Adam and I have both had conversations in the last week with companies keen to talk about SEO (Search Engine Optimisation). Companies that still needed persuading a couple of years ago that the web would be a key part of the their business future now see SEO as a panacea for all their traffic ills. If only they could find the right level of SEO skills, the phone would ring off the wall, their turnover of widgets would explode, and the company directors could take early retirement. This belief is reinforced by digital marketing agencies hyping SEO: take a look at the ads at the back of a magazine like NMA and you’ll see pages of SEO services on offer. So it must work.
Well, not quite. Skilfully applied SEO ‘magic’ may increase your search engine rankings in the short term but it’s really a question of diminishing returns. Success will always be temporary because it is subject to the arcane algorithms applied by the ranking engine. SEO is really Search 1.0. Let’s face it, publishing a web site without at least some level of applied SEO nowadays is like publishing your company details in the Yellow Pages using yellow ink: you’re invisible. SEO, therefore, is something you build into your site at birth.
Relying solely on SEO, however, is like putting up a billboard and then expending huge amounts of time, effort, and cash to erect a traffic management system that directs all cars past your advertisement. Described like this, you can see immediately how SEO has its roots in the old rules of marketing: make them look at me! We’ve moved on. (And the traffic will soon find a better and quicker route home.) You may get to the top of the rankings but that’s not much use if all your traffic is clicking through from Poland and Lithuania and you only deliver in a twelve mile radius of Manchester.
It’s the SEO experts who benefit
There is an increasing war of attrition between SEO experts and more wonga is probably spent on fine-tuning what lies behind the site than on the content and usefulness of the site itself. We know: we’ve done SEO in the past. This state of affairs ignores the fundamental truth of a successful web site: the most valuable visitors arrive through recommendation and they return because your site is sticky.
Recommendation leads to valuable visitors because they have already taken some self-qualifying steps before they arrive. They know what your site is about and they are either interested in the subject or even ready to buy. It means, for a start, that your home page or landing page can get down to business quickly. Contrast that with a click through from Google based on a simple link.
Bad love
Talk of recommendations raises the question of back links and link love. Google loves links, of course, but it’s choosy in the same way you would be choosy about recommendations. If I’m looking for a restaurant in a new town, I might look for further confirmation if I discover that the first two people who raved about the food and service at “Hank’s Especially Greasy Spoon” were the manager’s son and Hank’s wife.
Staying with the restaurant theme; if the manager shouts loudly enough then people will come. But what if the food’s dreadful, the service appalling, and my partner’s a vegetarian and the chef only does meat? I won’t be making another booking as I leave and I’m not going to be telling friends, colleagues, and family to hurry on down for a meal.
Acquiring visitors through recommendations and positive conversations means there will be fewer disappointed customers. Save the money you may end up spending on SEO and hire a better chef – or at least some bigger wine glasses.
While writing this I received an email asking if I wanted my web site to be ‘top of the Google rankings’. This sort of SEO promise is becoming increasingly like the other spam I get offering to add inches to my manhood – and I guess they’re not talking about my height. To be fair, the SEO offer, however shady the methods applied, might have a better chance of success – but not for long. The problem with using underhand tactics to manipulate rankings is that sooner or later – and usually sooner – Google notices and your site will be penalised. That means it more or less disappears from view. Yellow ink applied by Google.
Find them before they find you
The answer is to engage with customers before they arrive at your site and then, once they have visited, make sure your product or content is vital enough that they keep returning. (Maintaining core content is a subject for another post altogether.) So, less SEO and more CIE – Customer Interaction Effort.
