| |
| |
|
|
|
Search Engine Marketing Hype Killing Small Businesses
Think about the first thing you ever heard about "marketing a website" on the web. 99% of the time the first words anyone ever hears are "search engine marketing." Or some semblance of the phrase. And from that point on, the hammering of misinformation never lets up. You are led to believe that your business will die a terrible death without the search engines. You are led to believe that only people who can guide you through the mine field of search engine optimization are the SEO "experts." Also you are told time and again that the only way to market online PERIOD is through the search engines. You are conditioned over time to focus most, if not all, of your efforts on tricking the search engines into liking your site above all your competitors for search terms where "there can be only one." Well, here's a wake up call: The vast majority of small business startups will never have the resources, time, or know-how to turn an idea into a profitable online business focusing only on search engines. Just look at the deluge of information there is out there on Google and how to rank well with them. People are picking apart their ranking patent application right now to try an glean a website promotion strategy based upon what Google reveals in their application about their ranking system. Is this information valuable to a small business wanting to sell its wares to a whole market rather than just the part of that market which uses one of the big search engines? It is in extreme moderation, yes. In a well balanced marketing campaign that focuses on many ways to bring in targeted traffic, search engine marketing has its place. You do what you can, and you move on to all the other ways there are to promote your business. Yet, so many people are falling victim to the gleam and glitter of search engine riches being pushed on them by SEO firms and people selling search engine how-to manuals. It is not long before a new business finds itself wrapped up in a game where the only winners are the geeks and deep pockets. If you do not fall into either of those categories, your business is doomed from the start if you hop right off the porch to play with those big dogs. "But I hired a 'big dog' SEO firm to make my business stand out and compete with the geeks in my market niche." More power to you. In actuality, unfortunately, you probably just hired a teenager from India with an internet connection in his parents' house. Most small business start ups cannot come close to affording a major SEO firm. They charge corporate-level premiums to be able to access their services. Everyone else in the SEO world is practically working out of their garage in comparison. Scared yet? You don't have to be as long as you are spreading your marketing around to the non-search engine traffic you should be getting. Writing articles and syndicating them in your market is a direct traffic strategy that has nothing to do with search engines. Except that search engines find your site through those links as well. But you should be doing it solely for DIRECT TRAFFIC from readers on other sites and taking the search engine traffic boost as mere icing on the cake. You see, as people spam the search engines, they must adjust how they rank sites in order to compensate. This means a lot of good sites take a hit when Google changes the way it ranks sites. You could have done everything completely on the up and up and gotten dropped in the engines because they made a new rule that everyone who registers their domains only for one year is a possible spammer. There goes your legit site. Hope you weren't planning on search engine traffic for your SOLE source of traffic. Can you see how dangerous it is to get bitten by the search engine bug? YES you can propel your business overnight from a profitless dead zone to a glamorous profit machine with one top ranking. Of course that is possible. It is not likely. People who are turning their small online businesses into success stories are doing one thing across the board: Conducting a multi-faceted marketing campaign that includes search engines along with a good mix of other non-search engine marketing such as reciprocal and non-reciprocal linking tactics too numerous to mention here. If you want long-term success online, you must be willing to look past all the sleeze merchants selling you dreams of riches through search engine marketing. Search engines care about one thing: Their own hides. You should care more about your hide than anything else and use a well-planned, disciplined marketing strategy that puts search engines in their place. Not in the epicenter of your marketing campaign, but just another tool in your toolbox for bringing in targeted traffic. Do this, and you will escape the fate of thousands of startups this year who will realize too late that they hung their hopes on the wrong marketing strategy as their engine for profits. Copyright 2005 Jack Humphrey Jack Humphrey explains his proven marketing strategies in the all new Power Linking 2005 at http://power-linking-profits.com Jack is proudly NOT a "search engine expert."
MORE RESOURCES: Buy Website Internet Traffic. Website online advertising. Buy full page popunder advertising and increase website traffic to your sites. Bad Credit Loans - Loans for people with bad credit. Access online government grants and financial credit services instantly online. Digital Streaming Radio On Your Mobile Phone - La Vella Mobile Radio. La Vella Mobile Radio Gives You Access To Over One Hundred Of The Hottest Streaming Radio Stations From Around The World And Brings Them To The Palm Of Your Hand, Right On Your Mobile Phone. Get Streaming Radio On Your Cell Phone! Audio And Video Streaming For Multimedia Purposes. This Is A Complete Step By Step Guide To The Beginners Who Want To Install And Setup Audio And Video Streaming For Multimedia Purposes On The Internet.
