Abhishek Bhardwaj says SEO isn’t about packages. Eh, it maybe kind of is.

Okay, fine, SEO isn’t about the type of cookie-cutter, this-is-what-you-get-no-exceptions packages that he’s talking about in his post. You can’t buy your SEO by the pound like you can a guy (what?). Ordering X keywords, for Y months, at Z price isn’t going to get you the SEO results you’re looking for.  Rankings, like life, take more effort than that. You have to work for what you want.

SEO’s not rocket science but it’s not like baking a batch of sugar cookies either.

Or€¦on second thought, maybe it is.

Think about it. Your mother (or Michael Gray) and Martha Stewart may both have a favorite sugar cookie recipe. And the basic ingredients are probably the same, but it’s the finesse and the details that make Martha’s cookies trump your dear old mothers (even though your mom’s cookies contain 100 percent more love). The same is true for SEO. The rankings are in the details and the finesse.

When done correctly, SEO packages can help make sure those details aren’t missed. There’s something to be said for a multi-part, packaged SEO strategy. One that contains many different ingredients and flavors that combined create a much tastier cookie. Something that melts in your mouth and gives you far better Internet marketing success than you could have gotten independently.

I suppose I just take issue with the term “package SEO” being used to mean something bad. It doesn’t have to be dirty. The package refers to the ingredients, not the actual measurements for how much sugar, flour, and, um, whatever else is in sugar cookies (I know. I fail at being a girl. This is why I’m single.) goes into it. We may offer you a “package” of SEO services that we think you’d benefit from (some content creation, a heavy helping of social media and just a dash of reputation management), but that doesn’t mean those service aren’t customized for you. They absolutely are.   The package was created based on your individual needs.   We looked at your site, ran it through our spice cabinet of services and then took out the ones that we think would complement you best.  (I’m beating this analogy to death, aren’t I? Okay, I’ll stop.)

I like the packaged SEO approach because I think it ensures you’re covering all angles.  By designing a multi-part SEO strategy that includes SEO reporting, link building content creation, etc, we know you’re creating a stronger campaign. A campaign that takes everything else we’re doing for you into account so that it’s being done in unison and in the right order. That’s the kind of SEO we believe in and what we want to offer our clients.

So don’t be turned off by the term SEO package. Or at least not until you hear about how that package is created and what goes into building it. If the SEO company you’re talking to is only offering you an out-of-the-box strategy, then you have my complete permission to take that box and hit them in the face with it. But there’s a chance they’re offering you something much more. Like the greatest sugar cookie ever created. Mmm€¦

Rhea and I had a bit of a Girl’s Night last night. We went to dinner and chatted about our lives€¦which really means we talked a lot about work and clients and everything we have planned at We Build Pages. (I know; we’re exciting people. Shut up.) And when she was drunk off Diet Coke, she let me in on a little secret:  Rhea gets scared sometimes.

Rhea the Perfectionist is sometimes afraid of doing her job too well. Afraid of making our reports so comprehensive that a client has everything they could ever want and may be encouraged to take that information and go it alone.  Despite that, she knows that she’ll never give anything less than 120 percent (Rhea likes to work 14 hour days€¦) to her clients, in both information and raw energy.  She knows that when you’re a starving client, there’s no such thing as too much data. You can’t have too many tools in your arsenal to improve your site. And she works her butt off to give them that.

As much as we kick and tease one another sometimes, even I recognize that Rhea is a superhero.  Truthfully, there are a lot of superheroes here in Troy. I think it may be a requirement to becoming a ninja or something.

During my time in SEO, I’ve worked with two of the greatest Internet marketing companies on the planet: Bruce Clay, Inc. and We Build Pages.  Both of these companies pride themselves in education. Bruce Clay, Inc. makes each of their clients attend training, even if they don’t want to. At We Build Pages, we educate in different ways — through consulting, through reports, through our methodologies, and through our daily interaction with clients. Both companies give their clients every ounce of information they have so that the client benefits.

But apparently it’s not like that everywhere.

