After 15 years of involvement in developing Internet Marketing Strategies for many clients, when I started writing this blog I made a decision to limit all mention of SEO.
Although it is hardly ‘rocket science’ – SEO can be somewhat baffling and many unscrupulous ‘Google Resellers’ and self-proclaimed ‘SEO Experts’ are milking the vulnerable less-knowledgeable business people who simply want honest answers, ethical strategy development and a slice of the potential Google traffic.
A couple of years ago, I’d had enough of working in SEO as it became clear that this growing ‘industry’ is full of empty promises, valueless guarantees, scams, unethical practices, ‘one size fits all’ SEO processes, and rip-offs.
However, having spent quite a bit of time consulting with a new client, recently, and having, or so it seems, repeated myself many times while I explain the methods of achieving high rankings – and maintaining them – I thought I’d right a few ‘back to basics’ posts for my own clients and for anyone else who is interested – all about the mighty Google.
Where shall we start…
Because many small businesses I talk to have the completely wrong idea about what Google is and what it isn’t – possibly because they ‘think’ all ‘search engines’ are based on the original model of Yahoo in the days when for $299 you bought your spot on the directory… let’s start by clearing up this misconception:
Google is NOT a Business Directory.
Google is not a directory that guarantees top ranking. No amount of SEO or link generation or content creation can guarantee top ranking. No amount of tinkering can assure you that your rankings will never slip down the slippery slope and off the first page.
Consistency helps – but doesn’t guarantee anything. Your current rankings could be lost overnight for many reasons, including
- Google changes its algorithm.
- One or many of your competing websites add newer content.
- One or many of your competing websites get newer and better inbound links.
- One or many of your competing websites sprinkles a bit more SEO across their content having done some up to date keyword research.
The full list of issues that influence when and if your content is indexed and how high it ranks but, while keeping this post to the basics, we’ll just summarise that no matter what you do, because you have no control over what Google does (or is planning to do) or what your many competitors are doing or planning to do, it is essential that your keyword research, SEO, content creation, content distribution, link building, media distribution, etc., is consistent.
If your aim is to bring traffic to your website or blog via Google (and, to a lesser extent, Bing and Yahoo, etc.,) then you have to be fresh. Old static data may have kept your website at the top years ago but nowadays, as the main search engines focus on delivering the latest (newest content) in the search results, if you’re not regularly creating content and your competitors are, guess what will happen to the rankings you worked hard to achieve?
The more competitive your industry, the more you need to be working on consistently creating and distributing content. The higher your rankings, the more competitive it becomes so the more you need to keep reminding Google that your website or blog is the place to be for your target search-phrases and the way to do that – you guessed it – is by continuing to create new, fresh content, creating links to that content and distributing related material to the myriad of social platforms, etc.,
Read part 2 of Lifting The Lid On SEO
In order to clarify many of the points in these posts, and in order to help you develop a full and effective Internet Marketing strategy, I will add further SEO / Google related posts in the coming weeks and months. In order to do so, I invite all contribution from SEOs and from business people who have any specific questions about SEO and their Internet Marketing Strategy.
Please use the comments area below, the contact form or get in touch via Facebook and I will write back to you as soon as I can.
I actually had to read that whole paragraph again as I thought I misread seeing my name lol… Thanks Martin that means a lot more than I could ever explain.
I have a feeling though we were seperated at birth though… I read many things on the net and as I’m reading through I’m saying to myself ‘agree with that’. ‘don’t agree with that bit’.. that bit’s a bit misleading’ but I have yet to read a post by you where I disagree even by 1% to a single word you say. It’s lucky I don’t find the time to put my thoughts down on blogs cos we would be suing each other for copyright lol.
That’s an amazing eye opener on SEO, not to me obviously, but to the many out there that have been fooled by what they have heard or read elsewhere.
The problem I find when trying to help website owners push their sites to the correct audience is money! and the lack of it… Marketing a site is a very specialised field but a lot of people when wanting to set up a website based business or have a website to support an already existing business just don’t have or won’t put the money in.
There are two main ways to get your website seen on the internet.
1) Pay a recommended website specialist a decent wage and keep him or her on your books for the entirety of the site. SEO is not a process tyhat can be done in a week or in 6 months. SEO is and should be an ongoing and most important part of running a website.
2) Put a budget of thousands of pounds into specially researched advertising and ppc programs. Trust me, unless you are a household name with plenty of money (e.g. Argos) then go for option 1.
Don’t think for one second your website alone will gain you an income, allow in your budget to have someone on board, you can trust, and who comes with a good website marketing background to do all the things you haven’t got the knowledge and/or the time to carry out and this will leave you the time you should be putting into your business.
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