Brainchild of Bruce Clay, the ‘founding father’ of SEO, Bruce Clay Inc. continues to stay at the forefront of search revolution

You have to be in the know if you want your Google rankings to go from unseen to the top of the list. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) requirements keep changing, and it can be challenging to stay updated with the latest developments. Well-optimized sites will receive more traffic, and this, in turn, will lead to more sales. Without proper SEO, searchers will never be able to find your site, and all your hard work will go in vain. One of the key points to remember is that getting to the top is just one half of the battle, and staying at the top is the rest of it. With more and more websites popping up, and with Google tweaking its algorithm constantly, the online landscape is getting much more competitive. To survive in such a competitive atmosphere, businesses must step up their SEO game. In light of the foregoing, we’re pleased to present Bruce Clay Inc.

Since January 1996, Bruce Clay Inc. has been helping websites rank in search engines. Bruce Clay Inc. is an award-winning global digital marketing agency based in Simi Valley, California. The company is also a leading provider of ethical search engine optimization services, consulting, and training. The company offers a full range of digital marketing solutions for mid-tier and Fortune 500 companies, including SEO, SEM/pay per click, social marketing, content development, and website architecture. They provide comprehensive and 100% customized online marketing strategies that deliver results for your business.

Bruce Clay Inc.: Synopsis

SEO: The Beginnings of Ground-Breaking Thinking

With Bruce Clay’s background in math and engineering, it wasn’t long before he figured out a more efficient way to analyze a webpage. He programmed the first-ever software tool for keyword analysis. That simple program led to others, and soon the tools produced by Bruce Clay Inc. were in high demand as the fledgling SEO industry grew. By 1999, search engine optimization as a field was exploding. As during the Gold Rush, enterprising opportunity seekers sought a stake in top search engine rankings. And in those Wild West days of the internet, rules and best practices were hard to come by. To rank in search results, people tried all kinds of tactics that went against the best interests of web users. That’s when Bruce had an idea. The industry needed solid training in effective and ethical SEO. Bruce started sharing his SEO know-how along with his tools. The first SEO training was held in 2000, and the following year Bruce penned the SEO Code of Ethics, which has since been translated into 18 languages. Bruce has been in the SEO space from before it really had any name. He is one of the reasons there is a space at all, to be honest. His company was the first company ever to sponsor a search marketing show, and for decades, his company has continued to sponsor search marketing conferences. He is also credited with coining the term “search engine optimization.” It is hard to go through everything Bruce has done for our industry. He seems so much like a father figure for the industry because he has been around so long, helped people grow, and never lost any of that passion he has for the industry and the people within it even though he has been doing it for longer than almost anyone else. Maybe that is why he is known as the “godfather of the search industry.”

BCI is also the creator of the SEOToolSet^®, the Bruce Clay SEO plugin for WordPress, and the acclaimed Bruce Clay SEO Training course. More than 5,000 attendees have learned SEO from Bruce Clay’s classes worldwide. Bruce Clay Inc. has been a top search engine optimization company since 1996. BCI’s company history reflects many search marketing industry milestones. Through industry contributions such as authoring the 746-page Wiley book Search Engine Optimization All-In-One for Dummies (now in its third edition), the SEO Code of Ethics, Search Engine Relationship Chart^®, and SEO training programs, they have promoted ethical SEO practices for more than two decades.

Services: How Bruce Clay Inc. Helps You Outshine Your Competition

BCI will discuss your needs and develop an action plan. There are three things that BCI has as levers — quality, speed, and price. You cannot find high quality, fast speed, and low price … that is not how it works, or someone is lying to you. BCI will NEVER sacrifice quality. It must be there, or first-page rankings are not going to happen. That means that only speed and fee determine your next steps. A lower fee takes longer, and a higher fee takes less time. If you pay less, expect results to take much longer. Higher fee means the same high-quality work, only faster!

RETAINERS: With a retainer, BCI will manage your SEO project in sprints of 4 weeks each, staffed with an agile team and administered by a program manager who will be your uniform point of contact. This is a high-quality SEO program that includes on-page, off-page and server analysis. It covers desktop and mobile as well as E-A-T (Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness) and maintenance signals. It does get into everything SEO.

BLOCKS: Alternatively, you can choose a block-of-time service. You buy a multiple of 20-hour blocks of expert consulting and have 6 months to use it. This is useful when you know the hard questions to ask and need expert answers. BCI will not drive the project — they will only respond to your questions. This is ideal if you have some SEO capability and just want someone for the tough issues.

