local media insider

SEO Services bring $2 million in new revenues for OPUBCO

Since Google's algorithms changed, customized SEO services are back in demand

Alisa Cromer
Posted

Media: The Oklahoman and NewsOk, part of  OPUBCO Communications Group

Owner: Anschutz Exploration Corporation

Market: Oklahoma City, population one million

Key executive:  David Christopher, SEO manager

Initiative:   Leveraging inhouse audience development experts for SEO Sales Pro, to customized SEO services to merchants

Challenge:   Leverage core SEO competencies to create an inhouse division that provides SEO services to local merchants

Summary

OPUBCO did not originally set out to build a $2 million division. SEO manager David Christopher was hired in 2010 to create an SEO strategy for audience development of the newspaper’s own site, Newsok.com. The division unofficially began when a salesperson approached him with a client who needed to improve its online ranking. That first client went to the top of the search engine results for local design services.

Today the SEO division, with 14-non sales employees, is arguably the leading provider of SEO services in Oklahoma City, also providing back end services for large local ad agencies. Since the Opubco was purchased by Anschutz, the division also serves 18 more newspapers and is in the process of signing on as a white label provider to additional media companies.

A gap in the market:   The  changing face of SEO

When most media executives today talk about selling SEO, they mean selling directory listings and listing distribution  to small businesses, along with a little reputation management thrown in.   

SEO as a service is more complex, technological and means getting directly involved with merchants web sites, a tricky  business. Christopher contends, however,  that as SEO has evolved, so has demand for higher end SEO services from large local or locally headquartered companies with budgets in the millions. And newspapers are well-positioned to leverage core  competencies to go after this business. 

The  development of inhouse SEO services is aided by  Google’s updates Panda and Penguin, which  favor content providers and penalize black-hat practices. Suddenly the advantage eroded for short-cuts and content-free link sites, that violate Google guidelines; “all the things they kept saying didn’t work,  that did work.”

What ranks today is real content with links to other real content, precisely the stuff that newspaper people are good at creating. Similarily, mastering the mystery of meta-tags has also been replaced by the need to master the nuances of linguistics.

‘“SEO used to be done just with hidden words on the page. That strategy is a long time gone. What your content says is what the search engines are looking for. The content ...has to be sensitive to linguistics, “ Christopher says.

Out-of-favor too, are old-school SEO professionals whose low-quality link building was their main competency.  

"Link volume was once more important than the source of links. It's not anymore...Cheap hacking is out the window and can now be penalized.  That’s now a huge challenge for those cookie-cutter people.”

These changes have opened a hole in the market for media start ups like SEOSalesPro that take a more customized approach, and can take advantage of their built in sales team and infrastructure. 

Products and pricing:  What are they selling?

SEO Sales Pro customer meetings  begin with a free keyword analysis, and identification of business goals, site strategy, and search competitors. Much of the first meeting is involved in discussing the process and services involved.

 “Prospective clients don’t really understand SEO. One of the challenges is educating our customers or potential customers.  We spend 30-60 minutes of conversation with clients about what we do, how we do it, and what it is for them.  They don’t usually understand.  We have to tell them about website traffic, analytics, and where people are coming from.

 The four core services explained include:

•Key word strategy and content creation

Depending on the size of the company and competition for key words in the space, there may be content strategies both for high traffic key words, and for overlooked keywords that drive rankings and traffic faster. The content creation service includes copywriting both titles and descriptions to allign with key words, creation of new key-word focused content pages, and even URL changes. The team works with the merchant’s web developer or implements content changes directly.

•  Link-building 

The team develops “white hat” SEO strategies that build site authority, one of the qualities that determines ranking.

“Authority simply means the number, quality and relevance of links. If a brand new blogger linked to a website, Google would not care. If it’s a newspaper, Google pays attention. That web site has a lot of authority.”

Link-building sounds difficult but is worth mastering:  It accounts for two thirds of the overall of the client budget and division revenues.

“That’s what makes the contract renewable.”

 The link-building strategy starts with a simple strategic conversation with the business owner:  What are all the places in the real world where you are respected and referred from?

