People like things easy. The easier the better. At least it’s a common trait here in America, where the common perception is that life is hard, and we “deserve a break”. Work is hard. Relationships are hard. Saving money is hard. Having to get up, clean your body, get ready for work, drive to work, work all day, drive home, remember to eat, remember to pay the bills…
Rebelling against all that hard stuff is expressed in many ways. Procrastination, self sabotage, picking fights, not caring… I could go on and on about how hard life seems to be, and how people react to that perception.
But that would be too hard. There’s too many concepts, too many considerations to deal with! Instead, I’ll focus in on just one concept. Because it’s an easy one for me to talk about. Or rant about. – That’s SEO Audits. 🙂
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Being a renegade means expecting push-back
My SEO audits usually reveal that entire sites might need to be scrapped. Or re-engineered. Or countless other tasks that can add up to hundreds of hours of time and footwork. Clients are busy – they’ve got a full plate already. So sometimes there’s push-back.
Because I’m a renegade, I understand client limitations, yet I don’t waiver in my communicating the importance of my recommendations. And sometimes I need to be brutally honest when it comes to explaining the ramifications of failing to implement my recommendations. Us renegades believe it’s important to be honest about such things.
But “person on a pedestal” or “my friend” says…
Sometimes clients challenge me based on some such nonsense they heard from an SEO “expert” who provided consulting to them or offered them “free advice” before I came along. Or maybe it’s a company or person who they heard “knows what they’re talking about”. Or they read an article online…
When that happens, I usually do my best to explain REAL SEO according to current REAL industry best practices. In a way that helps educate clients.
Renegades are easily entertained
As a renegade, I sometimes laugh. Out loud. In business settings. Because some of the things people hear about SEO is just downright hilarious.
Like recently when I was asked by a client “What about using nofollow, and how it helps your Google Juice?”
Most “experts” just want to make a buck
Because I’m a renegade with “Captain-Save-A-Client” leanings, I don’t like hearing that – it probably means that “expert” just read a few or a bunch of articles online – the vast majority of which go so far beyond over-simplification that there’s no “real” answer to be found in them, and decided “I can sell this stuff to site owners as ‘consulting’ and make a buck, easy peasy!”.
The worst kind of nonsense people in business hear comes from people who just want to sound like they know the “secret” to SEO. Or they became enamored with an industry player and put them on a pedestal of idolatry. And if that person happens to have a lexicon of buzz words, they spread like an infectious disease…
Renegades deplore secret buzz words
I’ll be honest. I’m not a pirate. I don’t think it’s cool to have special “industry-speak”, and I don’t need to prop myself up with “PageRank Sculpting”, “Link Juice”, “Google Juice” or any of the industry generated buzz phrases that some people seem to believe makes them smart, or “in the know”.
Because clients, the people who we’re here to help, don’t need to be impressed by such things. They need real solutions to real problems. And if you need to impress them by referring to the process of passing along authority weight as “passing Google juice”, it means you’re not a renegade, you’re a pirate.
And if that’s the case, consciously or otherwise, it means you just want to make money. You don’t actually want to help clients. Or maybe you’re otherwise uneducated about the importance of choosing words that clients can understand rather than “be impressed by”.
Renegades have to be unique
Being a renegade means I don’t want to pass off your stock canned “best practices” as my own either. Because truthfully, that’s not an audit. It’s a 25 cent consolidated copy of countless free for the reading articles already available.
No – being a renegade means that I actually only detail in my audits issues that really are a concern on each unique site. And when I give examples of those, I don’t even use generic examples – I’ve got to be unique, as a renegade, so I actually take real examples right from the site I’m auditing. Examples that clients can understand. And because they come from that clients site, they’re examples the client can immediately recognize.
From what I’ve seen put out by others, apparently that makes me unique – a rebellious sort when compared to the majority of “audits” most site owners get.
Renegades don’t need to be popular
As a renegade, I don’t need to be popular. Sure, I’m human, so my ego enjoys the attention. Yet what I care about more is stepping outside the box, because I know when I do it my way, I get results. Results that others couldn’t or wouldn’t bother trying to get.
Are you a renegade?
What about you? Would you rather take the easy way out, or do things that sets you above the competition? Would you rather think you’re cool for all the Google juice you’re spewing out onto clients, and your “skill at sculpting”, or would you rather communicate in plain English, based on real world best practices that your clients will get more value from?
Would you prefer to bang out cookie-cutter audits, or provide unique information your clients can benefit from while everyone else is only providing limited value?
