Top 3 Myths On Search Engine Optimization Companies

THINKPAINTING

You can almost think of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) as a somewhat secretive industry. You see a lot of people claiming to be SEO experts, and some charge a lot of money for their SEO services. Some people guarantee results and some don’t. At the same time, almost nobody will tell you the exact methods he or she uses to improve your web site’s rankings, so you are left wondering: am I paying too much? Am I being too cheap? Am I hiring the right person? What should I look for when hiring a SEO company? Is it worth the investment?
If you think about it, there is a reason that the SEO industry is somewhat secretive. For one thing, search engines like Google do not like people tampering with their search results. If you are a dentist in Chicago and you realize that thousands of people type “Chicago dentist” into Google every week, imagine how much more business you would get if your web site comes up first in the search results! When I say search results, I mean the organic search results, not the paid advertisements, since 70% to 80% of people click on the natural search results instead of the paid advertisements.
This brings me to the second reason why search engine optimization companies are somewhat secretive. They take away Google’s revenues from paid advertisements! The more people hire SEO companies to improve their rankings on the natural search results, the less likely they are to use paid advertising with the search engines such as Google AdWords and pay-per-click (PPC) advertisements.
For these reasons, search engines such as Google do not like search engine optimization companies, and the SEO experts have to be somewhat hush hush with their methods. As a result, there are a lot of myths and misconceptions when it comes to hiring SEO companies. However, this does not mean you need to be at a lost. You are likely to get better investment of your dollars with some SEO companies than others. With a little education and understanding of SEO companies, you will be better equipped to choose the right SEO company for you.
Here are the top 3 myths when it comes to search engine optimization…
1. The majority of the SEO work takes place on your web site. The logic behind this myth is that if you design a really search engine friendly web site, your web site would be ranked high by search engines such as Google. Yes, it may be true that having the right keywords and meta tags on your web site help your ranking, but if it were that easy, don’t you think everybody would be doing the same thing? The truth is – only a small percentage of the SEO work is done on your web site. The majority of the SEO work to improve your ranking should be done on other people’s web sites! Search engines tend to care a lot more about what other web sites think about yours rather than what you have on your own web site. This is the reason that a good web designer is not necessarily a good SEO expert, and vice versa. Web designers tend to focus almost all of their energy working on your web site. Good SEO experts, on the other hand, tend to focus their energy on other web sites in order to help improve your web site’s rankings.
2. Good SEO can be done cheaply. There is a saying that people tend to get what they pay for, and this saying applies to hiring SEO companies. However, you should not base your decision on price alone. What you should understand is why some SEO companies charge you so little (such as $49.95 per month). Some keywords are more competitive than others. For instance, let’s say you run a hair salon in Los Angeles called “BJ Hair Design”. Which keywords do you want to optimize? Do you want to optimize “BJ Hair Design”, or do you want to optimize “hair salon Los Angeles”? I can charge you very little to improve the ranking of the keyword “BJ Hair Design”, but potential customers searching for hair salons on the Internet don’t know your company name (which is why they are searching in the first place), so no one is going to type in “BJ Hair Design”. Chances are they will type in “hair salon Los Angeles”, and this is when you want your web site to come up first. It is much harder to get a high ranking on competitive keywords such as “hair salon Los Angeles”, which means it will cost you a little more to get high rankings on highly desirable keywords. So before you go with the cheapest SEO company, think about this… Which keywords are they helping you optimize?
3. SEO stops when your ranking is high. Another myth is that SEO is a one-time investment. If you have a very high ranking on Google, there are probably 9 other companies trying to compete with you. If everyone else is advancing but you, your ranking will eventually drop. That is why you should think of SEO as an ongoing investment for your business. By continuing to invest in your web site’s ranking, you will ensure a steady stream of new customers that will visit your web site and call you up.

Saw this today on the web.....

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MagicPoolSvcs

Kudos for this post.


There are some companies that out there that can help you rank better, but it is like everthing else in life - " Count On Yourself " to make it happen.

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MEL

Are you aware that Google recently changed the way they produce results?

Inbound links are no longer the primary factor in determining your placement.

They are factoring in previous websites that the searcher has visited. In other words if a searcher has been to your website before then your website will show up in the search results.

You have to realize they can change the rules whenever they want to.

What Google gives Google can take away. Blessed be the name of Google.

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AutumnWood Inc.

Top 3 Myths on Search Engine Optimization Companies


Is this true ..?

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THINKPAINTING

It’s an opinion I read on a marketing small business website, is it true? I don't know but he does make some good points for sure.

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carolinahandyma

It is true that Google and other search engines are constantly altering their search algorithms.

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AutumnWood Inc.

When I search I rarely click on the paid ads.

But the pay per click people say it is not true..?