I’ve heard war stories about companies who withhold information or lock clients out of their own accounts. They’re afraid you’ll take your account away so they don’t tell you what they’re doing or what keywords you’re going after. They don’t give you the login to your Webmaster Tools account and they don’t go into too much detail in their reports or during calls. They’ll do the work and they’ll give it about 85 percent-90 percent, but you’re not getting anything outside of that. It’s like the supervisor who’s secretly jealous of the new intern.  They’ll teach you€¦they just won’t teach you enough to take away their own value. They want you to be dependent on them for survival.

As an SEO company, how do you combat that?

First, I think you get yourself a prescription to deal with all those unhealthy control issues you’ve got going on.   After that, I think you put those fears out of your mind and focus on being a ninja superhero.

As ninja superheroes, we fight for our clients. We do our best to keep them ahead of the curve and out of trouble, and we give them all the information they need to become superheroes themselves.  We want them to know what we’re doing. We think they have to know if we’re going to be able to work together and ensure everyone’s on the same page. Maybe my view is skewed and I’m just spoiled thanks to my previous employers, but I can’t imagine doing SEO any other way.  I can’t swallow the idea that we need to be less in order to hold on to clients.  If you’re trapping your clients into staying with you, you must not be a very good SEO.  You must not have all that much to offer them.

I’m curious to hear how other SEOs deal with this fear, though. And whether or not clients of SEOs feel someone’s holding something back somewhere.  Thoughts?

[If you need help being a superhero, this has always worked for me.]

I’ve been hearing lots of good things coming out of Chicago after last week’s big Search Engine Strategies show. Of course, one of the most talked about events was the Black Hat, White Hat & The Best Kept Secrets to Search panel that brought the infamous Doug Heil out from the I Help You forums and into the public eye.

The talk continues today over at Search Engine Roundtable where Barry Schwartz picks out an IHY forum thread by Doug where he recounts his experience at SES and tells us that some of our favorite SEO bad boys really aren’t as bad as they want us to think they are.

I actually knew that already.  I’ve met the SEO Angels.

Black hat SEO is sexy. It’s exciting. It’s risky. It’s daring. There’s that whole thrill of the chase thing. If black hat SEO was a guy, high school girls everywhere would be throwing themselves at it and making out with its wall posters.

But here’s the thing — black hat SEO is also incredibly stupid to use on a paying client.

The panels on link buying and black hat techniques are always among the most attended at shows. People like hearing about the war stories and the fables and the heroes.   The truth is, though, 90 percent of what you’re hearing would never be performed on paying clients.  The big name SEOs aren’t that stupid. You’re hearing about tactics that SEOs are trying on their own sites (or thrill-seeking clients who have sign off on it) to test the system. They want to see how far to the left the line is before they get burned. They’re trying to assess the risk involved to decide if they can try this for real. And that’s great. It’s necessary. But that’s the part that often fails to get mentioned at shows –  the “Don’t Try This At Home”  or “This Will Get You Banned” clause.

As Doug knows, Dave Naylor is not as dark as he’d like you to think. Todd Friesen has been a reformed black hat for years. And that Greg Boser guy who once terrified me as an SEO newbie is actually as gentle as a kitty cat (though he has mad skillz and can burn personal sites with the best of €˜em).

We Build Pages used to dance on the dark side. We sold links and made a killing. But the engines are smarter now.  You can’t hold on to big clients if you’re burning sites. No one is going to pay you to get them banned; they’re paying you to get them results.

People often say that SEO hats is about managing risk and I very much believe that.  If we kept with our old model and continued to put clients at risk, one of these days we’d find ourselves out of business and homeless in historic Troy. We chose not to let it get to that point (I like my apartment) and other black hats have done the same. They had to. Black hat SEO is not employable.  It may have been in the past, but it’s not now.

If you’re [insert major brand name here] who are you going to hire: The SEO company that’s going to keep you safe and ranking, or the SEO company who’s going to use your site to ‘experiment’, even if that means getting you banned?

It’s not so much that black hats are going white; it’s that black hats have clients, too. As much as it may kill them to play within Google’s guidelines, they have to, at least during work hours.  I don’t know about you but I’d rather be a €˜black hat gone white’ than a €˜black hat gone unemployed’.

[And to Mr. Heil, I'm sorry I wasn't in Chicago. I hope we get a chance to chat in person one day. I think we'd have a lot to talk about. ]