|
There's a lot of hype about
Search Engine Positioning. You'll find people on the Net
that promise to "Rocket you to the top of the search
engines". They'll "guarantee top 10 results for
all your keywords". They'll give the impression that
this will happen overnight. Don't believe it. Anyone
promising that won't deliver...and that's one guarantee we
can promise will be fulfilled.
We've run up against
unrealistic expectations time and time again, both with
potential customers and current customers. We wrote this
article to set the record straight.
What We Do
First of all, I think it's
important to lay out exactly
what it is we do. We prepare doorway pages and your
website to be search engine friendly, using all the
knowledge we currently have.
We constantly stay on top
of the engines, so when changes come and pages drop off
(which they will, another guarantee we can promise) we can
react quickly.
We monitor, adjust and
experiment to find new advantages for you to use to achieve
higher rankings.
But... and this is a big
but... we don't have a magic formula. We can't guarantee
that after you sign on with us, you'll have 20 top ten
rankings in the next week. We don't own the search engines.
Once a submission is made, we have absolutely no control
over how the search engine will rank your page.
Think of Us as Your
Search Engine "Stock Broker"
Search engine positioning
is a relatively new industry, and so it's sometimes hard to
get a handle on the realities, especially when many of our
less ethical competitors are muddying the waters with
unrealistic claims they can't live up to. We've come up with
an analogy we think will help put things in perspective.
When you go to a stock
broker, do you ask them for a guarantee that the stock
you're investing in will triple in value in one month? No,
because the stock broker has no control over the stock
market. The stock may triple, or it may lose half it's
value. The reason you're going to a stock broker is because
you're counting on their knowledge of the market and their
experience to increase your odds of making wise investments.
This is very similar to
search engine positioning. We provide you with knowledge,
constant monitoring of search engines and the tactics that
should produce top rankings. Can we guarantee you're going
to have a #1 ranking for the keyword "golf" on
every search engine in 2 weeks? No. But we can increase your
odds of achieving top rankings substantially. Will a search
engine suddenly drop all your pages for no apparent reason?
Very likely, just as it is very likely that the Dow Jones
will drop 300 points in one day sometime in the next year.
Would you blame your stock broker for this drop? I hope not,
but you would count on them to help you look for
opportunities to capitalize on the loss and to help you
recover from your loss.
The other important
similarity in this analogy is the fact that success has to
be measured
over time. Your stock portfolio may be up one day,
then be down thousands of dollars the next. If you used this
as the sole measure of your stock broker's competence, you'd
be going through a lot of stock brokers. But over time, you
want to see a solid increase in value. This is how investors
measure success. It's also how you should measure success in
search engine positioning.
Rankings vs. Real
Indications of Visibility
People get way too hung
up on search engine rankings. They insist on a #1
ranking, and to them it doesn't matter if it's on Hotbot or
AltaVista (which is silly, because AltaVista can produce 10
times the results of Hotbot). Truth is, there's not much
difference between a #1 and a #6 ranking, as long as you're
on the first page of results. It's far more important to
have a good title and description that encourages people to
click through to your site when they're scanning the top 10
results. And it's also far more important to get as many top
10 rankings for as many relevant words on as many engines as
possible, rather than beat your head against a wall trying
to move from #7 to #1.
This was the reason we
introduced the Search
Engine Position Visibility Index. It gives you a
measure of your visibility for all search engines and all
keywords. What we work to achieve is a consistent increase
in this index over time. THIS IS FAR MORE IMPORTANT than
individual rankings. If your index is moving upward but
a top ranking page slips off a search engine, that's okay.
That's reality. Just as it would be if one of your stocks
losses value but your portfolio gains value overall.
What's Your Comfort
Zone?
This is a question that's
often asked of investors. Only those that can tolerate some
risk are encouraged to invest in equities. The same question
applies to search engine positioning. If seeing all your
pages disappear from a search engine overnight would cause
you undue stress, DON'T DO SEARCH ENGINE POSITIONING! We
mean it, because IT WILL HAPPEN.
Also, if you think the
approach we take doesn't meet your expectations, PLEASE
DON'T USE US! If you're looking for miracles, pick one
of the competitors that promise miracles and pray that
somehow they'll deliver.
One the other hand, if you
want to work with us over the long term to take advantage of
every opportunity to increase your Search Engine Visibility
and see a consistent increase, then we're your company.
Further Resources -
Other Articles
Outsourcing
Search Engine Positioning
Web Marketing Today - March 99
|
