Why You Don’t Need An SEO Provider
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is often one of the first things a new web site owner asks about. Everyone “knows” you need it, but many don’t really know what it is. That’s why there are thousands of SEO providers out there – it is easy to make money at it and the customer has no idea what the provider is actually doing (in many cases not much). The purpose of this article is to help you decide what the best course of action is for your own SEO efforts.
What is SEO anyway? Quite simply it is the process of making your website visible to the maximum number of viewers through search engines like Google and Bing. If someone searches for your category of product or service, you want your website to appear as close to the top as possible.
Now that we know what SEO is, I would like to address some common myths about SEO.
1. “SEO is expensive” – FALSE. It is FREE and it always has been. Everything a provider does costs them nothing but time (and a surprisingly small amount of time at that). If a provider offers you a program for thousands (or even hundreds) of dollars a month, it is a scam, plain and simple!
2. “Providers know deep, dark secrets that move you up faster” – NOPE. Google uses formulas to decide which pages rank highly and they explain how it all works right on their website. They even provide you with the tools you need for FREE. It doesn’t matter if a flashy SEO firm or your grandmother does it – it’s all the same to the search engines.
3. “You need to submit your site to hundreds of search engines” – NICE TRY. Like it or not, Google is the big kahuna in the search world accounting for about 80% of all searches depending on whose stats you believe. Bing and Yahoo each get just under 10% and the rest barely register. The percentages may be debated, but the bottom line is those three own it. The dirty little secret is that the major search engines will find your site anyway if you have quality content. Submitting your site to them may help speed things up a bit, but it’s not as important as it once was.
4. “You need to be a computer wiz to do it” – mostly FALSE. A significant portion of good SEO is in the design and content of your site. You may need to modify the structure of your site if it is not search engine friendly. Depending on how your site was built, this can be very easy or deceptively difficult. The good news is that once your site is properly set up, you only have to be able to use the internet and update your content to do SEO.
5. “Google keeps changing the rules” – TRUE. Google changes the rules regularly in an attempt to make their searches as accurate as possible. This is a problem for people who are trying to fool the search engines into giving them an artificially high ranking. If you have a quality site with relevant content, these changes can only help you. If an SEO provider lists this as a reason to hire them, run away!
6. “SEO will get you to #1″ – that DEPENDS. If you are a new cola company and you want to rank #1 for the term “cola”, forget it! Coke, Pepsi and a host of others have a hundred years of reputation, millions of visitors to their sites and links beyond measure from quality third party websites. No amount of SEO will beat that anytime soon. However, if you try to rank #1 for “new cola manufacturers in Doodleburg” chances are you can get there pretty quickly. This type of phrase is called a “long tail” keyword and it helps you compete because it allows you to leverage what is unique about your business. This may sound trivial, but if your market is primarily in Doodleburg you’ll get a lot of relevant traffic. Once you build some traffic to your site, you will also improve your searches for “short tail” keywords like “cola” too!
7. “Every website needs SEO” – NOT TRUE. SEO only helps people who don’t know you to find you. If your site is mainly for people who already know you or your product, you don’t need SEO. If you are a specialty business that only accepts direct referrals, you don’t need SEO. If your business already has all the work you can handle, you don’t need SEO. My SEO coaching business is primarily driven by referrals so, strangely enough, I don’t put a lot of effort into SEO for this website. However, I also work on some travel sites that are driven primarily by search, so SEO is #1 for them.
8. “Those FREE SEO report offers you get by e-mail are useful” – NOT REALLY. Anyone who has even a basic understanding of SEO can show you legitimate, but very misleading reports on how your site searches. The information may be factual in the strictest sense, but they pick and choose only the parts that help them sell their service. Plus, you will definitely get a phone call afterward. Don’t waste your time!
The bottom line is that there is nothing mysterious or expensive about SEO. It’s all about following the rules that the search engines set and they are more than happy to tell you what they are. You CAN do it yourself and they make it pretty easy.
The only reason you should ever need an SEO provider is if you are growing your business and don’t have the time or interest to to wade through the rules yourself. If that is the case, there are plenty of legitimate SEO providers (like us for instance – what are the chances!) that would be happy to guide you through the process for very little cost. Our SEO Foundation Package is only $39.00 and once that is completed we offer $19.00 maintenance packages to keep you on track with no commitment. Why so inexpensive? Because that’s honestly all anyone should need to guide you to SEO success! Once you know the rules, you can easily do it yourself, or let us continue to keep an eye on it.
