Search Engine Marketing Articles
The Circle of Life on the Internet
When the Internet became the next big thing, anyone who was anyone in business, simply had to have a website.
“It will increase your business exponentially”, cried web designers as they ran around businesses charging thousands to set up their corporate websites.
“In a few years, all business will be done over the Internet”, they promised as chequebooks were produced from the technically naïve pockets of business managers.
Some took the risk and stumped up the cash for an all-singing, all-dancing piece of technological wizardry. Others waited, and then panicked as the competition took the lead, forcing them to pay top dollar for something that really didn’t have much impact on their business.
Now everyone has one.
Literally everyone. Businesses, charities, schools and individuals all competing on equal grounds. The technological elite have now moved on and left the web design to, well, everyone else. Anyone with basic computer skills can set up a website, and not costing the thousands charged in years gone by.
So where did the elite go? Are they sitting back watching their creation grow out of control? No. They’re making money from the next big thing.
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
A fairly self-explanatory title for the process of pushing a website high up in search engine listings, and thereby grasping the attention of more Internet users and driving them to your website.
The process of this is not anymore technical than designing the website itself (perhaps even less so). When you submit your website to a Search Engine, it ranks your site. Each SE has different ways of doing this – usually by relevance of the content of your site.
This is a good thing. It means for example, that good property sites will rank higher than bad property sites, so (in theory) when you type in “property” to a Search Engine, you will see the good sites first.
By “optimising” your site, you are making it Search Engine friendly (you are basically telling the Search Engine what it wants to hear from a good site!).
Now we have SEO’s running about crying, “Optimise your site. It will increase your business exponentially” to now once-bitten companies. “For only a few thousand pounds, we can guarantee you will be top of your category”, they claimed to a dubious potential client who is finally swayed by, “In a few years, all business will be done over the Internet”.
So, for a couple of thousand pounds, SEO’s take a poor site, and make it appear to be a good site (to the Search Engines at least), so the SE’s will then take it and shove it into the faces of the unsuspecting surfers.
By optimising the site, they are not making it better for you or me. There is no added content to make it more worthwhile for us to visit the site. There are no new tools for us to use. It’s the same site. The Search Engine just thinks it’s better.
So some SEO companies exploit this
They do very little work that justifies the large amount of money demanded. It just takes time for your results to filter through the vast Search Engine databases, and therefore appears to be a huge undertaking.
And very soon, everyone will jump on the bandwagon, the technological elite will move on to the next big thing and leave the mass market optimisation for the little people to fight over. The circle of life on the Internet will be complete.
It should be realised that Search Engine Optimisation is not a con, just like web design is not a con.
It is, like many things, abused by some people to make a quick buck. There are many webmasters and SEO’s out there that put in the time and effort to produce and optimise a quality site that genuinely deserves to be ranked above all the rest.
The problem is finding the quality sites amongst the optimised rubbish out there!
Many SEO’s (the credible ones) can help you to develop your site - adding value to it, tweaking your sales conversion strategy, suggesting alternate routes to sales - they will offer an all round business solution.
Finally, some advice for the less technically minded of you out there:
All business will never be done over the Internet
Anytime someone tells you that one-day all business will be done over the Internet – run away screaming with your hands over your ears! They are bad people. They just want your money!
There is an every increasing amount of websites out there. It is far too chaotic for all business to be done over the Internet (and don’t think for a second someone is going to come along and sort it all out).
Traditional business will be around for some time yet.
You can optimise your own site for free
Every piece of information
you need to know about optimising your site is available on the Internet
for free and it doesn’t take much to apply it to your site.
There is not a lot of work involved, and for all the good it will do it’s
not worth paying big bucks for (as soon as everyone starts doing it the
process will become obsolete).
OK, fair enough they are the key to getting people onto your site, but the users of your site are the ones that are important.
If you can afford to employ
a full-time SEO, then by all means do it – otherwise learn how to
do it yourself.
Don’t just optimise your site for the Search Engine’s.
Make your site useful for the people who actually want to use – it’s the only way that they will come back.
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More SEM Articles
- Business networking tips
- Choosing a domain name
- Content exchanges
- Content feeds
- Creative marketing ideas
- Good site navigation
- Internally promoting your pages
- Offline website marketing
- The circle of life on the Internet
- Writing content for websites
