Tag: search engine marketing services

Posted on

SEO snake oil

SEO-snake-oilRarely does a day go by without my receiving at least one email pitching the benefits of getting my site to the front page of Google.

For example:

“My name is David. I am a SEO and Internet Marketing expert. I am in this profession from since last 4 years.

I will be happy to promote your website and bring this on the top page of Google. My plan of action is to promote your website through local Google and your website to be promoted in the combination of Geo location with your selected keywords.”

How many things has David got wrong in just four sentences? Let’s begin at the end of his statement and work our way to the beginning.

      1. 1. The idea of “your selected keywords” being the basis of his promotion is an ineffective approach to SEO. When sem[c] begins a promotion we discover which keywords are being most frequently used by a business’ best prospects. These keywords are frequently not obvious. Figuring this out is our job NOT our clients.
      2. 2. The importance of “Geo location” is determined by the nature of the business and is not appropriate for businesses that might be limited by that kind of perception. Recently an sem[c] client in Iowa was approached by two prospects in Ireland and several in China. Their physical location was not important in the least. What would have been the benefit to them of localizing to Iowa?
      3. 3. Does it matter to you that he would “be happy to promote your website”? Of course he would be happy to take your money. How happy will you be?
      4. 4. Does his being “in this profession from since last 4 years” impress you? This sounds like it was written in fractured grammar by someone who is not a native American English speaker. The importance of understanding how people use language to find what they are looking for is of the absolutely highest importance not only in finding the right keywords but also in eliciting buying action from them.
      5. 5. He writes that “I am a SEO and Internet Marketing expert”. I am skipping yet another grammatical error here only to ask the question this begs: In whose opinion? He is writing to me hoping to promote http://SearchEngineMarketingChicago.com on my behalf. It should be obvious to him that my site is about Internet marketing. He completely missed that point.

His targeting is so wildly inappropriate that he brings to mind the old joke: “The word ‘expert’ consists of two parts, ‘X’ which is ‘the unknown’ and ‘spurt’ meaning ‘a short burst’.”

In the spirit of that joke is this guy’s name even ‘David’? The the reply-to email address belongs to ‘Bob’ at Gmail.com.

Posted on

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, from our ongoing review of online discussion seems to have begun to receive an undeserved unsavory reputation.  This must be a result of “black hat” practitioners that have caused problems instead of delivering results.

I was speaking with one of Google’s SEO consultants recently and I mentioned that there were people being quite vocal online about SEO being some sort of “scam”.  She laughed.  Of course the fact that Google, Yahoo and all the other search engines have SEO people on staff should alert everyone to the validity of the art of SEO.

In fact, SEO not only helps with organic search engine return position (SERP), but also results in the improved relevancy that keeps costs down in a paid online search advertising campaign (SEM) and ensures that people looking for what you offer find you easily.

Being relevant is critical in the lightning quick world of online search and the more one’s website is honed to be relevant to its prospects, the more successful it will be.

sem[c]‘s combined SEO / SEM campaign for a major Chicago real estate firm nearly doubled the number of visitors and tripled the number of registered site users interested in buying and selling real estate.  These numbers were achieved in a “down” market.  This is the effective power of SEO.