Comments on: 4 Reasons Your Boss Doesn’t Care About SEO

By: Scott Clark

Scott Clark — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 14:10:41 +0000

The crap hits the fan in the following scenario:

Boss looks at Google. See’s competitor X at #1, his company at #5.
SEO pushes case for blogging, social content, curated content. Largely based on Google/Bing’s sermons on same.
Boss points out that competitor X has nothing like that on their site, still rank #1, and is eating his company’s lunch. And their site looks is a Gomomma quick-site that uses comic sans.
SEO points out that competitor X has lots of links from Great-Biz-Directory.info, a trashy directory, but those links will soon not matter and the competitor X will soon be dropping in the rank. Any day now. Yep. Any time.
Boss loses interest, types on his Blackberry, reminds employee that performance reviews are coming up.

By: Jolly

Jolly — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 11:01:36 +0000

Thanks for the post Liza. SEO is important in a business and a boss that ignores SEO doesn’t really understand the true value of SEO. Maybe they are not internet savvy and are not familiar with internet marekting, social media, and so on. Nowadays, it is important for a business to have an internet exposure and to present the products and services in the web.

By: Ioana

Ioana — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 16:15:09 +0000

They don’t understand because they don’t want to, it’s as simple as that. This would require listening, making an effort to understand and being open to new ideas. Many just want things to be simple and rosy and coincide with their own ideas. And they will resist anything else.
I’m not a warlock, I just “optimize keywords” and when I attempt to make a story my e-mails aren’t being read because they’re too long.

By: Simon Yohe

Simon Yohe — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 12:46:36 +0000

Good article…. I think you are missing out on one important aspect…. the fact that our society is based on instant gratification. Proper SEO takes time for it to grow and be successful… a lot of bosses and companies are focused on the “now” and don’t want to invest/spend effort on something that they believe “may or may not” happen. Using your “warlock” reference, I would say that another good analogy would be SEO is “magic beans”.

By: Cody Ian

Cody Ian — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 12:13:36 +0000

SEO is really important for any business.
IF your boss truly understand the true value, you wont bring so much more to the company and your boss will see you differently :)

By: Garry

Garry — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 22:41:10 +0000

Boy did you just sum it up. I have to restrain myself when I hear future prospects say ‘I was spending $100 per month and I didn’t see any sales therefore SEO doesn’t work.’

Another ignorant-boss-moment is when you drive traffic to the corporate website then it’s dismissed because it didn’t lead to any sales and boss won’t authorize a site/graphics/layout upgrade to convert the traffic.

A favorite of mine is most always from the sales department: “People don’t find our products through the Internet. Our sales come from cold-calls and networking with other people.” Yes, they are convinced that no one uses the internet except to use eBay, Amazon, and watch porn.

That’s why i left working SEO for Corporatioins. The inevitable-idiot-boss who is in a position of authority and always has ‘sales’ troubles on his hands. Yet comes up with ideas like ‘let’s give everyone branded coffee mugs’ at the monthly sales meeting as their go-to strategy.

‘The Office’s” Michael Scott character isn’t too far off.

By: Mike Roberts

Mike Roberts — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 20:37:58 +0000

“Your boss thinks you’re a warlock”
I’m changing my job title now. :)
I’ve heard people refer to SEO as black magic, voodoo, making sacrifices to the gods of Google, and various other esoteric sounding phrases. When I try to explain what I know of SEO to my managers they get sort of glassy-eyed… as though any moment now blood will begin to drip from their nostrils due to some form of cerebral hemorrhage induced by the mystical terms flowing from my mouth. Then they ask me to rank position 1 for keyword X and walk off as though anything meaningful has come from the discussion. Hell, I’ve only being doing this for 4ish months and the people around me seem to believe I have to power to make “Link Juice” flow up walls at command. This may all eventually cause me to have a nervous breakdown but until then I shall soldier on.

By: Emily

Emily — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 18:35:07 +0000

Seriously, get out of my head. This post hits very close to home for me and pretty much defines all of my frustration lately. :)

I work in-house at a very small company. I do everything you listed (SEO, social media, content creation, even web design). But I struggle with communicating the value of what I am doing. I’ve been here a year and while searches for our brand name are up something like 500%, the sales haven’t been there to support it. I can sense increasing frustration with my boss, but no matter how hard I try, I can’t seem to get the message across.

Yesterday he asked why a press release about our company that was picked up by a major industry publication was not in the first page of search results for our brand name. *facepalm*

Anyways, THANK YOU for this. I’m considering actually sending it to my boss. :)

By: Chris Pantages

Chris Pantages — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 17:38:58 +0000

My parents are also clueless about what I do (and they live in the SF Bay Area!) Last time I visited my dad wanted to make sure my job wasn’t to create pop-up ads in his Yahoo email. Of course,a few years back, they also asked my I didn’t create YouTube.

By: Jerry McCarthy

Jerry McCarthy — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 16:34:43 +0000

Lisa,
Good post and very relevant. As a matter of fact, the post I’m working on today is a spin off of yours (great minds..). One of the biggest objections we get from potential s.e.o. clients is they already paid someone to do s.e.o. a while back and didn’t see any benefits. And here’s the best part-when we dig deeper in terms of what was done, we can sum it all up in one question; how much a month were you paying? The general answer is either $99 or $150 per/month. Can you say “almost criminal?” The ‘s.e.o.’ (if they can even call themselves that) companies out there pitching these rip off programs make it harder for legitimate companies like Outspoken Media or Premier Pixels. I don’t mind unraveling preconceived notions but as s.e.o. houses, we need to prepare ourselves and our team for this objection going in.
Of course Lisa, we all strive for the ideal clients (medium or large businesses) but how do you change the shift in thinking from SMBs who don’t understand the concept “you get what you pay for?” We’ve been fairly successful in our ability to explain the difference but it’s important to understand going in that a lot of these businesses have been sold on these half ass programs before, thus leaving a bad taste in their mouth. Thanks Lisa and have a great weekend!