Out of the Fog Marketing

Great post by Aaron Muller discussing myths related to search engine optimization companies.

You can almost think of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) as a somewhat secretive industry. You see a lot of people claiming to be SEO experts, and some charge a lot of money for their SEO services. Some people guarantee results and some don’t. At the same time, almost nobody will tell you the exact methods he or she uses to improve your web site’s rankings, so you are left wondering: am I paying too much? Am I being too cheap? Am I hiring the right person? What should I look for when hiring a SEO company? Is it worth the investment?

If you think about it, there is a reason that the SEO industry is somewhat secretive. For one thing, search engines like Google do not like people tampering with their search results. If you are a dentist in Chicago and you realize that thousands of people type “Chicago dentist” into Google every week, imagine how much more business you would get if your web site comes up first in the search results! When I say search results, I mean the organic search results, not the paid advertisements, since 70% to 80% of people click on the natural search results instead of the paid advertisements.

This brings me to the second reason why search engine optimization companies are somewhat secretive. They take away Google’s revenues from paid advertisements! The more people hire SEO companies to improve their rankings on the natural search results, the less likely they are to use paid advertising with the search engines such as Google AdWords and pay-per-click (PPC) advertisements.

For these reasons, search engines such as Google do not like search engine optimization companies, and the SEO experts have to be somewhat hush hush with their methods. As a result, there are a lot of myths and misconceptions when it comes to hiring SEO companies. However, this does not mean you need to be at a lost. You are likely to get better investment of your dollars with some SEO companies than others. With a little education and understanding of SEO companies, you will be better equipped to choose the right SEO company for you.

Here are the top 3 myths when it comes to search engine optimization…

1. The majority of the SEO work takes place on your web site. The logic behind this myth is that if you design a really search engine friendly web site, your web site would be ranked high by search engines such as Google. Yes, it may be true that having the right keywords and meta tags on your web site help your ranking, but if it were that easy, don’t you think everybody would be doing the same thing? The truth is – only a small percentage of the SEO work is done on your web site. The majority of the SEO work to improve your ranking should be done on other people’s web sites! Search engines tend to care a lot more about what other web sites think about yours rather than what you have on your own web site. This is the reason that a good web designer is not necessarily a good SEO expert, and vice versa. Web designers tend to focus almost all of their energy working on your web site. Good SEO experts, on the other hand, tend to focus their energy on other web sites in order to help improve your web site’s rankings.

2. Good SEO can be done cheaply. There is a saying that people tend to get what they pay for, and this saying applies to hiring SEO companies. However, you should not base your decision on price alone. What you should understand is why some SEO companies charge you so little (such as $49.95 per month). Some keywords are more competitive than others. For instance, let’s say you run a hair salon in Los Angeles called “BJ Hair Design”. Which keywords do you want to optimize? Do you want to optimize “BJ Hair Design”, or do you want to optimize “hair salon Los Angeles”? I can charge you very little to improve the ranking of the keyword “BJ Hair Design”, but potential customers searching for hair salons on the Internet don’t know your company name (which is why they are searching in the first place), so no one is going to type in “BJ Hair Design”. Chances are they will type in “hair salon Los Angeles”, and this is when you want your web site to come up first. It is much harder to get a high ranking on competitive keywords such as “hair salon Los Angeles”, which means it will cost you a little more to get high rankings on highly desirable keywords. So before you go with the cheapest SEO company, think about this… Which keywords are they helping you optimize?

3. SEO stops when your ranking is high. Another myth is that SEO is a one-time investment. If you have a very high ranking on Google, there are probably 9 other companies trying to compete with you. If everyone else is advancing but you, your ranking will eventually drop. That is why you should think of SEO as an ongoing investment for your business. By continuing to invest in your web site’s ranking, you will ensure a steady stream of new customers that will visit your web site and call you up.