Is SEO a waste of money?
Sometimes it is.
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is a very misunderstood term. In the web design industry, the term is oft met with scorn and sidelong glances. Even Google Webmaster Central warns about dubious SEO operatives.
If an SEO firm says they can get you to the top of page 1 in a search, they’re more interested in taking your money than telling you the facts.
Nobody knows how Google’s algorithm works. It’s a closely guarded secret because billions of dollars are at stake.
Google have been accused of anti-competitive business practices because that very algorithm often determines who gets the business. Add this to the fact that many of your competitors are also employing SEO experts and it’s easy to see why SEO is often referred to as “The Google Dance.”
With too many people on the SEO dance floor, your toes will get crushed. So why dance in the first place? Why not simply build a better website?
Black & White Hat SEO Marketing
I’ve had sites banned from search results because I unwittingly employed Black Hat SEO techniques.
Doing things such as;
- innocently using the same phrase too many times on a home page
- using invisible writing (white text on white background)
- using 0 size (zero pixel) keyphrases
will get you banned by Google. Search engines consider Black Hat SEO techniques “spamming.” They send spiders (little programs) to crawl the web looking for genuine and viable sites. If you are caught “cheating” the natural flow, they see you as a spammer. It’s completely understandable and you know what? As a reformed web developer, I’m with them.
More blatant techniques such as building doorway websites with the aim of funnelling customers to your main website or flooding search engine results with your results are also considered “Black Hat” or “unfair” by search engines. If caught using these techniques, you’ll find yourself mysteriously omitted from the search results.
In my case, I was banned for a month and my client lost a LOT of business (we’re friends again, now). I’m currently doing an SEO audit as many clients have asked for Search Optimisation services.
The best thing you can do is build a great website. Google always finds me (and my client sites) and ranks me highly in search. I don’t really care about being number one as I have enough work. It’s hard to accept praise for getting a client to number one in their industry when all that may have happened is that other SEO operatives might have been having a sandwich at the time.
Search engines want to give humans genuine results, not manipulated responses to a search query.
SPAM is bad, mmm’kay?
I’m forever deleting spam from my inbox, sent to me by self-proclaimed SEO experts promising higher rankings in search results and thousands of new customers. I get emails from clients asking if they need to “do anything” about seemingly important SEO emails.
My advice?
Write a blog.
Writing might actually be the hardest thing to do on Earth, but by jove, the pen is still far mightier than the sword.
Q : What do search engines do? (Click here)
While there are many things you can do to improve your web site ranking, you really need to keep your eye on the ball. That ball is NOT SEOnecessarily. Before obsessively monitoring your position on the Google search page like it’s a stock market, ask yourself a very simple question. Is your site worth visiting? There’s no point in ranking number one in a search for “hardware stores melville” if your site is impossible to navigate and you’ve forgotten to add a contact form. You have to be worth it.
Client : Why doesn’t anyone share my enthusiasm?
Stop promoting your services
One thing I’ve learnt in my 16 years as a webmaster, is that the web turns everything upside down. Literally. If your site is about promoting your services, increasing brand exposure, building a customer database and showcasing your awards … you’ve got it all wrong. That’s “old school” thinking. Your website isn’t for you. It’s for your customers. Sure. You’ll check your new web layout on your friend’s iPad, set it as your office homepage and gloat over your company history and embedded YouTube ad for hours. After all, you’ve come a long way. Plus, your logo looks great (although it could be bigger) and your company name ranks #1 in a Google search for “Homocentric Slippers.” You’ve made it!
Client : But where are the customers? This is the 24hr web. New customers should be pounding my door and I should be collecting untapped leads and making sales while I sleep. Something’s wrong.
Nothing is wrong.
Don’t subscribe to “if you build it they will come.” They will – for about 3.5 seconds on average – but if you’re boring or banging on about your company and your awards, they’ll quickly go find someone who can give them something worthwhile. There are plenty of other places to go.
You are enthusiastic about your new company website because it’s really a substitute for YOU. Nobody cares about your company unless they find something of value in it for themselves. Your employees will be loyal if you respect them, give them a pay rise, a bonus, or let them take the afternoon off. Customers will care if you include a few useful freebies with their swiftly delivered product.
Is there some way to offer an upgrade path on your physical item or service? Think outside the box?
If I’m going to buy a product, I’ll research it … to death. I’ll ask questions on Whirlpool Forums. Attending such forums and answering other people’s questions not only is good for business, but it’s good for SEO because it creates in-bound links. Sometimes price isn’t the only factor. Shipping, delivery details and speed of service might be important. I’m often interested in an “upgrade path.” It’s all the rage with software. Buy it today for $50 and when a new one comes out get 25% off!
The key to a successful website is to find an obvious (or overlooked) weakness in your market, and deal it properly on your website.
Find the weakness
It’s kind of why I’m writing this blog entry. SEO is such a minefield, that I really needed to get this off my chest. Also, to be honest, the web industry is full of sharks and charlatans, feeding off the technologically illiterate. I may get picked up by the Google search robot writing this article and (possibly) rank slightly highter on subjects like SEO, web development and web design in Perth, Western Australia, (there I go – seeding those crawlers, again) but my real volition here is to help wean small businesses (and people in general) off an unhealthy obsession with Search Engine Optimisation. Why rank highly if your site is nothing more than an egocentric business card floating in cyberspace? Why even have a website in that instance.
If you don’t want to put the effort in, it’s better to spend your money on a strategic letterdrop than build a website. I encouraged one client to do just that and he got lots of work. He came back two years later for a website.
I don’t know about you, but I want to visit a great website that is updated frequently with lots of information and customer feedback and reviews or the service etc. I want to go where other people go and I want to read about what they say about the company. Good and bad.
Blog about it …
Search engines read. In fact, until they come up with a better image recognition software, that’s all they do presently. So if you have something to say, write about it. And let others respond to your writing. Be brave. Go with the good and improve the bad.
If you take a look at all the great professional websites in the web design industry and you’ll notice something in common.
All these web industry sites revolve around a blog structure for a reason.
My Company Name?
Nobody will search for your company name besides you. They might search for “comfortable slippers queensland” but they won’t tap in “homocentric slippers”. They’d be nuts, wouldn’t they? So why obsess about your company name – up there in lit pixels?
What do I do?
List 5 reasons why you visit 5 of your favourite websites and the answer will be staring right back at you.
You’ll probably find they are doing one or more of the following things.
- Giving users a voice.
- Answering questions publicly.
- Providing good service.
- Posting the good and the bad.
- Encouraging discussion.
They certainly won’t be obsessing about their company name or the size of their logo.
SEO Experts
Yes. There is such a thing as an SEO expert, but the only one I regularly read (and therefore trust) is Ian Lurie at Conversation Marketing. I read this marketing blog daily. He’s a sensible man who doesn’t do the hard sell and speaks plain English about search engines and what you can do to rank higher. Here’s a link to Ian’s site.
Interestingly enough, like the web professional sites listed above, Ian also presents information using a traditional blog format. He knows. The most important page on your site is your home page. And getting new content to the top of that page is best. If you are refreshing your website daily with regularly updated content (weekly is a close second), in the absense of a decent SEO budget, that should be all you need to worry about. That is, Providing you’ve had someone like me coding your site from the ground up – and with the Google search engines in mind. 
I’ll leave you with one last question, because there’s another well-established industry that operates a lot like SEO …
