One of the companies I've been following closely over the years is Marchex, who does some pretty cool stuff with domain mass development. They own hundreds of thousands of unique sites and have a majority of them developed, directory style. The sites are filled with relevant business listings. So I noticed last week that they rolled out a new setup. I am sure many will be surprised in regards to this latest move but I am not. I've actually been advocating and saying that this strategy works each and every time for many years now. It is refreshing to see some of the larger companies actually finally starting to get it and try out something new. Something so basic and a no brainer that has been overlooked.. Until now. They are connecting the dots, at last. Good job.
I reached out to one of Marchex reps and asked what is the new setup all about and if they can provide more information and so on. This is an official statement from one of their online marketing lead specialists / sitesponsor department "Those sites are part of our newest local advertising service. We are looking for local business owners that want to advertise their motels. It’s only our beta launch thus, it is free for now. However, we do foresee fees in the near future. In terms of how much and when we are switching over is unknown." Ok --- great. So they are essentially giving away free advertising on some pretty good domains and high trafficked websites, search for chicago motels or miami motels over at Yahoo.. Their websites rank right at the top and get some nice traffic!
So why should a company give away free advertising? Why should YOU too offer free advertising on your websites or actually get off your ass and solicit advertisers to sign up with you?? Well, in order to "hook" an advertiser/s. I've been doing this for a long long time on my GEO sites that deal with real estate especially. This works like magic. You offer them a month or two for free. It costs them zilch.. Nada! If they like the traffic, assuming it converts for them... They will be ready to pay you. How much? A LOT! In the travel biz, as well as real estate... Agencies pay a lot of money for exclusivity and know and appreciate this. They are ready to pay tens of thousands per month if you can deliver the conversions. The KEY WORD being conversions. Not just traffic or exposure but actual conversions so that they get a nice ROI. This is a long term play. This is all about establishing the right relationships and doing so long term. Gotta make sacrifices. But it's worth it. Big time worth it!!
Marchex has many sites ranking at Google, Yahoo and MSN... But unfortunately when they do one thing right, another they screw up. Those two example sites, miamimotels.com and chicagomotels.com are now totally screwed up as far as the SEO goes. This is what happens at big companies. As I've mentioned a couple of times on my site already, the biggest failures are because of the smallest little things. They get overlooked so often. Now, it will be another few days or weeks at most before Yahoo removes those sites from ranking at the top. Marchex worked years for those spots, and now just like that... Bamm! They will get removed because they do not have a SEO expert / professional on their team.
I mean, how hard is it to plug in the TITLE and DESCRIPTION meta tags to a web site... It is a no brainer!!! Nope. Marchex screwed it up. God help us all. LOL! Look, I can't be here 24/7/365 monitoring and watching after other companies biz and pointing this stuff out, but this happens every day, with all of the biggest companies. The small stuff that gets overlooked and ignored. Constantly. They don't understand the basics. They don't know that it counts. Well, guess what. It does! Big time. Search engine optimization has to be taken seriously. Everybody that doesn't is going to suffer. Literally. You are going to suffer and lose out on a lot of free traffic which you could of had if you only followed the SEO best practices and some of the most basic guidelines. Duh!!!
I have very close and good friends who are considered some of the best and most innovative and brightest SEO experts / consultants working for the top agencies out there and all that but guess what... When they get paid $100k+ per job by one of this larger companies, such as Marchex... All they do once they come in.. Do an comprehensive analysis and fix up the problems usually within a few hours. Sometimes a day or two at most. They don't do anything that is too complex. They fix up the mistakes. Small mistakes that account for the biggest penalties and traffic losses. A 12 year old could of done the same exact thing and the same quality of a job.
Sure they work weeks or sometimes month's on some of this projects because it is part of their obligations as per contract but they don't actually work work if you know what I mean. They just sit on their ass doing other stuff and wait for the changes to go into effect, on Google's and Yahoo's end. If they don't happen, they charge the company another a hundred grand and try out different strategies. The "waiting period" is so hard and grueling... Argh!! This part of the job usually consists of lots of sitting by the pool / beach walks, tennis / golfing, going out to the best restaurants, clubs, etc. Yup. It's hard work baby!! :) But shhhh.. Don't tell anybody this, OK? Thanks...
Observations at WannaDevelop.com
02/23/2010: Dozens of Amazon affiliate stores for sale.. Developed by DomainMassDevelopment.com 01/11/2010: Wanna be part-owner of DomainState.com with myself and a few others? Ok, read this now... 11/02/2009: FS gets it on with WP... It's about time, no??!?! 08/24/2009: If all else fails... Who is gonna pay the bills?!! 08/22/2009: Frank Schilling has the winning formula $$$$$$
