December 20th, 2012
Through 12 years of conducting SEO for my other business, a vehicle route optimization software company, we realized that the SEO industry and the broader Internet marketing industry is missing key components that business owners require. There are numerous individuals and companies selling SEO, but most of them are not taking a scientific and professional services approach. They are essentially sales organizations. They do not research the Google and other search algorithms to understand the mathematics behind the search results. Although that research is still in its infancy, there are means to correlate the parameters utilized, such as social media references and backlinks, into improved search results. This is much the same way as operations research is used for vehicle route optimization. When you are trying to solve a particular problem, such as a garbage truck being routed in a dense residential neighborhood versus salespersons traveling across large territories, you would control the algorithm by using different parameters, At TESSA, it is our mission to boil down SEO into its quantitative components and not worry about the glitz of SEO, i.e., the sales pitch. We understand that the science of SEO is what will generate the results.
Some less than scrupulous SEO providers have created problems for their clients by taking shortcuts to getting higher rankings. These “black hat” SEO tactics, such as using automated software to generate thousands of useless links to your website or cloaking your website to show different content than what was found by the search engine (and the searcher), have caused their clients to lose search engine rank positions when Google catches on. Especially in the last two years as Google released their Panda and Penguin algorithm updates that have made black hat SEO techniques cause much more harm than good. At TESSA we only use “white hat” methods. The downside is that the white hat methods are mostly manual, time consuming and, thus, more costly. White hat methods are more ethical. Although the definition of white hat varies by source (e.g., Web.com, Wikipedia and Google), we have taken a basic definition. A litmus test, if you will. If the SEO tactic will waste somebody’s time (when searching), we will not use it. Demonstrating this mantra, we are not involved in email marketing, as we feel that spam has degraded email as a communication tool and wasted everyone’s time.
Another of our key ideals is to help businesses that are lost by the overly complex and confusing prospect of Internet marketing. When I first started doing SEO in the dotcom heyday, all you had to do was build a website, pepper in your keywords and, voila, you were on the first page. With the release of Google’s Panda and Penguin algorithm updates, not only have they made black hat SEO much less effective, they have also made it more difficult for small and medium-sized businesses to rank highly with just a website alone. We believe that we are helping the “little guy.” Most businesses don’t have time nor staff resources to figure out the complexities of SEO. Further, many of the other more reputable SEO firms don’t target small businesses. We strive to simplify SEO for businesses by providing highly skilled professional consulting services. By meeting with business owners, we provide a direct relationship with you and your Internet marketing consultant. We are persistent, because we take and “old school” approach where working hard for your client is a basic level of service. We constantly change our SEO methods monthly to persistently provide new content for the search engines to index and boost your rankings.
All The Best,
Kevin Callen
