No Quick Fixes Where Search Engine Optimization is Concerned
e-Marketing Company
rankings?
Many years ago I read Stephen R. Covey's "The 7 Habits of Highly
Effective People." One thing Covey discusses is the glitter of the
"Personality Ethic." He mentions how some people try to find some
"quick and easy way to achieve quality of life ... without going
through the natural process of work and growth that makes it
possible." Then he goes on to say, "The Personality Ethic is illusory
and deceptive. And trying to get high quality results with its
techniques and quick fixes is just about as effective as trying to get
to some place in Chicago using a map of Detroit."
What Covey says is nearly identical to what I've been saying for years
regarding search engine optimization: There are simply no quick
fixes.
I wish I had a dime for every potential client who came to me and
said, "We just need you to fix our Meta tags so our site will rank
highly with search engines." These people don't realize that if it
were simply a matter of fixing Meta tags, they could probably do it
themselves!
Why Not Meta Tags?
Search engines don't have a whole lot to work with when trying to
figure out which sites to show in their list of results for any given
keyword search. Considering this, it's actually quite amazing how
relevant most search results tend to be, given the sheer number of
pages on the Internet these days.
For an internal search engine that just searches through pages or
products on your site, the information provided in the Meta keyword
tag can really help to narrow down the most relevant pages that one of
your site users might be searching for.
Unfortunately, the differences between an internal search engine and a
public one such as Google are many. For instance, with an internal
engine, there are only a relatively small number of pages or products
to search through to find a relevant page. Plus, the content and Meta
tags on the site are trustworthy, since your goal and that of your
internal search engine is to help people find exactly what they're
looking for on your site.
On the other hand, with major search engines, their database contains
basically every page on the web that they know about. They can't
necessarily trust the Meta tags they find since a site owner's goals
may not necessarily be the same as the major search engines' goal
(i.e., you would like your site to show up in the search results as
much as possible for as many keyword phrases as possible, but the
search engine would like to show the most relevant pages, whether
those are yours or someone else's).
This makes changing or adding Meta tags on your site neither a quick
fix nor a slow fix. It won't fix anything and it won't have any effect
on your search engine traffic.
What About Content?
Sure, you can add all kinds of content to your site and hope that will
be a quick fix, but writing lots of good content cannot be done
quickly. It will generally take years of writing a little bit every
day or every week, to eventually end up with a genuine archive of
truly useful information. It's highly doubtful that if you're somehow
generating 100 pages a week, you're actually creating good content.
You're either stealing from elsewhere, auto-generating it from some
sort of icky software program, or you're some kind of robot with too
much time on your hands!
How About Links?
It is true that links are very important to helping your site gain
visibility and search engine traffic. But quick-fix link schemes are
not going to result in long-term high rankings for your site. Everyone
knows to avoid "link farms," but nobody seems to quite know what they
are. No worry, because it doesn't matter whether something is a link
farm or a link scheme or a link popularity bonanza software
extravaganza. If you set out to get links for the sole purpose of
increasing your search engine rankings, you're already thinking
backwards.
Forget about link popularity and instead think about your target
audience and how you can let them know your site exists. It's really
just marketing, plain and simple. You have a website and a business
that presumably is [better] [more unique] [cheaper] [friendlier] than
the others out there and it needs to be marketed. You may even have to
<gasp> spend a little money to publicize your site. Good, old-
fashioned newspaper, magazine, and even TV ads that mention your
website can really get your site noticed. The more visible your site
is, the more it will be talked about in the right circles, and the
more links it will obtain just because. Even PPC ads can help, because
they put your site in front of people looking for what you offer. The
point is that people have got to find your site one way or another
while you're waiting for your SEO campaign to kick in. It's your job
to figure out how to get it in front of them as often as you can.
Regardless of how you market your site, don't count on becoming an
overnight sensation.
This brings us back to Covey's Personality Ethic. Sure, someone can
edit your Meta tags quickly and submit to 50 billion search engines
and trade links with 90 million useless sites. However, if you haven't
invested the time up front to create a website with great content that
speaks to the reader in plain language that real people use (in other
words, without technology buzzwords), you will not see good long-term
results.
How To Achieve Long-term Results
You may achieve high rankings very quickly for words that nobody is
searching for, but as Covey so aptly put it, these will be illusory
and deceptive results at best. If no one uses those words in the
engine's search box, all the #1 rankings in the world won't keep your
business afloat.
It's imperative to think of the search engine optimization process as
a long-term investment for your site, so here are 5 tips to help you
invest in your future success:
1. Thoroughly research your keyword phrases using the paid versions of
Wordtracker or KeywordDiscovery. Keyword research is completely and
utterly the key to everything that is search marketing.
2. Make sure your site is not made up of graphics alone, as these
cannot be read by the search engine spiders that come a-crawling.
(This is especially true of graphics that look like text -- these are
often used when a particular font is desired.)
3. Be sure to use natural, easy-to-understand language that conveys
the message of your website and includes keyword phrases you'd like
your site to rank highly for.
4. Make sure your Title tags and link anchor text all jibe with the
visible content on the page.
5. Be patient! You knew I'd end with that one, but with Google's
aging delay in place for new sites, patience is more important than
ever. It's most likely going to be a good 9 months before you start
seeing much (if any) traffic from Google's natural results. Don't be
discouraged, but instead use that time to constantly make your site
better than the other guy's.
Remember, you are working toward the future. Good placement achieved
by doing things the right way will have staying power over time with
very little additional effort. Like everything in life, if you spend
the time and money to do it right to begin with, the long-term results
will always be impressive.
Sincerely,
Scott Richard Adams, CEO
e-Marketing Company
www.e-marketingcompany.com