Debunking the Myth: Is Search Engine Optimization (SEO) a Scam? Exploring the Real Benefits and Best Practices for Boosting Your Online Presence
Sept 25, 2012
Every page of your website has keywords that people will potentially use to find your website.
SEO Scam or Strategy?
Apparently, there is a section of the population that thinks search engine optimization (SEO) is a scam. Is it?
I guess it depends on who’s doing it and what the expectations are. I mean yes, there are people who say they optimize for search engines and they really don’t have a clue but there are just as many who do a very nice job of search optimization. The problem is, most people don’t understand how search engine optimization is *supposed* to work.
To begin with, search engine optimization doesn’t work in the way everyone thinks. As in “I want to be top of Google” – no one can guarantee you top placement, nor do you want top placement for a single term. Two reasons:
- People will find you based on far more than a single term and
- Most people ignore the top listings to a certain degree – not all the time but enough that you shouldn’t be stressed over being number 1.
By the way, there are plenty of websites that aren’t on the top of the search engines that are getting good business, and there are top-ranking websites that don’t get a lot of business.
Here’s how it does work:
First- you need to get as many pages of your website indexed in the search engines as possible. Think of it this way- you’re going fishing for prospective sales, do you want to use a single fishing line or a huge net? The more pages that are indexed the bigger the net.
Here’s why – every page of your website has “keywords” that people will potentially use to find your website. People will enter your website on any page – not just the “home” page because search engines will show people the “most relevant” results to their search query, which is most likely *not* your home page.
How do you get your pages indexed?
Get a sitemap made and submit it via Google & Bing. It won’t guarantee that all the pages will get picked up but it will show the search engines that you have more to offer and you’ll get feedback on what the search engines are able to index so you can make corrections (broken links, page not found, etc) which will, in turn, give you more pages indexed.
Second – you want to get high rankings for as many search terms as possible. We can’t read the minds of the people who want what you have to offer. We can only do a “best guess” scenario. The more terms (and phrases) that rank high the better the chance you’ll get visits. You can see how this is closely related to having more pages indexed.
You should optimize each page of your website individually for the content on that page. For example, if one page is about bicycle tires, optimize for bicycle tires – not handlebars. Use unique descriptions and titles for each page as well. This will lead you to the third part.
Third – you want to get people (traffic) to click on the link to your website. Each page of search engine results represents, to the visitors, an expectation – they want to see something specific. If your blurb in the search results is enticing they will click the link. How do you make sure your blurb is good enough? Sometimes search engines use the description you give them in the description tag, sometimes it’s text on the page itself. Your job – have good content both in the description and the page text. Have the most important, relevant information you want visitors to see in the top, the first paragraph of the page. Then, when visitors click on the link to your website they are met with the answer to their query and won’t want or need to go back and select another option.
Forth – once you have visitors on your page it’s all about the next action you want them to take. In web terms, we call that conversion. So if you have steps 1-3 but you are lacking in conversion optimization it won’t matter because you still won’t be getting the amount of business you want.
One million visits do not automatically give you a million sales.
When you optimize for conversions you’ve got specific actions like making a purchase, downloading a white paper, signing up for a newsletter, becoming a member, etc. that you want people to take. The key is to make the option the clear path and make it easy to take the action.
While I don’t think this will put an end to the debate over whether or not SEO is dead, social replaces search or all SEO is a scam it may just give a new way to look at the overall process and get the ideas going on how you can use search engines to your advantage. I hope that this gives additional insight. It’s important to note that the internet (and search engines) are constantly evolving. Staying up with the latest information is a really good way to keep your website in top form.
By Teajai Kimsey, Ideas That Work, September 2012
It may be reproduced and reprinted provided the author’s information including the web link is kept intact.
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