Search Engine Marketing Hype Killing Small Businesses
|
Think about the first thing you ever heard about "marketing a website" on the web. 99% of the time the first words anyone ever hears are "search engine marketing." Or some semblance of the phrase.
And from that point on, the hammering of misinformation never lets up. You are led to believe that your business will die a terrible death without the search engines. You are led to believe that only people who can guide you through the mine field of search engine optimization are the SEO "experts."
Also you are told time and again that the only way to market online PERIOD is through the search engines. You are conditioned over time to focus most, if not all, of your efforts on tricking the search engines into liking your site above all your competitors for search terms where "there can be only one."
Well, here's a wake up call: The vast majority of small business startups will never have the resources, time, or know-how to turn an idea into a profitable online business focusing only on search engines.
Just look at the deluge of information there is out there on Google and how to rank well with them. People are picking apart their ranking patent application right now to try an glean a website promotion strategy based upon what Google reveals in their application about their ranking system.
Is this information valuable to a small business wanting to sell its wares to a whole market rather than just the part of that market which uses one of the big search engines?
It is in extreme moderation, yes. In a well balanced marketing campaign that focuses on many ways to bring in targeted traffic, search engine marketing has its place. You do what you can, and you move on to all the other ways there are to promote your business.
Yet, so many people are falling victim to the gleam and glitter of search engine riches being pushed on them by SEO firms and people selling search engine how-to manuals.
It is not long before a new business finds itself wrapped up in a game where the only winners are the geeks and deep pockets.
If you do not fall into either of those categories, your business is doomed from the start if you hop right off the porch to play with those big dogs.
"But I hired a 'big dog' SEO firm to make my business stand out and compete with the geeks in my market niche."
More power to you. In actuality, unfortunately, you probably just hired a teenager from India with an internet connection in his parents' house. Most small business start ups cannot come close to affording a major SEO firm. They charge corporate-level premiums to be able to access their services.
Everyone else in the SEO world is practically working out of their garage in comparison.
Scared yet? You don't have to be as long as you are spreading your marketing around to the non-search engine traffic you should be getting.
Writing articles and syndicating them in your market is a direct traffic strategy that has nothing to do with search engines. Except that search engines find your site through those links as well. But you should be doing it solely for DIRECT TRAFFIC from readers on other sites and taking the search engine traffic boost as mere icing on the cake.
You see, as people spam the search engines, they must adjust how they rank sites in order to compensate. This means a lot of good sites take a hit when Google changes the way it ranks sites.
You could have done everything completely on the up and up and gotten dropped in the engines because they made a new rule that everyone who registers their domains only for one year is a possible spammer. There goes your legit site. Hope you weren't planning on search engine traffic for your SOLE source of traffic.
Can you see how dangerous it is to get bitten by the search engine bug? YES you can propel your business overnight from a profitless dead zone to a glamorous profit machine with one top ranking.
Of course that is possible. It is not likely.
People who are turning their small online businesses into success stories are doing one thing across the board: Conducting a multi-faceted marketing campaign that includes search engines along with a good mix of other non-search engine marketing such as reciprocal and non-reciprocal linking tactics too numerous to mention here.
If you want long-term success online, you must be willing to look past all the sleeze merchants selling you dreams of riches through search engine marketing.
Search engines care about one thing: Their own hides. You should care more about your hide than anything else and use a well-planned, disciplined marketing strategy that puts search engines in their place. Not in the epicenter of your marketing campaign, but just another tool in your toolbox for bringing in targeted traffic.
Do this, and you will escape the fate of thousands of startups this year who will realize too late that they hung their hopes on the wrong marketing strategy as their engine for profits.
