That, coupled with the fact that 50% of those who do have websites don’t engage in SEO, leads to many lost opportunities. More than 70% of all small companies are not engaged in SEO work in any form.

A website is a bare minimum. There are ways for a small business to obtain a website for under $500. Someone can also build a site themselves using templates, although that requires some level of expertise. The result will not be impressive, but at least they’ll be playing in the digital space. There is a marketing aspect involved as well, but a website by itself makes a significant difference.

Low or non-existent SEO engagement in the small business market may shift dramatically within a few years, with 60% of small businesses planning to implement a business strategy by 2017 or later. Is this a common thread with the customers you are talking to? Are many of them just now entering the game?

This data is very close to what we’ve seen. We have a fair number of customers who are just starting, while the rest have shifted from other agencies or from doing the SEO work in-house. Approximately a third of our new customers are completely new to SEO as a whole.

In the past few years, many clients have become more knowledgeable on SEO than before. The standards for success are higher and there’s generally more transparency required. Has this been the case with your own customers?

During my seven to eight years’ experience in SEO, I’ve definitely seen this shift. In the beginning, SEO work was largely seen as a “spammy” or a bad business tactic. If someone used SEO, they’d be seen as a cheater. Small businesses have also gotten more jaded because of agencies who simply took their money without giving something in return.

The time has finally come for these businesses to start trusting SEO companies again. However, they’re not going to trust blindly. They’ll require actual metrics and transparency into what work is being done for them. Owners are becoming well educated into what amounts to good or bad SEO work. Although views may differ and their interpretations may be a little off, they know links can hurt.

A shift has definitely taken place. Over the course of the last few years, we’ve seen a massive growth in our own company, and I imagine this has happened in other SEO firms that are able to provide the level of transparency and trust that small businesses need.

34% of companies that employ SEO for their websites are deciding not to work with an agency. What is your response to this?

I work with a couple of businesses in the construction and contracting field that have fewer than ten employees. It’s inconceivable to me that 64% of companies this small have in-house knowledge of SEO. This statistic makes me afraid for the future of small businesses. A related figure, however, did show that a majority of the businesses that do internal SEO work have between 11 and 500 employees, which is a little better.

Judging by my experience with small clients and family businesses, I know they wouldn’t have the expertise required to do SEO. A lot of small businesses, especially those with fewer than ten employees, may feel that they can do SEO themselves, but there are a lot of variables around SEO, and even the smallest slip can hurt a business. Even though this statement is somewhat self-serving, coming from someone who works in an SEO agency, my advice to anyone is not to lean on the services of someone who has simply heard of SEO, which is the case of many of my family businesses.

I expect that the number of companies who use professional SEO services will increase for two reasons: first of all, they will realize that their SEO efforts are not getting them results. Second, they will see many of the companies that are working with agencies are receiving a return on investment and gaining more competitiveness within their market.

A small percentage of companies are focusing SEO efforts on building quality content. What is your interpretation of that statistic?

My impression is that the statistic is accurate. Small businesses might have a hard time grasping the idea of quality content, especially when it comes to earned links. Small businesses have limited resources, but they also have less competition. The majority of them are local. Along all the data accumulated from around 100,000 customers throughout our history, one item has remained true: the basic things that you can edit on your website are the most important things. These include making the proper edits to the title tags, H1 tags and so on. They are key elements in increasing rankings and SEO success.

Local search engine optimization has been widely discussed. We finally have the right tools to help small businesses do this type of optimization. A focus on these two areas would be more beneficial than a focus on creating quality content in the hope of obtaining links. In the area of small businesses, this is the perfect approach. At an enterprise level, this is not the case. The focus there should be on quality content.

Paid online advertising is another means of positioning companies’ websites higher in rankings. However, only 26% of small businesses are using this digital marketing strategy. Is this surprising to you?

This is not surprising in light of the rest of the information I‘ve learned here, especially given the fact that 50% of businesses don’t even have a website, and many of the ones that do, don’t focus on SEO.

There are two different approaches here: someone could start with SEO and move on with paid advertising or vice versa. Paid advertising, even within the social media realm, can be very powerful. I wonder if the statistic is lower because many people try to do it in house. Paid advertising requires just as much expertise as SEO. Money can be lost fast through paid advertising; it can seem that you’re simply paying for people to click on ads. Unless the proper metrics and the right targeting are put in place, it’s easy to lose money, and users won’t know if they’re making their money back. In order for more people to start using paid advertising, they will have to use an agency’s services in order to get the right help. We’re an SEO agency with no focus on paid advertising, so there’s no hidden reason for me to say that. 

Boostability primarily focuses on small business clients. Can you talk about how you set realistic goals with your clients and how you set strategy, especially when working with someone who has never worked with an agency before? What are some of the challenges?

My brother is involved in a small business. He tried many different advertising approaches, even going to companies like Angie’s List or Home Advisor. It’s surprising that he didn’t come to me, but it’s probably due to his pride. I debated how I would go about convincing him to use our services and have since been able to do so. This extends to what the general approach should be in convincing a business to go down the right path, either in choosing the right in-house person for SEO, or choosing the right agency.

Unfortunately, I haven’t come up with a simple answer, except to say that the right approach is obvious when it’s seen. There are a couple of things that someone could look for. How fast an agency is trying to move the client through the sale cycle is one of them. If they work like a car dealership, shoving papers in front of them and making them sign, that should be a red flag. Sales tactics are good indicators of how a company will treat a client in the future: if they’re stalling on answers to a question or trying to push clients down a path they don’t fully understand or are not comfortable with, that could be a real problem.

Choosing an agency that will answer every question is a good route. Comparing different agencies and going through the sales process with each of them is also a way of telling which ones will care about their clients.

Experience in making comparisons and the realization that SEO is an investment are both important for small businesses. However, the work will require a few months to bring results, regardless of the chosen agency.