SEO

SEO or SEM: Free or Pay-For Site Rankings

Making your site more visible in the search engines – getting it to rank high on the first page of the results for a given keyword (search term) – is a goal of most of the website owners I talk to. That’s because 90% of searchers never go past the 1st page of the search engine results.

A few fortunate website owners are savvy enough, and persistent enough, to get their site to rank without any help.

For the rest of us, hiring someone to help with SEO or SEM assumes greater importance. I’ll describe briefly, the pros/cons of each.

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. “Optimizing” your site’s content and structure to make it more appealing (relevant) to Google and the other search engines is one way to get it to rank.

The other key to SEO is backlinks – getting other sites to link back to yours, so that the search engines see your site as a popular resource for those given terms. Sites that rank well this way show up in the natural or organic results – in the main body of the page. You do NOT pay Google or any other search engine for these rankings.

SEM stands for Search Engine Marketing. THESE are what you pay for – such as the Sponsored Ads on the top and right side of the search results pages. Through programs such as Google Adwords, you create small ads and pay every time someone clicks on the ad. (That’s why they’re called pay-per-click or PPC ads.) The more you pay, the higher on the page your ad shows, generally speaking. Some really popular, competitive keywords can cost more than $50 per click!

The advantage of SEO is that it’s cumulative, usually long-term – as you improve your site and get more and more backlinks, your site’s rank steadily improves. And once you get it to rank, it’s easier to get it to STAY there. Also, the vast majority of web surfers click on the natural/organic results – NOT the ads – because we don’t trust advertising. But it can take a while for SEO efforts to get results.

The advantage of PPC is that it is immediate – you can place an ad and have it show up the same day. It’s also a good way to test pages and offers – you can use an ad to direct traffic to something new and analyze how people respond. But when you stop paying – your site disappears. That’s the huge disadvantage – there is no cumulative benefit.

For most of my clients, I recommend PPC only until we get the rankings we want through SEO. After that, PPC is only for occasional testing, or perhaps when a new product is introduced.

When I’m Doing SEO Work for You, Please…

Don’t change your website without telling me.

Even if my SEO (search engine optimization) project is “offsite SEO” – in other words, I’m concentrating on external factors, like backlinks to your site, instead of modifications to your site itself (“onsite SEO”) – I need to stay informed about what you’re doing.

For example, one of my clients hired me to improve their website ranking but did not want their existing web designer to know they’d hired me. So their web designer unwittingly made updates that messed up what I was doing – changing a page name, removing tracking code, et cetera.

Another client, who designed his own website, completely revamped it about 2/3 of the way through a several-month program of SEO work I was doing for him. If I’d known he was going to do that I’d have suggested changes that would enhance what I was doing to get his site to rank higher.

“Onsite SEO” and “offsite SEO” need to complement each other to get maximum benefit. It’s much easier if one person handles the SEO onsite AND off – but if that’s not possible, at least keep your SEO professional in the loop about website updates.

It’ll be easier and more profitable for both of you!

AT&T Selling Sponsored Links (PPC) – Just Say No!

I just got an email from a local business owner in the construction industry.

He said:

“AT&T is trying to sell me some online listing that they say will get me ranked. The guy says that the sponsored links they will have for me will help get me listed organically. Does that seem right to you? They are trying to charge $270.00 a month to do this with a 1 year contract.”

Here’s how I answered him (edited a bit for context.)

NO NO NO don’t do it!

It IS true that Google will find your site faster if you’re paying them to notice it by buying Sponsored Ads (PPC or Pay-Per-Click ads.) So your site might get indexed in the organic results faster, but you won’t rank higher.

Think about it. Google is a for-profit business. Why would Google rank you higher for free when they can make you pay for it?

So if you’re accurately quoting AT&T I think they’re misleading you.

It IS true that having a listing on multiple places of Google’s first page will get you more clicks. A study released by AdGooroo in 2008 found that a prominent paid ad on the same search results page makes your #1 natural ranking receive 20% more clicks.

HOWEVER… PPC ads, alone, are not as effective.

First, people know they’re ads and they don’t trust ads.

According to research reported in “The Art of SEO” from O’Reilly Books, only 50% of visitors even VIEW the first pay per click position, while 100% of searchers view the first three natural search positions.

