ParkHowell.com

Sometimes the answer to your website’s lousy online performance isn’t even relevant to the question your asking.

Allow me to explain.

They Asked for a Culvert, but They Got a Tunnel

My Dad was a civil engineer with fairly bad eyesight.  He is still one of the most creative men I know. Keith was president of Constructors PAMCO, a general contractor for large construction projects in Seattle; like dams, and bridges, and pipelines. As a kid I marveled at how he would get himself out of the most perplexing construction challenges, while always delivering a better final product to his customer.

What does this have to do with SEO, besides his bad eyesight? Bare with me a minute, I’m getting there.

PAMCO was once asked to bid the replacement of a large irrigation flume that provided water for a vast region of apple orchards in Eastern Washington. This wooden aqua duct snaked precariously through the rugged foothills of the Cascade Mountains. Sections of the canal were often wiped out by falling rocks, mudslides and avalanches. The project’s owner thought a concrete aqua duct could take the punishment.

After touring the job in preparation for the bid, my Dad decided not to estimate another exposed canal. He chose a tunnel, which wasn’t even close to the scope of the bid request. He knew that the concrete waterway would eventually end up in the bottom of the ravines alongside its wooden predecessor. The tunnel was more expensive, and none of his competitors wanted to risk losing the bid by being out-of-scope. But he knew it was the right call.

PAMCO won that job, and the Chelan County PUD has never had to replace the aqua duct since my Dad burrowed his way through three miles of the rolling terrain nearly 30 years ago. Imagine the money he saved them and the apple orchardists.

We just lost a web project for the vary same reason. The potential client asked us for an SEO proposal. After we did our digging, we realized their 10-year-old website couldn’t weather the traffic, and their conversion funnel was as rickety as that old wooden flume. Plus, they weren’t even paying attention to the conversation about their company happening online, which is not particularly favorable. We did the right thing: Diagnosed the problem and offered them a much better solution that would stand the test of time. But it cost more too.

So if you’re asking an SEO firm to create a campaign that’ll drive more people to your site thinking it will create better performance, assess the strength of your website first.  To remain a growing and sustainable online enterprise, perhaps you need a tunnel instead of a culvert, whether you want to invest the money or not.