Website – Good or Bad – SEO Has A Highly polarizing Response
Obviously if SEO is good or bad there’s going to be quite a bit of debate on the topic. Here is what most people think of when considering SEO:
SEO – Good!
SEO is the promotional enhancement of a website. It can include creative ways to make your website more attractive and it can help you get found by the search engines in a more natural and organic way. In addition that can help you get more visitors which ultimately leads to more businesses.
So why doesn’t everyone agree? I think most people just don’t believe in SEO or don’t know of any poor techniques. The purpose of this article is to help promote this belief.
Before I attempt to help determine whether SEO is good or bad, I’m going to try to open your mind to some possibilities.
SEO is difficult
Yes, remember that everyone’s situation is different. To say that everyone is accessing the search engines, then that goes against what in the real world appropriate 200 tone of sound marketing mentions says. A typical client response is that there are many easy ways to make their website more attractive and therefore easier to notice by the search engines, but if they have any type of weak spot in their page at all they may not be picked up by a search engine, let alone a visitor.
Somewhere in the middle
I’ve seen a few SEO consultants go a variety of routes. They started with a strong keyword emphasizing the importance of a specific keyword that a potential customer might type into a search box. They butted in and complement the keywords with description and other content to satisfy different, yet legitimate, objectives.
Sometimes this is done quite nicely. In many cases, however, it falls short of expectations. I sometimes confuse this with the technique of crowding your source code with keywords that don’t fit properly. Keyword research is a perfect example of this situation. If you’re going after different keywords that just match with each other, you’re not going to get as many hits as you want.
On the other end of the spectrum you also do not want to over-stuff your source code with keywords that don’t fit. This is a real issue, especially with search engines, so if you should over-stuff your source code you need to make sure what you are doing is appropriate. It’s a real chicken and egg situation, but if you should or if you shouldn’t use keywords with keyword-rich descriptions in your source code, you should determine this yourself without the search engines’ intervention. If you don’t do this, your website will obviously be penalized. If you think you have to engage in some form of keyword-anticipant descriptive text, do not. You will probably be penalized. It is particularly important in an industry such as entertainment to use keywords in your descriptions.
It does not guarantee success
There is no guarantee that your website is going to be hit number one. Probably the biggest myth about SEO is that if “SEO optimize” your website, you can be guaranteed to receive the highest amount of hits. No SEO consultant can guarantee a first page ranking for any kind of website, but if you can’t receive a decent ranking, don’t worry – you don’t have to have many visitors to maintain a good ranking. Updating your content regularly is one sure way to get noticed by the search engines, and should be one of the top priorities when you are doing search engine optimization.
Yes it works
If all of the above warnings are true and you are about to put SEO to work for your website, then congratulate yourself. You have no reason not to. Better web design, relevant information, current content, increased strength in links from relevant sources, lots of cautious development of your site structure and rich, on-topic article submission have all proven to work well to get your website to the top of these search engines.
SEO is very expensive
SEO can be very expensive if you use the wrong practices. That’s an issue that is often emotional as much as it is rational. The reason you want something to be really quick and fail-proof is because you don’t want to be the worst SEO consultant ever.
Always be right
Believe it or not, when you decide that SEO is not working, you will really want to work with one of these on-site optimization companies. Taking the time to educate yourself about SEO, so that you can make a wise decision about which company you want to work with is something that you should consider. Good on you. In the end, you will make a wise choice, because you will know what you want your website to do for you.