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Dudes Construct

It sounds about right with the 70 to 80% of people do click on the natural search instead of the advertisement.

I signed-up with this site called BidPuppy.com (they’re very new), and when I Googled my company (Dudes Construction) it was ranked pretty high – if not first, second. Is that how it’s supposed to work?

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tinner666

I couldn't imagine clicking on a sponsored link. The organic results will be more targetted, in general. imho.

The same techniques that will get your sponsored link up top will also get your organic site up top too.

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AutumnWood Inc.

Can you explain in more detail ... please

I am new to all this stuff and I do not know all the terms, But do you mean - pay per click = sponsored link.

Don't they bid on the pay per click for rankings only?

We talked to a company that runs a pay per click campaign. They believe that the organic results are no better than the pay per click.

They also said to make a real good presence in our market, it would take $1000 a month. Which seems like a whole lot !

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Publisher1

Organic search (natural, not paid listings) I believe attract better results by a significant degree, just as when you read the newspaper or listen to the news, you give more credibility to the editorial or actual news broadcast than the paid advertisements.

Trouble is you cannot control the former, but you can the latter. You pay, you play.

SEO consultants are something like PR consultants: They can help you improve your results, but if they guarantee success, the only way I would work with them is on a contingency fee (and they will likely decline). Many variables outside the SEO optimizer's control work for or against success.

And a lot of dumb stuff is done in the name of SEO. I have a highly ranked blog and the volume of comment spam it receives is incredible. I'm not talking about the autogenerated pharma spam -- this is supposedly targeted for relevance to my site, and set up by real people (perhaps offshore).

I delete it all. Ironically, even if I published it, it wouldn't do anything at all for the spammer's SEO -- because of "nofollow" attributes built into comments which mean they may appear but are not recognized (unless the recipient chooses to allow them) to be counted in the SEO rankings.

I hate to bring this bad news to you. If someone you don't know is selling you a magical solution, be wary. Purchase these professional services the best way: Through referrals, relationships and validation, just the way most of your best clients purchase your services.

electricohio

I've not heard this one before, I usually stay quite up to date on changes as they happen.

I can tell you that yes Google most definitely always is changing the way they opporate. The reason for this is obvious because as time moves on more tools are created that complement the internet. People are spending more time "playing" on the net rather then just working or searching for information.

I can tell you that just in the past few months Google has unveiled what it calls "Live search" this means that google is now monitoring what people are saying about certain topics 'right now".

They are collecting this information from places like Twitter and facebook and sending it straight to the search results. Now this is still in its infancy stage, in order to see these results you would need to search for something that has a very high perch volume.

I just checked twitter for a trending topic "kuyt" is currently a very much so tweated topic (I guess he's a soccer player) do a search for it and see if the "live results show" they may not if it isn't a highly talked about topic when you search.

The point is that things are always going to change. The social media craze is here and it's very real. Will it be around in the future...I certainly think yes. It may not be Facebook or Twitter but will certainly be a reincarnation of something that was the genesis of this movement.

Many ask me "Why should I use Twitter or facebook if they aren't going to be around in the future?" Why would you not? It works here and now, rife the train till it ends, and who knows where it will end.

OK back to seo. Yes you need to watch who you deal with. Many seo companies will promise page one results for a few key words. If you are looking to hire a company to try and get more traffic to your site make sure the words that they are going to have you rank for are words that people are actually looking for.

I can get a business name that doesn't contain any keywords to post #1 in a few hours it really is not difficult at all. It gets more involved when you are trying to rank for a particular well searched for keyword or keyword phrase.

Think of goolge basically as a big "catch-all" it goes out to each site and looks for information on every published site. It then will cross reference that with other sites. If it sees a link pointing to your page from a very popular website then it feels you must be important.

In High school you had different clicks of people. Cool Kids, Nerdy Kids, Athletes, ext...
Most people would look up to the cool kids and want to be one of them but very few ever got to be in this exclusive group. Every once in a while you would have one of the "cool kids" befriend an outsider. Because the one cool kid accepted him so did the rest of the group.

Consider google the "cool kid" and high traffic websites are all cool kids too. The more 'cool kids" who accept you the more google will notice you and reward you with moving up in the search engines.

Oh yes one more thing, it has also been well documented that a "less caliber searcher" is more likely to click on one of the paid search results then the organic results. this doesn't mean that google is against you getting higher in the search results. Actually quite the opposite. If your site is a very targeted on topic page they want you high in the results.

There are many people that would love to bump google of it's pedestal. I personally know of 3 different people who are creating "hand made" search result web sites. Meaning you would search for something on their site and the results that would be displayed would be results that some actually input into the system. A person actually reviewed the web page and determined it to be a very relevant site. (personally I think these guys are crazy but to each their own!)

