Search Engine Optimization is, simply, the act of making your website highly visible and important to search engines. - Seeing as how everyone uses search engines to find websites, you would think that Optimizing your website would be a no-brainer.
Like all things however, Monthly SEO services are surrounded by a cloud of Myhts and misconceptions that have been passed along over the years.
So without further delay, here they are:
The Top SEO Myths Everyone Wants you to Believe
SEO Myth #1: There's no money online.
Anyone who watches CNBC or any of the Market shows knows this one isin't true. Sadly for a few of our friends out there, this Myth does have a hint of truth in it.
The Internet has been a medium in which small business has repeatedly been able to overcome big business, often turning those small startups into Mega Corporations in the process. The lure of quick fortune and this dream that the little guy can beat the big guy has kept the number of new startups each year astronomically high.
The promise of a quick path to riches by starting an online store, affiliate program website or other offerings lures countless numbers into the frey. The staggering truth is that almost all of these startups fail before they ever have an opportunity to really compete.
You can have the best looking website on the Internet, and a sales pitch that converts over 50% of your visitors, but even in this unlikely situation, if no one can actually find your website, you will fail. SEO is essential to preventing this.
SEO Myth #2: There is WAY to much Competition Online.
There are BILLIONS of websites online. Thankfully, only a fraction of these websites will be in direct competition with you over your set of keywords.
But even that fraction, can still be a staggering number.
A website promoting a local business, such as a contractor or restaurant will on average compete with 50,000 other webpages for top spot.
A website promoting products or services on a national level can easily compete against millions of websites, some of which are successful and deeply entrenched in the top 10 rankings.
The truth is however that while there IS a lot of competition, most of your competition's SEO strategy is probably ineffective. If there are a million websites competing for the top 10 - 999,990 will be left out.
Still - That is A LOT of competition... or is it? Let's take a hypothetical look:
Say there are 1,000,000 Webpages competing for just one set of your keywords.
Out of that million about 99% will be stored under "supplemental" results. Basically these pages are so identical to the top 1 or so percent that the search engine has excluded them. Most of your competition is probably stuck in this abyss.
Some of the websites above the SE Abyss will be run by people with basic SEO knowledge.
A larger portion of these websites will be informational pages - These pages may have only a passing interest in the topic, offering light or sporatic content. There has been no specific SEO conducted on these pages, but these pages are usually hosted by a large website that search engines trust.
You will have many websites that were optimized professionally by a search engine optimization expert when it was first designed and built. These websites tend to lose rank overtime and the optimization loses effectivness as the website owner adds freshly unoptimized content.
A select few will have in-house SEO or IT experts capable of advanced SEO managment - OR - will have a managed SEO solution through a group like IMAG Studios.
A handful of sites may have a combination of past optimization or currently have a managed seo solution, plus have an enormous amount of inbound links from websites that add importance to it.
These websites typically dominate the top few. ranks. Overcoming them can take time, but a managed SEO solution should not have difficulty under the vast majority of conditions achieving top 10 or even top 3 ranking.
Overtime, a monthly SEO solution that includes link and popularity building for a website can overcome nearly any obstacle.
SEO Myth #3 We had our site optimized already.
Search Engine Optimization is a business. Let me say that again, SEO is a business. And like any business that is very technical and complex, the costs for a single optimization can be very high.
I recently encountered a friend who took great offense at the idea that his website needed optimization. "It's already been optimized!" he exclaimed.
The fact that his website was on a slide down the rankings was hard to argue with though. His website was in DECLINE, and was LOSING the battle for position on the search engines?
After talking back and forth a few days, I asked my friend what he thought the problem was. His response included a string of answers;
"My competition is up to something..."
"I think the search engines are penalizing me too, maybe I'm not compliant anymore"
The reality was... he was right. He just didn't see the big picture.
His competition WAS up to something. It was offering fresh content, which search engines LOVE, and all the content they offered up was optimized and on target.
My friend was updating his website too, but his content while fresh, was not optimized at all for his website. He had made structural and design changes to his website over the last year that also hurt him.
The search engines DID penalize him. Not because he wasn't in compliance, but because his site began losing important inbound links, and was no longer offering the same kind of "quality optimized" content that his competitors were.
I learned later that my friend did on some level understand the real reason his website was in decline. Having a website optimized a SINGLE TIME is helpful, but those optimizations start losing effectivness right away.
As webmasters we are caught in a catch 22. Search engines will penalize you for not updating your website (hence keeping your original optimization pure), but will also penalize you if your content is not viewed as relevant - aka optimized.
So why didn't my friend just have his website re-optimized or sign up for a managed SEO solution?
Principal. He had spent over $13,000 dollars having is 30 page website optimized, and couldn't let go of the fact that those dollars had started going obsolete the next time the search engines crawled his page.
SEO Myth #4: We tried having our website optimized and it didnt work.
Snake oil salesman be damned. Beware those calling themselves SEO expert or SEO guru.
SEO is not easy work, but the basic concepts are not so difficult that someone with reasonable computer knowledge can't impress a website owner with a few flashy catch phrases and buzzwwords.
Key Warning Signs to look out for:
"Top page rankings in just weeks!" - Effective SEO can take several months to a year of managment to achieve top page results. Each website is different, they should tell you not jus what your results will be - but HOW they plan to get you there.
If they refuse to tell you because "Then you would just go make the changes yourself" - RUN AWAY.
SEO Myth #5: Once you've had your website optimized once, you won't need it done again.
This Myth continues to be spread by SEO Companies as part of their sales pitch.
Many in SEO realize that websites evolve and grow, that search engines change and modify algorithms, and that your competitors are always on the move as you must be.
But for some SEO operators, a "single optimization is all you need" helps to support their incredibly high fees. My friend who spent over $13,000 for a single optimization believed this until the final days of his internet business.
In order to seperate your business from it's hard earned money, they have to convince you that this single optimization will solve all of your past, present and future search engine problems.
It would be great if you could fix all of your future optimization needs in one sweeping act, but sadly it does not work that way.
SEO Myth #6: If you run a pay per click campaign, you don't need SEO.
Years ago, you could probably make this argument in some circles of the SEO community. While the majority feel that a PPC (pay per click) campaign is a great supplement, a website with an effective Monthly SEO campaign will generate long term success and provide traffic at a lower cost and with better conversions.
Today, it has become much harder for PPC purists to make the argument against SEO. The reason for this is that PPC companies such as Google Adwords, and Yahoo's Overture have begun using something called "relevancy" when determining ad placement for PPC.
Years ago, PPC was simple. He who bid the most, was placed on top. The problem was that the person who bid the most, didn't always offer the best content. The end result, was that people stopped clicking ads.
So the major search engines and ad providers, started using "relevancy" to make sure that PPC advertisers were sending people to webpages that matched the keywords they were advertising too.
Today, you will find it very difficult to run a PPC campaign without a well optimized website.
Take Action - Get a Free Website Analysis and SEO Report
It's free and includes:
A Detailed Analysis of Your Website
Details on your Current Competition Online
Link Building Suggestions
Structural Development Suggestions
Content Managment Suggestions
A Clearly Defined Plan of Action
e-mail: sales at imagstudios.com
