SEO: Why Gamble Against the House?
Has your small business been forced to tackle a “must-do” project like Y2K or ISO9000 where the only result was a big bill and lots of wasted time? After watching dozens of clients invest in search engine optimization (SEO) and reviewing my own experience, I am coming to believe much of SEO is electronic snake oil. Let me explain.
Defining SEO
Search engine optimization is supposed to elevate your website’s Google and Yahoo rankings by fooling their programs into believing your site is the best answer to key words. The pitch of SEO is that you can “beat the system” by adding special phrases, formats and styles to your website, so it will be “seen” by the web spiders and crawlers who will “tell” the search engines to rank it higher. Doesn’t this remind you of gambling in Las Vegas? Only in a casino would you spend your money trying to beat the odds against those who set the rules. And as soon as they catch someone “beating their system” like counting cards, they make up new rules that keep the odds in their favor.
But isn’t SEO the same thing? As business owners we bet our money on SEO firms to beat the Google “system” but we can’t even bluff Google since they see all our “cards” as soon as our SEO “expert” puts them on our site. So actually we are subsidizing Google’s R&D efforts every time we “bet” with our SEO secrets which Google immediately can and does learn from! But armed with fancy graphs and charts, SEO experts promise us “get noticed quick” schemes that will place our firm on the first page and ahead of all the other firms that aren’t smart enough to invest in SEO.
What’s a Business Owner to do?
Don’t throw out the baby with the bath water.
- Basic SEO is good business.
Tell the truth. The key words that truly describe your firm’s Best and Highest Use should already and always be throughout your website. For example if you install home theatre, your company name, website name, and website content should of course contain the words home entertainment and listing some key words is sensible. - Buying your way onto page one is not a shortcut for success.
Think how you feel when someone says, “I sell insurance, cars or legal services.” I immediately assume the worst as they have commoditized themselves by refusing to narrow their focus, sharpen their offer or state what they do in terms that are special to me. The internet is no different and to expect to own a generic category such as public relations services online is per se evidence of a lazy, sloppy and probably incompetent business. If a business takes the time to focus and understand its best and highest use, the needs of a specific target market and to resolve specific kinds of pain or opportunity your message sends to the marketplace and the compelling way in which it will be received will not only impress prospects and clients but SEO engines. Therefore, the very activities that a small business needs to undertake are the very ones that need to benefit its online marketing. - If a business has been carefully targeted and positioned as discussed, then what is the real role of SEO?
I’m not sure there is one. Before spending thousands of dollars to optimize my site, Birol Growth Consulting was on page one of Google and Yahoo. Today it is there as well. Why? Because by staying focused on a given message based on a best and highest use and pointed out a specific target market, there is no doubt of what I do and whom I do it. The key to me is to add content continuously, examples and links that continually pay off on the narrow positioning and target marketing you defined in the first place.
Conclusion
My experience with SEO is the same as it is with Las Vegas. It’s okay to dabble and gamble a bit, if you do so for the entertainment and the short term thrill you may get. But banking on either in lieu of focusing on your day job of narrowing your focus and pointing it at exactly who needs it is irresponsible.
Focus on developing content and proof that your expertise helps your target market and leave SEO to the pretenders and who have more money than brains.
April 19th, 2008 at 4:55 pm
[…] michael@gigavox.com (GigaVox Media, Inc.) wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptThe pitch of SEO is that you can “beat the system” by adding special phrases, formats and styles to your website, so it will be “seen” by the web spiders and crawlers who will “tell” the search engines to rank it higher. … […]
April 19th, 2008 at 8:26 pm
Andy:
In Direct Marketing, when someone does not achieve the success they were hoping for, more often than not, they’ll blame it on the medium.
How many times have you heard someone say “We tried Direct Mail. We sent out 5,000 postcards and didn’t get one response.”
Does that mean everyone should stop relying on Direct Mail, as one method among many, to generate leads to keep their pipeline filled? Of course not.
Instead you need to ask “Why it didn’t work?” “Were we using best practices?” “Did we target the right audience?” “Did we deliver a relevant offer?” “Was it the right creative package?” “Did we get the timing wrong?” “Did we flub the follow through?”
We’ve all heard the saying “you get what you pay for.” Conversely “you have to pay for what you get.” Response doesn’t come cheap. However, if executed correctly, both Direct Mail AND Internet Marketing can provide ROI that most executives only dare to dream about. I just worked on a case study with Jeff Gessler at Lapis Business Solutions that illustrates how a major US Bank achieved an ROI of 10,000 to 1 using a Direct Mail Package that was developed over a period of years. And this bank reaped the rewards from their investment: for every dollar invested they received a return in the form of contribution to gross profit of $9,999.
You are right though. SEO is a lot more than just paying for page one rankings. If you’re doing it correctly you should aim for a #1 ranking for your keyword phrases on all the search engines, and then you should continually test and refine your landing pages to reduce bounce rates and increase conversions (turn browsers into inquirers and buyers).
So instead of comparing the medium to a Craps Table or a game of Black Jack, it’s more constructive to take a look at your methodology:
1.) Did your website target the “right” keyword phrases?
2.) Did you have special optimized landing pages for each different keyword phrase to make your message/offer as relevant as it possibly be be?
3.) Did you test several different offers for each of the landing pages? For example: a “Cheat Sheet to uncover your best sales opportunities in a down market” versus a “Series of Emails on 5 easy steps that will help you sell more by helping you explain your highest value to the people who could use it the most”.
Thanks again Andy, keep the softballs coming!
