Thursday, July 24, 2008
Eggs, baskets, SEO and Internet marketing
Internet marketers sometimes astound me. They seem to think the world starts and ends with Google. Everything they talk about is how to get to Number One on Google, or how to maximise your pay per click listings in Google AdWords, or the latest "buzz" on Page Rank.
This is the kind of attitude that will inevitably lead to tears. In fact, it actually means these so called entrepreneurs are actually working for Google. Far from being independent they are totally and wholly dependent upon Google. The search engine only needs to change one element of its business and those Internet marketers are sunk.
Would you put your entire business in the hands of one supplier? That's what many Internet marketers are doing by being so dependent upon Google. So why do they do it? Why are they so ready to be slaves to Google?
The answer lies in their data. They can "prove" that by targeting keywords they get more traffic for those keywords. They can demonstrate "beyond doubt" that Google brings them the vast majority of their traffic. And they can be "certain" that particular words in adverts lead to maximum profits.
But these are all self fulfilling prophecies. Let's imagine for a moment that the only marketing I ever did was with postcards. I'd send out thousands of postcards and then I'd measure their effect. I would see them having an impact and so I'd send out more postcards which would therefore bring me more business.
Then someone might say to me "you should try newsletters" and I would go "why on earth would I do that when I'm doing so well with postcards; postcards are where it's at."
See the nonsense? Yet this is the exact, self-same nonsense we get from Internet marketers and so-called "SEO Experts" who keep droning on about the need to maximise Google.
Here's the truth: people will come to your web site in a myriad of ways. To concentrate on Google alone means you are denying yourself business. True, SEO companies can prove that they can increase your online effectiveness. And they produce some pretty good graphs to show it.
But the real question you need to ask is how much greater is this increase when compared with other forms of getting people to your web site? All SEO companies do at the moment is say their ways of getting search engines to like your site are better than other ways of getting search engine ranking. It's like saying my method of sending postcards is better than your method of postcard marketing.
In other words it is so narrowly focused as to be of little real benefit. So next time some Internet marketer or SEO expert offers your business their services ask them this: "How much more business will you bring me when compared with other forms of marketing?".
What you need to find out is the best place to spend your marketing budget; here's a hint - it's not SEO.
Labels: internet, internet marketing
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Absolutely spot on - Google is just part of the bigger scheme of things - unfortunately, as ever, it's an education process.
People are brainwashed into thining that Google is the be all and end all of Internet Marketing - it's up to people like us to help them to see that's not the case.