All this talk of ‘Number One Ranking on Google‘. 1000′s of ideas, 1,000,000s of pages of blog content and all for what? One simple positioning on a search engine. Do we really need it?!?! The answer is a straight forward ‘No’ if any of the following apply to you and your business philosophy.
1.) ‘We don’t need help finding new clients’
How true the above statement should be! Your business is steeped with decades of history, you know that anybody thinking of employing a service offered by your business will be straight on the phone. Why give more money to a third party such as Google?!?!
2.) ‘We’re just too busy… especially with our upcoming trade show’
Another very popular reason to avoid SEO – the simple fact that you just don’t have the time! What with all these opportunities to schmooze current clients, meet up with old friends, and pop another grand in the pocket of your local printer, where are you going to find the time to develop an understanding of Search Marketing.
3.) ‘No need to worry, our CEO’s son bought a book on it’
Exactly! We’re not talking rocket science here are we? Plus it gives the CEO’s son a great chance to show off his skills in a school project. He’s promised to read a book all about it and then do an SEO on the website. It’s not exactly challenging is it?!?
4.) ‘Our clients don’t use the internet to research within our industry’
This is an ever popular reason not to bother with SEO. Let’s face it, it’s not you that’s too busy to optimise your website for your prospects, it’s the fact your prospects simply don’t have the time to sit around all day looking at a computer screen.
5.) ‘Not to worry, our designer has already done this’
Fantastic news – not only does your website look great, your designers billed you a few hundred pounds to build in SEO. Makes far more sense to get one company to do everything for you doesn’t it?
6.) ‘Our site already comes up No.1 !’
Even better news for you – anybody searching for your company can already find it! All they need to do is search for Company Name Widgets, Mytown, Mycounty and up you come! No need to optimise for the search engines, it’s already done for you!
7.) ‘It’s just not worth it’
How true. Why would you spend marketing budget on optimising for Google when tried and tested routes to market like your Yellow Pages ad, or your ad in the local paper appear to work fine for you? Last thing you’d want to do is switch budgets from ‘proper’ marketing channels to these new fangled internets.
8.) ‘It’s in the capable hands of our IT manager’
You get the best of both worlds! Not only can he fix your company laser printer whenever it’s jammed, he is also working on the project to make your website visible to the search engines… and lets face it, the last thing you want to do is tread on the toes of your IT Manager? What happens the next time you can’t login to your computer?!? He’s not going to come running to your rescue knowing full well you didn’t allow him to write your website content AND do the SEO is he?!
9.) ‘I heard it’s all a big waste of time and nobody uses it anyway’
Couldn’t agree with you more… what’s all the fuss about? It’s been around for years and lets face it… it’s just for nerds anyway. Nothing better than hitting the phones and getting in the face of your potential clients. That way you can tell them all about the features of your company without wasting time building a website SEO thing.
10.) ‘There’s no budget, nice idea, but no budget’
Totally agree. What’s the point in spending more of your money when you can’t guarantee a return on your investment? The websites years old, your competitors are miles ahead of you so you can’t even try and compete. Best just to focus on doing what you do best.
As you can see, there are a wide range of reasons as to why SEO maybe irrelevant to your business…. if you’re comfortable knowing that all around you your competition is advancing upon your territory, stealing your clientele and generally making a nuisance of themselves then stay clear of opportunities such as SEO…. you know it makes sense, don’t you?
11) We already had an SEO company look over our site a few years back and all the pages have keywords in them.
11) We already had an SEO company look over our site a few years back and all the pages have keywords in them.
Oh yes! … and then you scroll down to the bottom of each of their pages to realise just how the keywords were added…. 1000s stuffed in size 6 font – usually a nice tidy alphabetised list of every town in the country! (Retro Geo-targetting
)
Author wanted to make a statement, but it would be nicer to actually see some good analysis of where SEO is going and what's on the other side of the river. Because it's unavoiadably becoming useless strategy as price competing.
The true marketing is in product.
Hi Duny – thanks for your comments. True, I did want to make a statement. A statement detailing the real objections an SEO practitioner faces each and every day.
My blog covers a wide range of topics and the future of SEO is very much at the core of many articles you'll find on this site.
'The true marketing is in product'. I'd have to disagree with this comment – in particular when this is related to online marketing. The 'product' is only part of the traditional and online variation of the marketing mix. If you don't have the necessary marketing channels tuned and ready to promote your product, your product will simply pass by your intended audience.
Ian, surely I agree that you need to be seen to have your great product on sale. And surely SEO is one of the currently most important tools to work this out.
But looking a bit into the future, one thing can be clear. Who pays more, gets higher in search pages. It can't be avoided.
It is obvious that you need good people to do this job. The better the person, the higher the results. The better the person, the more you need to pay that person.
Not little economics does the trick in the question who can pay the best people to do the best job.
Surely there's a lot of if-then-but-hmh here, but in the long term, you can't beat the big ones only by SEO. First you need an amazing product. Then SEO will find you (as Chuck Norris does:-)).
If you have a great product, people talk about it. Over twitter, FB, blogs,… you don't even need any special website, people will make it for you.
I do optimization for our clients othwerwise.
))
Hope I didn't complicate too much. Just stressing out that SEO is currently overblown and people don't manage their core products well anymore.
Perhaps to give it a bit historic view…
1. Once upon a time someone invented printing machines
2. People started printing books, newspapers (exchange knowledge)
3. Then people started printing little ads within those things
4. Most surely (wasn't there) someone noticed that position and content of those ads makes impact (is correlated) to the success
5. People started selling marketing services to improve companies use of those marketing channels
6. More and more agencies and professionals were rising
7. Suddenly the ad space became expensive
8. People invented PR
9. Suddenly PR became expensive
10. Well, then internet came
I belive you see my point as being a professional. This is a time-money game. And on long term, by the rules of economics, valuable space (where many people put their eyes and money on) becomes expensive. You need big money to be where big masses of people are.
Of course, we're not quite there yet. But in 5 years time, no matter how you turn it, money will bring customers to the company. If the company pays 10.000$ to local media or SEO professional, what's the difference? It's10.000$.
Anyway, was Facebook about good SEO to become such a success?
But I do agree on your points within year 2010 for example. It's the hit of the moment and you can take advantage right this moment for many industries/regions/markets.