Then the team works to get those real world relationships “represented digitally” by contacting those companies, often suppliers, and asking to put website links in place.

“(The search market) has reached critical mass in some categories like roofing and HVAC,” Christopher says. So expertise in link authority can provide a competitive advantage.

 • Content marketing

 Related to link-building, the next level of SEO is inbound marketing through creating content and buzz that drives traffic. For example, one client is local roofer whose type of roofing slate was the only type that held up in a recent hail storm.

 “You create a blog where you talk about how it’s the only slate that held up, and a link from that slate company.  Its a clever marketing thinking, how to great links from great source of authority.”

“A lot of people are under the impression that good SEO  is like hacking, or tinkering  with key words.  It’s real marketing.”  

• Local Search

The company also makes sure that listings are claimed and distributed.  

The basic technology tool that Opubco’s strategists use, after trying “Lots of different tools” is still Google AdWords, used for “90% of what we do.”  

 A few other tools measure things like keyword difficulty, such Brightedge  and eHelp.

“If you don’t have the expertise they could be valuable.” (For the Geeks: Here's how a Christopher's study ranks key word difficulty tools in order of best to worst: 1. Google Adwords Exact Match Monthly (US) Traffic, 2. SEOMoz Keyword Difficulty Tool, 3. Google Adwords Cost Per Click (CPC); 4. Google Adwords Competition Score.)

Pricing

Rather than charging by the hour, SEOSalesPro provides customized packages, with monthly prices that  range from $400 for a small business to more than $10,000 a month for a national or regional brand. Packages require a one year commitment and there is no discount on SEO services for Oklahoman advertisers.

 “Like any service, you can’t see what you buy; you buy based on the promise of the brand and the track record of the brand. We have clients that rave about us...who say it’s the best money we ever spent, the most effective marketing they’ve done or that two thirds of their business now comes from their web site. So that's how we deal with (the price) issue.”  

Here's an example of the results-oriented pie chart used on sales calls: 

Personnel strategy

Perhaps the best example of the new skill sets required for SEO today is Christopher himself.  With a masters in journalism, he went directly to an internship in audience development, which turned into a full time job in what is, essentially, SEO.

Positions now require “a confluence of linguistics, marketing and then IT.”  Candidates need to “have enough of all three and excel at one.”

Recruiting talent is the biggest challenge and the company has developed an extensive training program.  "There isn’t enough talent in SEO and it is extremely sought after."

"Though a lot of the ‘old world’ folks are out of business and looking for jobs. These people don’t have the marketing skills to do the job that way it must be done now. We’re also dealing with increased demand, so we hire bright but inexperienced people and train them. It’s really a hands-on apprenticeship program from which they must graduate.”   

The department started with the one SEO expert who took on a few of the newspapers customers, and added trainees as the customer base grew. While there is now a team of 14, the division has always been profitable.

“We’ve moved slowly, compared with how quickly could have moved with more marketing. The challenge is not finding customers; the challenge is full-filling the contract and making sure that  it’s a great product. It is  more like a lawyer, in that is is skilled time that you are giving to people.”

With 30 multi-media (not dedicated) sellers, sales accumulate at about four new clients per month, averaging $500 to $1000 per month each, though large accounts spend upwards of $100,000 per year.

Expect an SEO expert handling both the key word strategies and link building to max out at about 25 accounts. At an average of $1000 a month about $240,000 per year, which could double with one or two mega accounts in the mix.

As the department grew,  the team split into specialists at link buildlng which is more marketing driven and key word content strategies, which is driven by linguistics and IT. each of these sub-specialists can handle able 50 accounts.  

Early on, Christopher did consider affiliating with Orange Soda

 “We had to decide if we should engage their services and just use them or invest more in a homegrown product and service that seems to be working for us.  I’m very grateful we decided to do this ourselves. Due to recent Google updates those automated cookie cutter solutions are finding it very difficult to deliver results for their customers."

