Are You Marketing to Search Engines or to People?
You have probably seen the “Get Number 1 PageRank Instantly for any website” self-proclaimed SEO experts and consultants all over the web. I am sure some of them can actually do that through their so-called secrets, but what if your website sucks? You will have spent all that money and time stuffing your site full of keywords, altering your site’s content to the point where it barely makes sense to humans and you have achieved your Ultimate Goal – “Google Domination”. That is the problem – your goal.
Shouldn’t your goal be to grow your business, get customers,
and sell your product or services?
Your site should be designed for people, not just search engines.
I’m sure you understand Google is never going to buy your product – but neither are people if they follow your top ranked link and find… nothing useful.
Can your site be found? SEO can help - but it is one small piece of the greater whole. Quality content which is updated regularly, site design & structure, and insightful marketing are what will make you "Findable". Let Ker Communications help you make sure your customers can find you
It is too easy to get caught up in the competitive nature of search engine ranking for keywords and lose sight of what you are really trying to do. Good quality content is the foundation of any SEO strategy.
The job of the search engine is to direct users to what they are looking for. By trying to trick the search engines, you are trying to trick potential customers. Not a great first impression. Make sure you are able to give users what they are looking for and it will be much easier to get that high rank you want. Give your website viewers useful, high quality content such as videos or informative or entertaining blog posts and you will be rewarded with better pagerank, repeat views, quality leads and increased sales!
SEO used to refer to things like making sure the structure and navigation of a site is user friendly, efficient in size and speed, and making sure your title and meta tags matched your message. It still is all that, but the term has been abused by “internet marketers” who can’t seem to figure out how to market anything more than information about “internet marketing”. It is almost like the work at home schemes where you buy a report on how to sell the same report to other people.
That does not mean that SEO should be ignored. Search engine optimization really is essential to the success of your site. However, it must be more than just keyword tricks and those should not be the main part of your strategy. “Real” and effective SEO is not just all the magic tricks and schemes, but is a process that should be taken into account in all phases of development and marketing. Your content should be clear, concise and effective in getting your message across. If it does that, your keywords will already be in it! Your website or blog must function properly – people (and search engines) need to be able to navigate around it. For SEO, quality content is step one, user-friendliness or “usability” is the next step before starting keyword oriented meta tag manipulation and backlink building. Really, most of it should be done all at the same time. It is that holistic synergy thing or whatever new buzzwords I come up with to say “your stuff all has to work together toward the same goal, with each part enhancing the ability of the other parts to achieve their individual goals because it works so much better that way”. (This is why marketing people use buzzwords.)
And yes, all those SEO rules and criteria you have read about are very important, too. But they are constantly changing. Keeping up to date on what is important to the search engines – keyword placement, title tags, link popularity, inbound link text, H1 usage, what social media sites have bookmarks to the site, what color socks the web developer was wearing – that requires dedication, continuous research, and a true passion for this line of work… or at least a slightly obsessive compulsive personality.
To do it well also requires a talent in addition to knowledge and diligence. The ability to gain insight regarding what people will type into the search box, what they will click on when they see it, and what will be useful to them and will work for your goals – that is how Ker Communications handles search engine optimization. Like everything else we do, Ker Communications’ SEO services work well on their own, but work much better when integrated with the design process, marketing, and even video production. Quality content combined with technical excellence and insightful analysis and marketing instinct. Synergy.
No silver bullet, no voodoo, no tricks.
Whether you have a site that needs traffic, or you need to fix the damage done by web snake oil salesmen, or you want to build a website from the ground up, Ker Communications can do that.
