More than once in the six years that I have been providing SEO services for
websites, I have had the opportunity to discuss with individual business
owners their search engine optimization needs.
Now and again, I run across an individual business owner who is quick to say
that SEO is absolutely worthless. When confronted with such an absolute
statement, I like to press for details.
It has been my experience that people who speak in negative absolutes will
have a horror story to share.
In this article, I am going to detail some of the stories I've heard, which
frequently tells more about some of the people in our industry, than it does
about the effectiveness of search engine marketing.
Problem Number 1 - "I rank number one in Google, and yet, I have never
earned a dime from my website."
When I first heard this story, I was very surprised. After all, if your SEO
company did good keyword research, there is no reason why you should not be
getting traffic and a few sales from a top ranking in Google.
I pressed for more details. I learned that the company who built the website
also did the search engine optimization.
It only took a couple of minutes to learn that the website design company
optimized this fellow's website for the name of his company. There was no
other optimization performed on that website.
Lesson 1 - It is rather pointless to optimize a website for the name of the
company. The only consumers who will be searching for the name of your
company are existing customers.
But, if your company is unknown to the general public, then the people who
would like to buy your products or services will not be able to find you
among your competitors.
If you sell widgets in Tulsa Oklahoma, your future customers will be typing
"Tulsa Oklahoma widgets" into their favorite search engines, trying to find
your business. And if your prospective customers cannot find your business,
your business does not exist in their minds.
Problem #2 - "I had a company build a website for my business, but I have
never received a single customer for my business, through my website."
Are you sure?
Asking this question is not meant to offend you, but rather to get more
details as to how you track incoming business.
If you are the average off-line business owner, who has built a website to
promote an off-line business, chances are real good that you probably have
never received a single customer from your website.
However, if your website does not request your prospective customers to let
you know how they found out about your business, then chances are that
people who did find you through your website would never tell you that.
If more than one person answers the phone at your business, chances are just
as good that someone may have mentioned finding you on a website, but no one
conveyed that information to you.
In your business, you should have systems in place to track and record where
new customers have found your business. To do otherwise is like driving your
car in the fast lane during rush-hour traffic with a blindfold over your
eyes.
Lesson 2 - If you are not asking your customers how they found your
business, you will never know what kind of advertising is producing profits
for your business, and which advertising is sucking the wind out of your
business.
Problem #3 - "I spend a great deal of money on PPC listings (pay-per-click)
to get my business in front of search engine
users, because after spending tens of thousands of dollars on SEO, I could
not rank in the search engines at all."
What keywords were you trying to rank for in the search engines?
"Travel. I have a travel business based in Oklahoma City OK that caters to
business professionals."
Have you ever noticed the caliber of companies who rank on page 1 in Google
for the keyword: travel?
Those are companies who spend millions of dollars per year to market their
businesses online and off-line. Do you have a marketing budget that will
allow you to effectively compete with Travelocity, Expedia or Priceline?
Besides that, where do the majority of your customers work and reside?
"Oklahoma City of course."
If that is the case, why would you spend your limited marketing budget to
target consumers who would never buy from you, because they are outside your
local marketing area?
"I never really thought about it in that way."
Most of your competitors are making the same mistakes that you are. That is
to your advantage, because when you start to market your business in a more
realistic and cost-effective manner, then you will be able to compete with
your competitors, while spending far less money than your competitors are
spending.
Lesson 3 - If you operate a local or regional business, do yourself a favor,
and stop trying to compete in the national marketplace.
Final Thoughts.
Listed inside this article are three lessons that could potentially help
your off-line business to find new customers and to generate new sales, as a
result of your online advertising.
Depending on the average ticket price of purchases in your store or service
business, how much could an extra 20, 50 or 100 new customers bring into
your business each month? You do the math.
my motto is "Keep it simple" and "don't leave anything for tomorrow that can
be done today."
If you have any questions or comments please contact me.
Regards Gerald
Website: http://www.webcraft.ws
E-mail: gerald@webcraft.ws
Twitter: WebcraftGuru
Facebook: Webcraft Guru
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