Sincerely yours
Les Proctor
April 19th, 2008 at 10:14 pm
[…] read more […]
April 19th, 2008 at 10:48 pm
[…] read more […]
April 20th, 2008 at 5:27 am
Another misguided and misinformed business consultant … showing just how naive he really is by spouting mis-truths and rumors as fact. I for one think the management consultant industry needs better quality control. How are people like this permitted to practice?
Any good professional knows that facts speak volumes … and any consultant worth his weight in salt would base suggestions and recommendations on fact and not speculation.
Are some SEOs snake oil salemen … yes. Are some management consultants snake oil salesmen … again yes. Should all management consultants be regarded as snake oil salesmen, or their advice disgarded as ‘weak’ … no.
In the future … make sure you’re speaking based on fact before making an ass out of yourself.
In the end … you’ve now showed that people are also gambling on business consultants.
April 20th, 2008 at 4:40 pm
True SEO (as done by a true professional) is not about tricking or cheating the search engines into ranking your site higher. It is about providing relevant and useful content, then communicating to the search engines that your site has relevant and useful content about a certain topic. Search engine optimization is NOT a “get rich quick” scheme, and often times optimizing a site will not result in increased traffic for months or years. SEO is such a hot topic because Organic Google results can make up over 50% of your web traffic, and any company that does business online would be foolish not to try to capture this traffic. I can sympathize with the author’s frustration, however–As there are tons of unscrupulous SEOs out there.
April 20th, 2008 at 7:50 pm
Hi Andy.
I have to agree with some of the people here that your take on it is a bit shaky. Whoever told you that you were tricking the search engines was not a professional.
I also think many SEO experts will take a lot of money tweaking a site that might have been better used on a writer just putting out a lot of quality content.
You could also be brilliant, if your goal with writing this was to get a bunch of SEO Experts to link to your website - their sites would be well optimized and you would get a nice bump.
I am going to take a chance and say that was part of your rational.
April 20th, 2008 at 10:04 pm
I knew I would draw the fire of the good folks who make a living selling what I have critiqued, but I would hope that a few actual customers who have paid real money and have enjoyed real results would respond to defend their SEO suppliers. So far no owners of buying firms have responded which is remarkable given 95% of my newsletter readers are business owners and likely buyers of SEO.
Still, thank you, Les, for the DM 101 primer, which we all follow regardless of SEO, which is not similarly accountable for results or ROI; Alan, I think your response is in agreement with my three points; and Ron, you humble me with your idea that I am smart enough to play the SEO game back at you!
Let’s hear from some buyers of SEO who can speak to their success and how their SEO providers delivered this!
And wouldn’t it be great if a business owner could buy SEO on a success fee, just as they buy consulting, investment banking, venture capital and other professional services, Jeff. But time will tell who survives in the professional services business as making our clients more successful, profitable and wealthy will always separate successful providers from pretenders!
April 20th, 2008 at 11:18 pm
Andy, I used to develop web sites for Fortune 500 companies; now I have other work, but I still keep my hand in. I would have to say that I have seen competitors “buy their way” temporarily to the first page, but fade in a few weeks because it was a “quick fix.” For the long haul, I rely on reliable, professional, frequently updated content that relates to my core. If people find what they’re looking for, bookmark the site, add links to articles on the site, tell their friends, and so on, that results in “organic” positions that have staying power.
I’m sure paid SEO consultants have a role, just like anyone else who knows more than the average businessperson about a particular area of expertise. I just agree with Andy that it’s no magic bullet, especially if folks follow the link back to your site and don’t find what they wanted.
There really CAN BE an “if you build it people will come” aspect to a good web site, but you have to have something worth coming for if you want them to come back. And, by the way, by building that content, you’re automatically doing most of the things the optimizing pros would tell you to do and more.
Paul Race
Breakthrough Communications, Springfield Ohio
April 22nd, 2008 at 9:16 am
If I hear what you’re saying, unless you’ve got a website with a compelling reason for people to do business with you, SEO is a ticket to nowhere.
The reason that the Wright Brothers got it right, and were the first ones to fly, is because while everyone else was working on manufacturing the most powerful engines, they were working on the plane itself, particularly making it lighter and giving it the wings it needed to fly.
So instead of focusing exclusively on “tricks” to achieve top rankings, focus on the message and the offers that will make people want to do business with you in the first place. This is not only the thing that will make a page relevant and drive pagerank; it’s also the relevance that will turn browsers into buyers.
Thank you Andy, and I am sorry to contradict you, but SEO and DM are 100% analogous, and SEO should be, if it is not already, held similarly accountable for results. Google offers A/B Splits, Multivariate Testing, Continuous process improvement and all. If it’s not results-accountable, that’s the fault of the practitioner, not the medium.
June 15th, 2008 at 8:28 pm
The *subject* and “meat” of the article are vague and some of the responses seem to follow the generalization. “SEO”, unlike a PPC campaign (where landing pages are a must) require no outside funding whatsoever. As in, you shouldn’t be paying someone for this. You need good page copy, meta page names, key words and other script. Given a little time, if your pages do not pop on 1 to 2, then you have a way-lame site, selling nothing no one wants. We’re not talking tough stuff here. ~Duh~ We have written *everything* ourselves and show up on page one of both G & Y for the top 25% of our best selling product lines (over 18,000 cached pages). Andy, write some stuff about the PPC sellers! Who really uses the “top & right” is where I base my skepticism for outsourcing.
June 27th, 2008 at 4:34 am
[…] game – information for novicesgee bobg