|
|
|
|
RELATED ARTICLES
SEO Expert Guide - Keyword Analysis (part 3/10) If you imagine that building an optimized site is like cooking a meal, then keywords are the essential ingredients. Would you attempt to cook a complex new dish without first referring to a recipe? Would you start before you had all the ingredients available and properly prepared?In our analogy, key words are your ingredients and the rest of the guide (after this part) is your recipe. Creating a Google SiteMap For Your Work At Home Business Web Page Search engine traffic is the best traffic You can get for your online Business. So if you are running a Home Based Business with an Online Presence why wouldn't you do everything possible to gain a Top Search Engine Ranking. Anchor Text Optimization Anchor Text (also called phrase linking) can significantly improve your web pages relevance in the search engines. Optimized or keyword rich anchor text can help your web site gain positioning in the search engines as well as help drive better targeted search traffic. How To Really SEO Your Site Search engine optimization is one of most popular online marketing tool for any website. With more websites coming online every day the competition gets larger, so you have to make sure you can out SEO them before they out do you. Website Copy-writing for Higher Sales and Higher Search Engine Ranking Why, you ask? Mainly, because search engines want to provide their users with good content. How do they find it? By surfing the web for it. Beginners - Getting Listed In Search Engines Once you have your web site complete and ready to be listed you need to take a slow step by step approach to get listed in the search engines. If you do it right the first time and then build on that formula, your profits and your site will benefit in the long run. SEO Deadly Sins - Mistakes That Hurt Web Page Ranking The following are a list of mistakes can ensure that your site maintains a low ranking with the search engines. Avoid at all costs. Attack Smaller Searches To Get The Big Ones! Searching online can not only be fun, but you sometimes need to be downright inventive.For those of you who have been searching online for years now, you've probably adapted ways & techniques to find what you are looking for quickly. Why Does The Link Page Have A PR Zero? For beginners, link exchange campaigns can be a minefield of problems. For example, here is a question I was asked:"Hi Andy, I have noticed that a lot of sites that request a link exchange from me may have a PR 5 or 6 on their home page and when I click through to the links page there is a PR 0. Developing A List Of Keywords For Marketing Keywords aren't just some words that allow search engines, like Google, to find your web site. They are also key elements for creating attractive language to use in your marketing or advertising material. The Ultimate Free Google Ranking Tool The first months my website was online, I was constantly checking the search engines to see if my site was listed under the keywords that I was targeting. And always with the same negative results. 10 Ways To Indirectly Get To The Top Of Search There are millions of web sites trying to get listed in the top 20 spots of the major search engines. That amounts to a lot of competition! I say if you can't get listed at the top, indirectly get to the top. Absolute Top Five Search Engine Marketing Myths Uncovered! It's no secret that Search Engine marketing can drive significant amounts of very qualified traffic to a web site - as 85% of Internet users utilize search engines to find/research for goods and services. The problem for many companies is the difficulty they face sifting through conflicting information and hyperbole! Here is my top five list of myths that need to be run to ground. How I Suddenly Stumbled Onto No.1 In Google and Yahoo Without Search Engine Optimization - So What? Sometimes, the search engines act really strange. And this story will prove how I've got top positions (80% on no. Creative Search Engine Optimization - A Case Study Search engine optimization this and search engine optimization that. You read and hear about it all day, but what about your site? While there are plenty of articles providing useful information, this article shows you how a real world example met with success. Tread Towards A Successful "Internet Research" Internet is a terrific resource containing billions of web pages dedicated to thousands of topics. Since the amount of information available on the Internet is so vast and mind baffling you may feel lost. Commonly SEO terms and Jargon used by Search Engine Gurus What does all this SEO jargon mean.Have you ever been left scratching your head, wondering what the Search Engine Optimizers SEO's or Gurus are talking about. Website Promotion: 10 Search Engine Optimization Blunders to Avoid If you want to develop a successful search engine optimization (SEO) strategy, go out of your way to avoid blunders that limit rankings.Here are 10 to keep in mind:1. Using Blogs for SEO Why Start A Blog?I knew about blogging and blogs for years before I actually started my first blog.. The Myth of Rankings - Beyond Search Engine Optimization What follows is a condensed version of a conversation that happens all too frequently when I am approached by a prospect interested in search engine optimization (SEO):Prospect: We need our website optimized, because we aren't showing up for any searches. Me: What searches have you tried? Prospect: We don't show up for ANYTHING.
|
