Screwed: Is this an inevitability in the SEO World?

Written by Courtney Heard


By about 2pm everyday, each of my team members has spoken to a good handful of clients and potential clients who have been speaking with other SEO firms. This an absolutely wonderful thing to see, as inrepparttar past in our industry, not enough of our consumers were questioning what they were purchasing. It is a sign that accountability will come andrepparttar 138529 bad guys will be weeded out.

While this is a good sign, it’srepparttar 138530 cause of my having to answerrepparttar 138531 same questions over and over. The consumers inrepparttar 138532 SEO world are being fed out and out lies by some ofrepparttar 138533 people who call themselves experts inrepparttar 138534 area of Search Engine Optimization. They hear these lies and while comparing prices, contact us at Abalone Designs. They then proceed to tell me everything that all of these other companies promised them and I am utterly astonished. Here some ofrepparttar 138535 most asinine claims I hear throughrepparttar 138536 grapevine.

“We can guarantee your rankings”

Don’t be fooled! Askrepparttar 138537 company what you will be ranking for, immediately! 9 times out of 10, a company that guarantees you rankings, is guaranteeing that you will rank for your own company name, which means people on Google or MSN or Yahoo! would have to know your company name before searching. How does this produce new customers and visitors to your site? Chances are, as soon as these search engines index your site, you will rank withinrepparttar 138538 top ten for your company name, if not first, because it is unique. Why bother paying someone for something that is already going to happen, anyway?

Guaranteeing rankings is highly unethical. It is impossible to guarantee rankings unless you have access to Google’s database itself, and even then I’m not sure it’s possible. Keep in mind, we are working with a 3rd party, here. A highly guarded 3rd party that doesn’t, under any circumstances, reveal it’s secrets. No one outside ofrepparttar 138539 companies that run these search engines knows what it is exactly that makes search engines rank sites high. Especially due torepparttar 138540 fact that these search engines andrepparttar 138541 rigorous ranking filters they use to spit out search results change almost monthly. Even a former Google employee doesn’t know how to guarantee rankings! If someone is telling you they’ll guarantee top rankings, run fast! Those are some shady, shady claims. Google themselves have said:

“No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google - Beware of SEO's that claim to guarantee rankings, or that claim a "special relationship" with Google, or that claim to have a "priority submit" to Google. There is no priority submit for Google. In fact,repparttar 138542 only way to submit a site to Google directly is by usingrepparttar 138543 page at http://www.google.com/addurl.html. You can do this yourself at no cost whatsoever.” - http://www.google.com/intl/en/webmasters/seo.html

An ethical SEO company will not guarantee rankings. They will guarantee that their methods follow search engine guidelines, and they will guarantee customer satisfaction, but at no point in time will any SEO company with a conscience guarantee your rankings.

“Your site needs to be continually resubmitted to get on and stay onrepparttar 138544 search engines”

When will I seerepparttar 138545 end of this one? How old is this method now? 5 years? 10 years? We’re talking aboutrepparttar 138546 days when Webcrawler wasrepparttar 138547 biggest search engine and all computers were beige! This claim is so fully untrue, had Pinocchio uttered it, his nose would have stretched from Rome to Poughkeepsie. Andrepparttar 138548 good folks at Google will once again back me up on this one:

The Business Case for SEO

Written by Scott Smigler


It’s interesting how potential clients have preconceived notions about which aspects of search engine marketing haverepparttar most value. In fact, they tend to fall into two camps that are 180° apart. The first camp believes completely inrepparttar 138528 value of pay-per-click marketing (PPC). It’s easy to understand why. PPC provides immediate and measurable benefits. The ROI of PPC marketing is obvious. This group doesn’t understand why it’s necessary “to bother” doing SEO. The second camp believesrepparttar 138529 only way to go is SEO. Clicks are free andrepparttar 138530 branding benefits of high rankings have been well documented.

The right answer is that they are both valuable. Each has its benefits and when you can afford to, you should implement both.

Pay-per-Click

PPC makes sense if you want immediate benefits and likerepparttar 138531 idea of paying for performance. SEO provides branding benefits and longer-term will provide an ROI that is compelling. But unlike PPC, SEO revenue results aren’t as directly measurable and manageable.

Pay per click (PPC) gives yourepparttar 138532 ability to have complete control over your search traffic. With PPC programs you selectrepparttar 138533 keywords and writerepparttar 138534 listings. You control where you’re listed and whatrepparttar 138535 listing says. You decide what your budget is and can adjust your spend rate based on results or events (e.g. announcements, promotions).

By tracking results from a PPC campaign, you can build up a knowledge base with respect to your business, including which messages performrepparttar 138536 best, which search terms haverepparttar 138537 best conversion rates, and what destination URL is best for specific users to land on. Over time, this knowledge can help you to improve and define your business.

One ofrepparttar 138538 greatest attractions of PPC isrepparttar 138539 ability to easily track clicks and costs allowing you to understand your ROI from a specific marketing initiative. This gives you confidence to spend money and drive volume. You may have thought that spending $5,000 a month on a PPC campaign is way outside your budget, but once you measurerepparttar 138540 ROI, you may realize that it’s well worthrepparttar 138541 investment.

Search Engine Optimization

So, if PPC is so great why bother with SEO? Basically, because you will be missing out on a large number of potential clicks. How large? A number of recent studies have demonstrated that there are still a lot of users that do not click onrepparttar 138542 "paid" listings but rather will search throughrepparttar 138543 regular editorial search results. The accompanying chart shows that 60% ofrepparttar 138544 search users prefer (some exclusively) organic over paid listings. The only way to get optimized (high) rankings in these regular editorial results is through an effective SEO program. In most cases, once you have good positioning inrepparttar 138545 regular search results, you will continue to receive “free” traffic. Again, based on data from a number of marketersrepparttar 138546 increase in traffic due to SEO averaged 73%. Consider search engine optimizationrepparttar 138547 same as you would word of mouth advertising or public relations. It’s exposure that comes with a very high degree of credibility and trust. Traffic coming from traditional search listings tends to have high conversion rates.

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