TRAINING: BCI offers a comprehensive SEO training program for your staff. Team understanding of a common methodology is critical to project success, especially with so many teams and skills involved.

SOCIAL: BCI can assist with social media, but they only focus on social media ads and how to get conversions. Social succeeds when there is buzz about your service … which requires shareable content and much more. Social media, without some trustworthy content behind it, is a waste. Social success is never only about social. For this reason, clients often combine social media ads with our other services.

CONTENT: They can help with your content needs, but BCI will normally do this as part of a larger cohesive program. If you want content, they can certainly start there, but content alone is not a solution. You need quality shareable content, and that requires a content strategy and SEO, which, in turn, requires a keyword-theme and hierarchy strategy, which require persona development, and ... you start again. Content needs to be trustworthy as well as optimized or else it is a waste.

AUDITS: To round off BCI’s SEO project services, they do very complex audits. They vary by purpose and range from simple quick reviews to deep penalty detection and repair, to comprehensive full site audits with implementation support (our most popular). For full site audits, BCI has a long list of items that they research. This takes approximately 160 hours over a comprehensive six-month detection and implementation program.

In conversation with Bruce Clay, Founder and President of Bruce Clay, Inc.

Q. Business owners trying to compete in this highly competitive market usually face a dilemma with their digital marketing campaign. How do you help them find the right tool that they can use and focus on?

There is no easy button, and certainly no “one right tool.” In our business, our best tools are employees. They are all senior-level, 10+ year experts (and I mean 100% of them – a key differentiator), and that wisdom to sort through the data and see the problem instead of a symptom is the best tool around. Aside from people, there are training and software… both essential if you want to rank well. As for software tools, we have many, usually under a large subscription, because they are all specialized – “funny how when the only tool in your toolkit is a hammer every problem looks like a nail.” That is just unwise.

Q. You could update all your content and website features and still not find that your site has improved. Is it possible to promise results?

It is absolutely impossible to promise or guarantee results. Google changes the algorithm about eight times daily, and at least 30,000 competitors change their website daily for each keyword… you are never able to promise. In fact, Google discusses that it is impossible to promise in their recommendations for hiring an SEO.

Q. Tell us about your content development. What are the factors that will contribute to the engagement level?

We have a patent-pending technology that identifies the content characteristics of a top-ranked page in Google using proprietary algorithms. These targets guide us in our multi-step process to select keywords and content. Then we integrate SEO into the writing process using our WordPress plugin.

Q. What are your trajectories for the next five years?

We are cautious relative to the virus and projections, but the projection is a 10x growth over five years, and we believe it is attainable.

Meet the leader behind the success of Bruce Clay Inc.

Bruce Clay is the Founder and President of Bruce Clay, Inc., a global digital marketing optimization firm providing search engine optimization, pay per click management, social media marketing, SEO-friendly site architecture, content development, and SEO tools and education.

Prior to launching his company in 1996, Bruce operated as an executive with several high-tech businesses, with a far-reaching professional background in leading Silicon Valley firms. Bruce holds an MBA from Pepperdine University and a bachelor’s in math and computer science from Western Illinois University. As an industry thought leader, he is an accomplished speaker, author, and educator. Each year, Bruce speaks at leading industry conferences and conducts training courses for students worldwide on concepts and methodologies related to Internet marketing. His insights have been featured in publications such as The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, P.C. Week, Wired Magazine, Smart Money, and many more.

Bruce authored the book “Search Engine Optimization All-In-One For Dummies,” now in its third edition, published by Wiley. It contains 765 pages of hands-on, practical guidance for implementing comprehensive SEO. His book “Content Marketing Strategies for Professionals” covers how to use SEO and content marketing together to reach a target audience online and generate sales.

Bruce Clay received the Lifetime Achievement Award of Excellence in Vision, Execution and Market Influence in the Practice of Search Marketing by the History of SEO advisory board in 2013. Other notable accomplishments include past member of the board of directors of the Search Engine Marketing Professionals Organization (SEMPO). Bruce has been a frequent speaker at industry conferences, including SMX, ad:tech, Pubcon, Inc. Magazine’s GrowCo, DOMAINfest, Affiliate Summit, and many others both within the U.S. and internationally. He is also the creator and teacher of the highly rated Bruce Clay SEO Training courses, which are now being delivered online.

“Our SEO goal is to be top-3 rankings for important keywords and to generate traffic. We cannot sacrifice quality. We are top-shelf and thus charge the right fees for a quality white hat solution.”

–Bruce Clay