Any rate it's all about service. Just like in the contracting business. You provide a better service then your competition and you'll be more successful. Same goes with goolge. If someone else figures out how to give someone the information that they want when they want it then they will provide a better service then google.

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MEL

It’s true, I got the info from reliable sources.

You could assume that your website ranks high because when you search for your own website it ranks high.

It’s ranking high because you have visited your own website before and Google is taking that into account. Google knows if you have been to a particular website before so it is feeding that info back to you.

You can’t assume that your website is ranking high for everyone out there that is searching just because it ranks high when you search for it.

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MEL

festerized

Mel you bring up a good point, I have test your theory over the holidays.
Holidays are great because I’m over state visiting relatives.
I did some fundamental searching: my site still shows up the same as from my own PC
I tried long & short keywords, same results

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electricohio

Ahh Now I understand what you are talking about however your confusing a few things.

What you are referring to is something that sites like Amazon do based on previous searches or purchases. Yes they do bring up relevant information based on what you have looked for in the past.

Can I say google doesn't do something similar...no... but I highly doubt it.

There are many third party websites and tools that you can use to see what place you are ranking for certain keywords, if this theory had merit how do any of those systems work?

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zookies

I have found that when I am logged on to my google account, results are different then when I am logged out and clear the cache. Sometimes, I think I have really high rankings and I have to log out of my google account to make sure. Weird.

Also, I agree with Publisher about the general motive we garner when looking at search engine results. The advertising is advertising, and the organic results are where I look first. I have found in interviewing users, that mostly, only the in-experienced are fooled by the paid advertising. Most of us prioritize, we look past the paid stuff first, and only if we aren't seeing what we need do we start to scan the paid stuff.

On SEO, I get a lot of sales calls promising results. Some of them even employ the classic selling principles I run into at a home furnishing club membership drive, first comes the warm up act, then the handlers wear us down, then comes the closer. I tried one for a couple of months at a cost of over $ 2000, and then I wised up and concentrated on the content on my site. I never have enough time for all the things I could write about our company.

I did see something today about google putting sites with videos at the top. I don't like this myself, because I HATE SITES THAT MAKE NOISES AND START TALKING TO ME. But maybe that is just me. When I am sneaking a few minutes of personal time on the internet to to research the rash in my inner thigh, the last thing I want to do is enter a site that boldly asks, "Do you want to get rid of your body crabs?" (while I regrettably have my speakers at full volume)

I can say, on a retail level, that our phone number needed to be added to our site, we had embedded it in the header artwork. We found that to get the most out of our links to google maps, yahoo maps, mapquest, and their ties to the business directories, we had to put our phone number in bold letters ( in html, <b> is the bold tag, or <h1> is a header tag, and the search robots say - 'wow - that's important!) so that the spiders - the automated programs that index our websites for google, yahoo, etc. - properly affiliated our website with our business.

So when these SEO people call and promise results, I generally find they either want to do paid results, which I know how to do myself with google adwords, or they say they are going to provide a ton of links. In my experience, the two or three years I have spent writing content, and the bosses college room-mates sister with a really good knack for using dreamweaver was what served us best.

Speaking of dream-weaver, I am not very artistic, but I am good at the domain names and hosting and such. So when a guy with an auto shop asked me to recommend web design software, and I knew he had a little artistic talent, I told him to go out and buy dreamweaver. He re-designed his own web-site and did a remarkable job. I hosted him and pointed his domain, even helped him with content, but the graphics and artistic nature were all his and top notch. Something to think about.

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alanmoore

Organic makes up 75% of the actual space on any search query results page. Paid search takes up 25% so it should come as no surprise that MORE clicks go to the organic sites. Why? Because they take up MORE of the overall page space and "surfers" tend to gravitate to the content.

Here is the difference though that all contractors should take notice to.

Paid search CONVERTS more visitors to clients vs Organic to clients. Almost double the conversion rate to be exact.

WHY? Because those who are seriously looking for what you do, entered their search term in, hit Submit and tend to click on the very top ads 1-3 on the top or 4-6 on the top right. They dont tend to scroll down the page let alone click on page 2.

Food for thought.

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DKnafo

Do you have anything that backs that claim?

lbsrdi

Thanks for all of the great information. Really interesting stuff.

festerized

Organic results are gathered by search engines’ web crawlers and ranked according to relevance to the search terms. This relevance is calculated by criteria such as extent of keyword match and number of sites linking to that website. It is much more valuable to be listed highly in the organic results than in the PPC advertisements.
Organic results are listed based on the search engine’s measure of your relevance and quality, not your advertising dollars
Most people click the organic search results, not the paid advertisements, Organic Results (75% of Results, Paid (Pay Per Click) Results (25% of Clicks)
Research shows those who click on organic search results more often have a higher level of education

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