Undesirable SEO and What to Do with a Small Marketing Budget

[thejenn]

Authored by: Stoney deGeyter

Full Text: http://www.searchengineguide.com/degeyter/007311.html

A Snippet:

Unfortunately, there are far too many of these faux SEO providers out there. The knowledge of these SEOs differ, some know enough to talk a good game, others know enough, or are good enough salespeople, to be able to sell a sham service. In either case, these are the SEOs that give the industry a bad name.

[jvance]

I agree with this article BIG time. It has two themes that struck a chord with me.

Businesses (either start up or seasoned) that don't have enough funds to properly do SEO on their website, or are not educated enough to make wise decisions about it.

Bad SEO

I started an "internet" company a little over two years ago. I thought this was going to be easy...you know...build a great tool and people will come from far and wide to see how great my product was. I spent 30K on development of the product (basically an online application). I also wanted to make sure that search engines could find my site properly, so I hired a local SEO firm to perform a keyword study for me. I had no idea what I was doing, but I had heard a bit about this SEO stuff, and figured it was a good thing to do.

I spent 3K on a keyword study that gave me a list of keywords that should drive traffic to my site. To be fair, the SEO firm I hired does know what they are talking about, but without the knowledge of how to use these keywords or where to place them on my site, I was lost. They tried to explain, but the terms they used were way over my head at the time. The other services (link building, explanation of where to put keywords into the content etc... cost more money, which I didn't have). This experience made me pretty jaded towards SEO, especially when I found WordTracker.

Years later, I realized that the keywords I helped create with this SEO company were not correct at all, as the product and target customer changed so the keywords need to change as well. Bottom line is...I wasn't wise enough to know how to spend my limited budget with SEO.

I starting writing about inexperienced SEO "experts", but I wasn't able to write clear enough to come up with something constructive (something to do with rage), so I wrote this sentence instead.

I have met several self touted SEO experts that do nothing more than charge large sums of money for running pay per click campaigns for their clients. The inexperienced clients are delighted that their traffic has increased through the stats (whether or not it is increasing conversion or profit).

Man, I needed this article a few years back...but then I probably wouldn't have listened.

[BWelford]

Yes indeed, this article is spot on. Unfortunately the noise around SEO means that most website owners have heard that ranking in Google is important. The problem is that many SEO consultants are offering packages similar to what Stoney deGeyter mentions in his article.

SEO is not a computer video game played against the search engines. If it is, then the search engines are winning in the vast majority of cases.

SEO should be part of Internet Marketing and that should be about growing sales. The astute website owner will be looking for services that target sales rather than rankings.

[Karri]

Originally Posted by BWelford

The astute website owner will be looking for services that target sales rather than rankings.

I just may have to quote you some day! Not a truer word was ever said about SEO

Karri

[dhundee]

is it correct to say SEO experts should be SEM experts to not merely SEO.

SEO is just a one foundation of Internet Marketing, Search Engine Marketing on the other hand focuses on the proper process of researching the right techniques of driving higher value traffic than loads of visitors who are not really interested on the sites product but is looking some others.

Driving Traffic is being used by affiliate advertisers, if you are selling your own products then Driving Valued Traffic is they way to go. hmmm i should say, there must be atleast 90% traffic conversion.