No-one loves social media marketing more that I do, I wrote a bloody book on it. BUT what I’d like to remind website business owners out there is that SEO or ‘search engine optimisation’ IS the free traffic auto-pilot that we all have wet dreams about.
Marketing online today is a bit like a balanced meal, you need both meat and veg (no offence to vegetarians of course) to grow big and strong.
So here are my 10 reasons why, if you’re not already, you should take SEO seriously:
- The traffic is FREE –Ok I know you’ve heard that before, but it’s true. Now the reality is that you do need to invest time, effort, content, expertise initially but I have plenty of clients who I worked with for 6 months or year and for years after that their rank remained and they enjoy truly free, targeted traffic – heaven.
- Google has a gazillion web-pages – If you still believe that you can launch a website and be ‘found’ somehow in all the pages has in its index then similar to a 404 page you won’t be (sorry, geek joke – a 404 page is, oh never mind)
- It helps social media – Depending on what you’ve named your Facebook page for example facebook.com/londonseospecialist, Google will treat this as a keyword. And yes you’ve guessed it; Google will return your Facebook page as a result when someone searches for a key phrase related to your business.
- Google search is now multimedia – You’ll have noticed that Google search includes images and YouTube videos – So what I hear you ask? Well there’s a lack of video in so many industries nowadays that it’s a key area to take advantage of; but this gap is closing. You could have the most boring business on the planet, but trust me, someone needs to know more, would like some tips or ideas and you could be the one to do that on YouTube.
- Good content should be easy to write – So you’ve heard Google loves fresh content yadda yadda, and then you thought ‘oh crap I don’t have time to write it’ – fair enough. But consider this, you ‘should’ (and I emphasise ‘should’) be in a business that you enjoy and have a passion for or are an expert in. If any of the above is true then you are probably underestimating you ability to write 400 words once a week on it. Try recording a good rant about something in your field, and pay a few pennies for it to be transcribed. You could quite easily rattle off 400 words in 5 mins. Or use that Dragon Dictate app thingy.
- Google isn’t going anywhere – Will I eat my words? I doubt it. As long as Google exists, millions of searches will be performed each day for products and services. Truth is, we ‘discover’ products and services on social media but we ‘search’ for them on Google (oh ok then and Bing). The question is – will you be found at the end of a search?
- Compliments PPC –So if you’re doing AdWords that’s great, but did you know that appearing in both organic and paid search at the same time increases the likelihood of your link being clicked on by 30%? The reasoning here is that the searcher will presume you ‘dominate’ your sector by appearing in both places at once.
- SEO helps you to LEARN – Instead of assuming what keywords potential customers or clients will use to find you, Google tell us exactly what words people are using to find our products or services. So you might assume that ‘hotel in London’ is a great keyword to get rooms booked but in reality ‘hotels in London’ (with an‘s’) has 50% more searches. But there would have been no way for you to know that otherwise.
- SEO is getting cheaper – The cost to hire a really good SEO guy/gal has dropped considerably over the years because being an SEO consultant was the ‘thing to do’.
- Google Vs SEO is dead – Google realised they weren’t going to win that battle so decided to support SEO’s, webmasters and business owners. They have provided loads of tools from Google Analytics to Webmaster Central which help to provide some great recommendations and SEO help.
In 2012 there’s never been a better time to get your ‘SEO on’ and benefit from the internet’s first rising star of online marketing.
About the writer
Julian Hall also known as ‘The Online Genius’ has been helping companies big and small with their SEO requirements since 2004. He is also author of the Amazon Best Seller ‘Entrepreneur to Ultrapreneur – 100 Ways to Up Your Game” available on Kindle and Paperback now.
