My thoughts on SEO (Search Engine Optimization) services

[Chris Culver]

I've been asked alot of questions recently about the value of SEO services and how one is supposed to recognize the validity of one company over another. If one can provide better results, and if its worth the investment in time. While everyone is certainly entitled to their own opinion, and being respectful of those businesses and individuals that do offer SEO services, I offer the following...

Say you run a magazine that reviews consumer products. People from around the world read your magazine to find the latest, impartial reviews for the best dishwashers, televisions, lawnmowers, etc. Being listed in the Top 10 of their guide instantly brings companies new revenues and business with almost no investment in advertising whatsoever. Now, the problem is that businesses start to take notice at this opportunity and all begin to compete to be in that Top 10 ranking, specifically by focusing on the key areas that you use to judge products. They all learn to make their products aesthetically attractive, out of durable materials and in some creative packaging. Suddenly, your magazine is reporting ranks of the companies that understood the system - not based on their quality. Your judgement and reliability in the eyes of consumers begins to fall, and your reaction is to make the review process more selective. You create elaborate formulas for ranking products, add hundreds of variables and most importantly avoid telling businesses what specifically is being used and how. All they know is the basics, and everything past that is pretty much guess work.

This is pretty much how Google and search engines are forced to operate. The more ways you find to artifically influence the system, the more ways they find to prevent it. Only, as it is proprietary technology, they hold a firm advantage.

My opinion is for small businesses to save their money from SEO services and to move their focus elsewhere. Instead of picking over H1 text or META tags, look at the structure you have for building content and getting involved in other places on the Internet. Add new articles and ideas, reviews and feedback. Why load up a website with hundreds of keywords when you can just write an industry article that will do the same - and give something for visitors to actually review?

Spend some time dedicated to the customers that come to your website but leave. Some e-commerce clients that I've worked with in the past never even knew what their customers were searching for on their site and couldn't find. If you had a customer that walked into your store and asked for a product you didn't have, would you just turn him away? No. You would offer alternatives or special order options. Apply these same principles to your site. For every customer that navigates beyond the homepage, you have somebody who is looking for something. Work to understand what it is.

Be creative. If you're still intent on getting the mainpage, remember that you must find something new to influence your positioning. Otherwise, it just takes 10-15 competitors using the exact same thing to knock you farther down in the rankings. Google has several billion webpages, so its always a possibility.

Again, just my thoughts, but hopefully someone finds it useful. More as time permits.

[alsunway]

I agree with your theory. There are just many ways to approach this. You can keep up with just organic SEO in some niche areas. In others, you might need some booster juice. Like buying a few hundread links. In others you just can't be alive without black hat, because the market is tight.

Building content is always the best way to go, but it takes lots of time and patience. Not something CEOs of big companies have. They want it good and to be done yesterday.

In some areas it might take you several years to be in top 10 with just organic SEO.

I thought the analogy here was pretty good. While the rules for search engine position change, it is because of "tricks" used to get to the top. Some things don't change, like useful content that others will want to link to, and information your target market will find helpful.

Yes, that does take time and patience. If you are a small business, and your web site is an extension of your business and not the only source of business, then you are in good shape to spend some of your marketing efforts on the web. SEO can work well if you plan it in advance and have realistic expectations. It provides a flow of business you would not get any other way.

You made an excellent point Neil about competition knocking you down a few notches. That's the price of getting to the top, someone will copy you (sometimes exactly, AKA copyright infringement). They can copy your ideas, but if your unseen marketing is solid, you will still prevail and stay on top. If you use www.copyscape.com to police your content, you can often stop the thieves before they cause any real problems with your search results (although offshore thieves with no integrity are still frustrating to deal with).

I agree that the importance of SEO is often overstated, but for most businesses, it should not be ignored.

[visualcharisma]

Hi

This is my first post and I decided to start here because I thought this was an interesting thread.

Some good points here.

I have recently become interested in SEO and find it fascinating for some reason. I do agree with Neil about concentrating on being "organic" and not being like everyone else. I think that is great advice.

I do think that the most important determining factor for SEO is the quantity and quality of links to your site. At least with Google. This is even more important than content, although content is extremely important of course. So I would recommend getting involved with link sites and companies. This you can do yourself fairly easily and more inexspensively than SEO companies.

You can use link brokers or save money and get links yourself. Some sites have link auctions.

There are some good free ebooks on this subject and some great software to help.

Tim

[Glen Pastores]

If somebody wanted to hire a SEO form why would they choose anybody other than the firm that comes up as #1 for a search of "SEO" on Google??? This is the firm that can obviously get results for one of the most competitive keywords ever.

Tim, as you are apparently new to SEO, I would advise caution on some of those linking strategies. Using anything other than natural and relevant links can bring you down faster than it can build you up. Since Google relies very heavily on links, be aware, they also look for where the links are coming from. If it is not relevant, it either doesn't count, or worse yet, it counts against you.

Think of it this way, a couple dozen links from sites that are relevant to your content is worth more than hundreds that are just there for numbers.

Tino, that might be good advice if you have the budget for it, and the budget to keep doing it. You also must have the means to keep up with the load if you get a sudden surge of business. That could be a good problem, it could also be a source of stress, it depends on the business.

[caroldeckert]

Tino,
I agree with you.. The company that I am using for SEO is in my signature. And they are ranked #1 at YAHOO for SEO Software. You can see for yourself.

[Jag2112]

<spam removed>

[Awaters]

Originally Posted by smarthomebizguy

search engine change too often, do you really want to build your business on these such "shaky" foundation? how about try this out: <URL removed> it's free, and you get unlimited visitors with NO EFFORT you will love it

About as useless as most network events where everyone is looking to sell. Join instant buzz if you feel like wasting your time spamming your sites to people who won't even look at it.

[caroldeckert]

Ha Ha Ha.......