As a search specialist with more than ten years in the field, you've seen it all. Over those years you learn a lot, both about the craft itself and about process. At Hatless we run plenty of our own projects: we experiment, innovate and execute bold content ideas just to see how they land.
SEO processes should be efficient and detailed
Process-wise we do everything as efficiently as possible. We bring in outside specialists to sharpen every process, and in Denisa we have a project manager who optimises every detail with smart formulas.
You profit from all of this in the collaboration, because knowledge is power and efficiency lets us apply it optimally. Especially in the long run.
SEO knowledge is highly specific and highly complex when it comes to:
- URL structures
- The hierarchy of a website
- Content cannibalisation
- Indexation issues
- How a crawler works
- The technical optimisation of a website
- Internal linking
- Applying and using JSON markup
- Producing linkable content
- Finding websites to earn a link from
- Crafting the right pitch
- Negotiating a placement
- Placing an article correctly
- Keeping track of a link marketing campaign
- Auditing a website
All of these tasks can take a lot of time, are highly error-prone, and have to be right down to the smallest detail to safeguard the SEO factors (read: an optimal experience for visitors).
Why time is not a good or complete measure
Reasons why time is a poor measure of the work being done:
- Knowledge and skill can't be billed per minute. Someone without experience makes mistakes that cost you serious money in the long term because you're not being found. The costs we prevent by thinking along for one hour up front are not covered by an hourly rate.
- A complex problem needs the right approach. Chances are we've already solved your exact problem several times over the years. We know how it's done, have the right approach and work efficiently. We're faster and more precise than anyone. Bill that per minute and we'd effectively be punished for our efficiency.
- Time is limiting. To us, SEO equals love. We do our work with commitment: commitment to you and to the project you entrust to us. The moment we'd have to keep watching the clock, that love would suffer. And if a job is too big for one month, an hourly model would simply mean delay. Put plainly: we want to give you more knowledge, more skill and more results in as little time as possible.
- At the end of the day, you want the best quality. We take you seriously. We could sell you as many hours as possible and put a junior on the job to maximise our margin, but we wouldn't be able to look ourselves in the mirror. SEO is a craft we've mastered, and a craft doesn't lend itself to a scalable hour business. Do it anyway, and quality pays the price. We're high end, and we don't play that game.
Examples from daily practice
An (international) SEO migration
A lot can go wrong in an (international) site migration. There are countless missteps with big consequences, such as losing positions and traffic. A few common migration mistakes:
- Visitors aren't redirected to the right page;
- Earned links hit dead ends, stop counting and may even get removed;
- No thought is given to an international URL structure;
- There's no logic behind redirecting the old URL structure.
It should be clear: a migration is specialist work, and an SEO specialist should be involved as early as possible.
"Can you quickly check if this page is good for SEO?"
There is no "quickly checking" in SEO. To walk you through just the basics of what happens when we visit a page:
- Is the URL right?
- Is there no internal competition?
- Is the heading structure logical?
- Are all internal links correct?
- Is there JSON markup, and is it valid?
- How are the images doing on title, size and alt text?
- Does the page pass on speed?
- Are the metas filled in properly?
And that's only the beginning. So no, there's no such thing as a quick check. A large part of SEO is also nuance-sensitive. Where a junior SEO specialist might think "the Yoast bullet is green and all the keywords are on the page", we know a page also has to match the search intent, hold the visitor's attention, and get every detail right. Details that green bullets and tool KPIs simply can't capture. That's craftsmanship.
"Do you really spend X hours a month on a link campaign?"
Easy! We can make link campaigns very big, because we're always bursting with ideas. Try it yourself: spend three months writing to websites (and no, not 10 to 15 sites with the same email) asking them to link to your site. Our rules of thumb:
- Every site receives a personal, unique email aimed specifically at their website or page;
- We want to add value for the visitors of the site we approach;
- In most cases we go for a free mention;
- The website matters: it has an audience, a reason to exist and relevance within our field.
The replies vary widely. Some come with a counter-question, some open the door to a long-term relationship, some decline. Either way: an outreach campaign takes empathy, and you have to spot every angle to get the most out of it. And that's before we get to negotiations with publishers who want compensation or want to try a product.
In short: if you want the highest quality, it has to be custom work. Custom work takes time, empathy and above all: knowledge and skill.
"We'll write the copy ourselves" or "the content already exists"
Not all copy is created equal. Ideally, copy is written by someone who understands SEO and knows the product and company inside out. We often see copy written by someone without SEO knowledge: it may look nice, but offers little substance for people arriving from a search engine.
Writing has to suit you. Do it reluctantly and chances are:
- The content falls short on substance;
- Planning becomes a challenge, because you have better things to do, so the intended result (quality copy that covers the full search intent) keeps getting pushed back;
- A deep review is needed, which produces lots of comments, which means even more work done reluctantly.
That's why Hatless works with a fixed method, executed step by step, and always with a writer who knows the specific subject. Within that method you can write the copy yourself, while we watch closely and catch the common mistakes up front.
"My new site is live and I'd like to start with SEO, can you help?"
This might be the most painful example. Search engine marketing is often treated as the "least most important thing". The site is already built, the CMS is chosen, the structure is final, every element carefully picked, and only then do we enter the picture. In nine out of ten cases we arrive with a long list of comments, like the points above.
The result: a mountain of work that could have been avoided if an SEO had joined the very first brainstorm.
The lesson: save yourself a lot of hassle and make SEO "the first most important thing". In the end, SEO is about the visitor and about making a genuine connection. That should be central to building and maintaining any website.
Hopefully these examples give you better insight. They are exactly why we only work with a retainer. We don't do hourly billing, because it doesn't cover the knowledge factor. And we keep project management to a minimum, to keep the focus where it belongs: being found, and making genuine connections.