Copyright 2005 Jack Humphrey
Jack Humphrey explains his proven marketing strategies in the all new Power Linking 2005 at http://power-linking-profits.com Jack is proudly NOT a "search engine expert."
|
|
|
From Corpora To Matching
Making effective use of the Internet is increasingly about creating better and more intelligent applications and search engines. Here is a brief introduction into how search engines work:01) Define the corpus, search space/data;02) Separate the corpus into documents;03) Generate features for each document;04) Generate a representation of each document;05) Study the feature/vector space;06) Cluster documents;07) Reduce dimensionality;08) Accept input Queries;09) Find the cosine angles against the query vector; 10) Find the sought vector column;11) Output results to user in some way;Each document in a corpus (database)...(related: Seo)
Basic Search Engine Promotion
I can't tell you how many times people have asked me, "Howto do I get my site to come up in the top ten of the searchengines so I can get hits and sell my product?"What they really want to know is, "How can I get people toshow up to my website without spending any money onadvertising my site!"People usually don't like my answer because accomplishing a"top ten ranking" on any search engine always requirescareful thought along with a signific...(related: Seo)
Attack Of The Killer Google Zombies!
Don't share this with people of a nervous disposition because I really can't restrain myself any longer.Picture the scene if you will...[A conversation last week though it could be this week or the next - it happens all the time...]Anon: "We want lots of people to find our website but it doesn't seem to be happening for some reason."Michael: "Can you tell me some of the methods you've been using to market your website?"Anon: "Well really we're just waiting for Google to update and then we'll be fine. Once that happens our problems wi...(related: Seo)
How To Use Keywords To Improve Your Ranking In Search Engines
The importance of keywordsKeywords or key phrases you choose will determine how your site is positioned in the search engines. It is always better to have lots of pages each focusing on a small group of keywords. This will give them more relevance to each individual page.For example if your site is about shoes you may have lots of different types of shoes.Your index page should have a menu leading into each of the different categories of shoes.You might have a page for sandals, one for platform shoes as well as stilettos, court shoes and flat heel shoes.Choosing keywordsFirst you have to think lik...(related: Seo)
Youve Got The Power, Why Arent You Promoting It?
Like all things, theft is theft, misery loves company, negative people are everywhere, business is sometimes bad, things go up and others go down.If those are all true then knowledge is power right? Wrong, knowledge is only power if applied. So why is it that most of us only apply "commercialized" marketing tactics and fail to utilize the little stuff that counts?For instance, Google allows us to promote 2 url's, www.yoursite.com & http://yoursite.comSo ok. Nothing new...Then why aren't you promoting the power Google gave to you?See there's some of us who know that adding a link to both urls within our sites is a powerful thing. But what most of us don't k...(related: Seo)
Got Spiders?
Many internet marketers blow mountains of start-upcash on their websites just trying to break into search engine rankings. I was one of these internetmarketers.I spent cash on get-rich-quick submission servicesthat claime...(related: Seo)
The Google Phenomenon: Greatest Hits Collection
As my readers know, I've been one of Google's harshest critics. However, I'm also a firm believer that it's okay to criticize, as long as it's justifiable and fairly balanced with deserved praise.Hence, in this article, instead of criticizing, I will be saluting Google and several of its many accomplishments.According to the dictionary, the definition of phenomenon is:"A remarkable development or occurrence. A marvel. "I think we would all agree that definition fits Google like a fine tailored suit.In 1998, singer Janet Jackson was the biggest star on the planet. On September 7, 1998, Google Inc. opened its door in Menlo Park, California. The door came with a remote control, as it wa...(related: Seo)
Seo -- Tips To Optimize Your Webpage To Compete For A High Ranking
Search engine optimization (SEO) is very important to websites. If you rank high in search engines, your website are shown to a huge number of target users.To start with, you have to pick a list of target keywords. Try the overtune keyword toolprovided by www.SEOChat.comDont try to crack into competition of over 1million results. Narrow down your target keyword which yields a relatively high number of searches, and relatively low number of search results.
Seo Help: Dont Try To Fool The Search Engines
Writing articles is all the rage these days on the web. Or should I say getting other people to write articles for you, joining membership sites that provide "private label" rights -- that is all the rage.And the reason? You get all the benefits of a well-written article without the work! Someone has to write the articles of course, and if you have writing skills theres plenty of opportunity for you.Why have articles become so popular? People surf the net looking for information -- or "content" to use the buzz word of the moment. They're not interested in adverts, or flashing banners...(related: Seo)
site-map - Copyright © 2006 | You can send your articles and get links. Contact Webmaster | All Rights Reserved.
| Seo