Search Engine Optimisation, SEO the three magic grunts that echos around the marketing walls of small start-ups to giant corporations?
Our SEO techniques will get you on the first page of Google
Our SEO skills will get you in the top 5 of Google
Our SEO ninja voodoo priests will put you number 1 on Google
Smell familiar, yes my friends that is the smell of bullshit. There are three things you should commit part of your budge to SEO.
- Anyone can be an SEO guru. Being able to do SEO doesn’t mean you should do SEO. It (like web development) is unregulated. But unlike most unregulated markets theres no amount of training or certification available.
- Google decides who goes number one, two, three etc. This changes based on complex mathematical logic powered by millions of dollars worth of investment, is your £/$150 a month to a slick haired chap going to beat that?
- Google is not the only search engine in the world, certainly not when you consider that most business communities are now global. Take a London / New York / Berlin based business, surrounding these businesses will be people from all over the world, they may not (probably will not) all speak the same language or share the same social thinking. SEO packages aren’t catering for these, they don’t care. They will try and rank you in one very tiny specific vertical, how much is that vertical worth?
It’s important to remember that SEO is not concerned with your business generating a profit, its not client focused. It’s barely results focused. It is a short term expensive investments, that can have negative consequences if you end up with a *blackhat SEO operator. The cousin of SEO is search engine marketing, this is far more appealing and sensible, as it tackles the issue SEO pedlars are desperate for you to ignore, ROI. If you spend £150 a month on SEO – will that investment lead to £1800 worth of extra sales and appointments. Will it beat that target by enough to warrant the time spent researching and monitoring your SEO efforts?
The bottom line for most businesses (maybe not the terrible ones) is to generate revenue which in turn makes a profit. SEO does not concern itself with this. SEO does not measure success this way, SEO is just concerned with a being at the top of a list. If you fall from your chosen position, well you just have to pay more to get back, or pay to stay there.
Businesses are very competitive, to grow they need to reduce costs, increase profits, make sales and improve services. SEO does not address any of these issues
Two final thoughts on SEO
- Don’t pay for it, put your money on a horse, you’ll get a better ROI
- Video yourself putting a cat in a bin, then upload it to youtube. You’ll get some pretty amazing SEO results then