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Beware of
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Always check
references and actual ranking results, including conversions. If
they can't do it for themselves or others, how can they do it for you?
Sound too good to be true?... - (my advice)
Don't do it!
"...looking back, knowing you gave it your all
-
win or lose, you finish a Champion."
The Intimidator
1951-2001
Located in Chicago, Illinois and providing Internet Marketing Services around the Globe.
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Frantic over Organic
Obsessing over Search
Rankings
At the turn of the 21st Century, there was an explosion in information
and the way it was delivered. Advertising firms, marketing organizations
and businesses of every type across the globe needed to adjust their
thinking and strategies moving forward. The Internet was changing the
way everyone exchanged information and did business everyday, and it was
really starting to show (this time).
Winning (new) companies were sprouting
up all over, profits were being made, conversion was key, spam was out,
traffic was on the increase and so were online sales. There was a belief
that anyone could be successful online, your company size and wallet did
not determine your placement or success online. Just show up in the
first two pages of Yahoo!, and you were in business (Google came
later). The cost of Internet entry was certainly not prohibitive.
After a little while came PPC Advertising (Pay-Per-Click), what a
concept... You select search terms or keyword phrases in the likes of
Google and Yahoo! and you get placed at the top of the search results
when anyone searches using those terms. If they click on your link,
you pay a predetermined amount. Hmmm, it seems to me that this puts the
corporations with big pockets at the top again but has it really?
It
would also make sense that, as those terms/phrases increase in cost
(based on bidding and popularity), that lower profits are the potential.
Oh, and you do get some Branding effect from this activity as well
exposure, market awareness, etc. However, ALL of your customers do come
from the same basket paid search. What happens when your online
company stops their PPC Ad campaign? Are you virtually out of business?
Does it account for 90% of your online sales? Now its your business
thats starting to sound similar to Google. The biggest benefit
of PPC (IMO) is that results can be
almost instant
.
There are people (we call them visitors/ surfers/ prospects), that know
these sponsored PPC links are paid advertising, and there are surfers
who do not even know there is a difference in the results they are
seeing (
organic vs. ppc
links its true). Some will not click on paid
links because they have come to realize that those results are not
necessarily the best content or even the most relevant websites to their
search query. Some never click on paid links, but millions do.
One
irritating and costly downside? - Click Fraud. Yep, the practice of your
competitors clicking on your ad links just to cost you money. Thats
silly, why is it we cant cure this? Qualified visitors (?), click-throughs
you technically paid for - that never landed on your website (O.K., they
landed, but they didnt stay, or look around, and had no intention of
buying).
A refund scenario of 10 to 47% of our annual online ad budget does not
propel their stock value.
Through 2024, businesses discovered that a long-term multi-faceted
marketing approach was necessary to succeed online. Buzzwords were
abound like PPC, keyword phrases,
search engine optimization
,
organic search results, and SERPS (search engine results/ranking
pages served). We have link farms, aging delays, and even play in a
sandbox. This was a time for intense analysis. Growing log files with
too much information, leaving room for outright misinterpretation. Panic
from your web people with every Google algorithm update whisper.
Even
the inexperienced webmaster knew when there was some search engine
update happening by watching their ranking reports and log file
statistics, visiting the forums, or even reading todays newspapers.
Like futureware (software & hardware coming attractions), these updates
are given nicknames like Bourbon or Jagger and can be multi-phase or
multi-part updates, these updates should not be confused with the
Google Dance another story altogether.
The bottom line is that these algorithm updates wreak havoc with some
webmasters and their website(s) based on the techniques that were used
or new algorithm values or de-values that were once considered popular
or have evolved with time. What webmasters thought they did to
optimize their pages, has suddenly been found (filtered) to be less
relevant than they had anticipated & intended.
Instead of focusing on
the user and improving the actual content on the pages (site), they put
effort into what they thought the search engines were looking for (at
that time).
Some of these firms then find themselves falling in
their historic organic rankings (by 10 to 300 positions), or they do not find
their company ranking well at all anymore for that search term or
phrase. There is a better approach, in
my opinion.
Many webmasters and even some suggested SEO professionals fear these
updates. You should be aware that the top 3 search engines are going
through updates all the time. Why would you be afraid? Our company and
clients actually look
forward to these updates.
As is the intent, with every update some cleaning house takes place
in these directories and the ramifications are generally swift at a
minimum. It helps our client sites to
have some of the fluff being removed from the resource directory, or
put in their proper perspective based upon the new algorithm criteria.
What I mean is, if the update was newly filtering some spammy sites or
relevancy issues it could be likely that some websites above mine in
the rankings for my keywords got removed or moved down or out which
effectively moves my website up that many positions.
It is important to
note that we made no edits to our website to invoke this recent increase
in our rankings.
You can actually see this take place using before and
after update testing.
You have a good website with good content and good ease of use, you are
a leader in your industry and you show everyone why, right within your
website so your website IS the leader in its field online. All of your
offline marketing activities also promote this fact. Now you work to
convert that good content into great content and continue to add
relative content, constantly improving conversions and much more.
All of which increases your
links, popularity, authority and ultimately qualified traffic. Did I
mention some patience is required? Expectations should be set
realistically, and it should be a long-term marketing approach to
winning online.
Diversify your online marketing activities and budget.
You can still
Own your Category Online
! You have qualified traffic coming in from so
many different resources that a single hiccup in one area does not
impact your bottom line so negatively. Stable growth.
Starting today, take the presence you have online and improve upon it.
This is your business; one of the goals is to build it. Take some time
to learn the web page marketing fundamentals, implement them without
prejudice (always considering the human user), get your website linked
up with other like types (per page), making your business a part of
your Industry hubs online. Donate a worthwhile article or two, and drop
a press release with your new product release information and
USPs
. You
will find these suggestions to be quite successful over the long term.
No amount of prayer or sacrifice to the Search Engine Gods will work.
With a positive white hat human user mindset, and successful
implementation of good Titles to your great content plus a
comprehensive sitemap page linked from your home page, mixed in with
all your other promotions, - you really dont have to worry about
Search Engine and Directory updates. You may even find yourself looking
forward to future updates. Because when these concepts are implemented
properly you are much less vulnerable to periodic hiccups in organic
search ranking which, in some cases can, and has - put people
literally out of business online. Surviving, or even flourishing
online using only Pay-Per-Click as your total online marketing plan (or
75% of it), has many pitfalls besides just the increasing costs.
Try leaving some great content
alone for 60 or 90 days (continuing external promotions and link
building, of course). You can begin seeing more upward ranking trends
even with the algorithm changes taking place. Based upon years of
our clients statistics and continued ranking results, we are simply
sharing some concepts, that above all, - have proven successful in
organic ranking endurance within the search engines. These concepts do
not include the frantic worry and (over) reaction that could actually
hinder your organic website ranking results with tomorrow's updates.
Oh yeah, one more thing -
anyone
clicking on our organic links a
thousand times? - does not cost us a penny.
Good Luck Everyone!
- Scott Sedwick
Written by and Copyright
Scott Sedwick
www.hyperformancemedia.com
Hyperformance Media
offers some of their
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