 Sales generation 

 Leads come into the division from a variety of sources:

• Promotion on OPUBCO and NewsOK websites.  SeoSalesPro site offers a free, no-obligation SEO report that generates some of the leads: 

 

•  Opubco’s 30 sales representatives

“The Oklahoman sales people have been trained to identify opportunities for SEO sales," said Christopher.  The sales person takes the SEO expert, referred to as “subject matter experts” on the call, and fleshes out “what a successful campaign might looklike” for that particular sector of the industry. 

•  Reseller (wholesale/retail) arrangements with advertising agencies and other media groups, including other Anshutz newspapers such as  Washington Examiner, and The Gazette in Colorado Springs. Twelve of the current SEO clients came to the firm this way.

The reseller financial arrangement is customized to fit the needs each partner. The first newspaper partnership outside the group is now in the works.

• Conference and speaking engagements.

Customer base

While there are some local companies who spend $400 a month, the department courts and relies heavily on larger companies with multi-million dollar bugets and which can spend upwards of $10,000 a month.

Christopher looks for large coompanies and locally based national headquarters, but the core qualities are the same for large and small companies interested in SEO.  

• Search driven.  “We ask, Is this a product people are searching for online? “  Good examples would be auto, roofing or HVAC.   Companies that do not fit the model are referral driven, such as, for example, a radiology company that relies on referrign docotrs. “If we get a request for something like that we turn it down.”

• High ROI.  The best example of this is a car dealer,  which not only has high search driven marketplace, but also a very high spend per customer, which can sustain a high invesment in SEO.

• Trackable online.  Trackability is becoming increasingly important and is one of the initiatives currently underway. Online stores are ideal purchasers of SEO since they are 100% trackable, and can only be found online.  Brick-and sales, require setting up a system to measure sales results.  The team is currently combining a tool set into a system track post and pre-click activity, calls, emails and pipelines to the sale. 

Current clients include builders, car dealerships, grocers, plastic surgeons, hair transplant services, roofers, schools, attorneys, and hospital networks. 

Results:

• SEOSalesPro generates $2 million annual revenue.

• Approximately one third of the local SEO clients had never advertised with The Oklahoman. 

• Forty percent of the SEO clients are outside the Oklahoman’s DMA. The company is now pitching more national companies.

•  Within 3 months of implementation, Christopher claims that 77 percent of clients’ keywords have delivered the client’s site to the first page of results. Forty three percent of those are the first listing in the results.

• SEOSalesPro is the largest SEO services provider in the city if not the region, and is beginning to establish a national footprint. It provides back edn services for ad agencies and has a partnership with another media company outside its chain in the works. 

Lessons Learned:

•  Separate branding helped. While it originally made sense to tie the SEO services brand to OPUBCO, and sell first to current advertising clients, the SEO services are being rebranding away from The Oklahoman and NewsOK.

•  People and expertise are mission critical.  It’s better to hire the best inexperienced people and train them than to attempt to rewire  “old-world” SEO experts.

• Many of the sales are larger companies, and not typical traditional-media advertisers. 

• The new link buidling strategies require making outbound calls to companies with established relationships and content marketing - all of which requires marketing and linguistic skills as well as IT. The largest and longest term revenues are in link-building which requires not only analsysis but outbound marketing. 

• SEO writers are also critical to the team, ie people who are able to allign marketing content on web sites with key word strategies. 

•  A leader with  management and business skills is needed to spearhead the project. Start with a leader who is an expert in online audience development, ie the SEO strategy for the papers own site. 

• Recruit trainees and interns on a constant basis; look for marketing, linquiistics AND IT. All three are neccesary.

• A fulfillment rep can handle $200,000 to $300,000 in sales, or about 25 accounts. At some point break specialists out for content which is more about writing and key words, and link building which also involves marketing and personal contact by phone. 

•SEOSalespro.com has marketing materials and testimonials on its website. It is offering back end fullfilment partnerships to media companies who prefer to sell rather than fulfill SEO contracts. 

Many thanks to David Christopher for sharing his expertise with us. 

David Christopher


SEO, OPUBCO, The Oklahoman, SeoSalesPro.com