The Art of SEO: Mastering Search Engine Optimization (Theory in Practice)

As far as people actually seeing the listing, the #1 Sponsored Link gets as many people noticing it as the #7 site in the natural search results. So if you can get your site ranking above #7 in the organic results, it’s already outperforming the #1 Sponsored Link.

Second, when you stop paying, the ad goes away and so does your site traffic. It’s like paying rent when you can own. $270/month for a year is $3240… and this business owner will HAVE to keep paying that, year after year… in order to keep the high Sponsored Link ranking.

I’ve done a great deal of research on SEO for local businesses, and I took a look at his site. For that amount of money – I can get his website to the top of Google in 3 to 6 months, a much longer lasting solution. And that’s pretty typical.

I’m not saying that Sponsored Links (PPC ads such as Google Adwords) are never a good idea. For immediate visibility, they can’t be beat. It can be smart to run PPC ads until your site does rank organically.

I’m just saying to beware of ANYONE who contacts you and tells you they can put you on the first page of Google – there’s often a catch.

Beware Flash Website Builders

Twice this week I’ve had someone contact me who either has built or is building a site for themselves using Wix.com’s flash-based website builder.

I’ve gotta say that I don’t think this is a good idea at all.

Flash and SEO are like oil and water – they just don’t mix very well. Google and other search engines don’t “read” flash – and pages with lots of flash content take longer to download. Both hurt your chances of ranking high in the search engines.

And despite what Wix says about being the only SEO-friendly website builder, there are so many things you have to understand to make sure you’re doing it right that I don’t feel it’s worth the effort. Not when there are other options such as using WordPress to build your site.

Should You Hire an SEO Expert If Their Site Doesn’t Rank High?

I USED to think the answer was a clear and emphatic “NO” – if not a “HECK, NO!”

Until I started doing SEO (search engine optimization) for clients. And making some claims as to being halfway good at it, too.

Let me make one thing perfectly clear – I DO feel that anyone you hire to do SEO work for you should be able to provide evidence that they can do the job, and do it well.

What I’m saying is that don’t judge how well an SEO firm does their job by looking at where they – or a random client – ranks in Google.

Why?

First – you have no idea what keyword term the SEO company is trying to rank FOR (if they’re doing SEO for themselves at all.) Is the company trying to rank for “SEO Columbia MO” or “search engines Missouri” or “optimize website Columbia” or any of the virtually endless variations of keyword terms related to SEO? They may be #1 for half a dozen terms, but not the term YOU choose to type in.

Second – you have no idea if the client is having any SEO work done, especially when you’re evaluating a company (like mine) that does SEO and web design. I do “onsite SEO” on every site I build (unless a client convinces me they don’t need or want it, which has happened once or twice.) That’s often enough to get a site to rank high for a while – but not forever. When rankings start to drop, I have no control over whether or not that company hires me to bring the rankings up again.

Third – you don’t know where in the process they are, or where the site started out. Maybe they’re ranked #14 in Google now – which isn’t anything to write home about – but if they started at #51, the website owners are probably pretty pleased.

I’m not trying to make excuses – I’m just saying that there are reasons you don’t know and cannot know – that impact where any site ranks in the search engines. So that in and of itself is not a good reason to rule out working with a prospective SEO company.

What’s a Backlink? And Why Should You Care?

A backlink is a link coming from another website to yours – it’s also called an inward or inbound link.

(Not sure what a link – AKA hyperlink – is? It’s a reference to another document or web page that someone can follow, usually activated by clicking on it. Links are often underlined and/or in blue text, but not always.)

When someone puts a link on THEIR website or blog that leads people to YOURS – in other words, they create a backlink for you – that’s good! For a couple of reasons.

First – because someone might actually click on it. A friend of mine does catering in Columbia, MO – did you notice those words are actually a link? If you click on it you’ll be taken to her website, and she’ll be very happy about it, especially if you’re looking for a caterer. So that’s a backlink for her – a link from someone else’s site (mine) to hers.

Second – because it helps with your search engine rankings. The more backlinks you have, the more popular (more important, more relevant) your site appears to be to search engines such as Google and Yahoo.

The vast majority of websites will need backlinks if they want to be easy to find in a search. That’s a large part of my job as the owner of a search engine company – finding ways to generate appropriate backlinks for my client’s websites.

If you’d like your site to be easier to find, contact me today for an SEO quote!