SEO and Magic
It’s about this time of year that everyone comes out of the woodwork, looking for a bargain in marketing. Last year it was “Hey, I heard social is cheep! What can ya do for me there?” This year, it looks like it’s back to the basics. So, we’re getting a lot of questions about SEO, or Search Engine Optimization. “Hey, I heard SEO is cheep! And it lasts a long time! Can ya get me some good search positions, huh, canya?”
For those of you who have been living in a hermetically-sealed bubble for the past decade and a half, SEO is the process of getting your company, or its products and services, listed in Google (or other search engines) under “natural search results.” These are the results that appear below, or to the left of, the sponsored search results. Which is a whole ‘nother ball game, but since Adwords aren’t perceived as “free,” we don’t get as many questions about them.
The problem is, a lot of people think there is a secret way to get to the #1 position on Google for any keyword in the universe, and we (as agencies) are simply hiding this secret.
To which I reply: “Ha!” If it was that easy, I’d be retired and living in a tropical paradise right now.”
The problem is, there’s no secret to SEO. There’s no simple, easy way to get listed in the top 10 search results for most keywords. There is a process, yes, and there are real, bottom-line benefits you can reap from a real SEO program, but (like everything else in marketing), it’s a long, time- and labor-intensive process. Google isn’t stupid. Google is very, very good at telling the difference between real, helpful content and content that’s just there to shill for your product. It’s very, very good at discerning auto-generated content from stuff made by a real human. And it’s very, very good at telling when you’re blogging just to hear yourself blog, or creating an article by pulling from the wiki, or any of a dozen other tricks that less-competent SEO guys will tell you work for “cheap and easy” results.
Because, when you get right down to it, SEO is about content. Good content. Unique content. Helpful content. Does this describe the articles on your website? Are there articles on your website at all? If not, who’s going to write them? If it’s not someone at your company, it’s your agency. Outsourcing articles to people who don’t live and breathe your culture ain’t gonna cut it. So you’re walking right into some very expensive work: either you staff up, or you pay agency rates.
“But what about inbound links?” you ask. “I heard I could create a billion sites and link them to mine–”
Wrong. Good inbound links count. Good links are from sites with a lot of eyeballs, and a lot of good content of their own. An inbound link from Wired is great. An inbound link from Yagattaseethisyoubetcha.com with a grand total of 12 visitors last month isn’t going to count for a thing. So, if you want to create links, you’re looking at pushing real press releases, and doing real PR, to the gorilla sites out there. Which takes you back squarely into the “gotta pay an internal person or agency” thing again.
And, to top this all off, you have to keep up. Did you know you could do a Google Base feed of your products and get listed in product search? Did you know your product photos could show up in natural search and Adwords? The rules keep changing, and again–someone has to keep up with it. It’s either your staff or your agency. Neither is cheap.
So, what’ll you choose? Don’t say “magic.” Because, when it comes to marketing, there ain’t no such thing.
