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09.23.09 Using SEO To Its Fullest Potential  By
Stoney deGeyter When performing SEO on a site there are literally an endless number tactics, strategies, changes and combinations that can be implemented to help you achieve search engine rankings. Google alone analyzes hundreds of different factors, all to varying degrees, when determining how it ranks pages in the SERPs. Once you get outside the realm of looking only at achieving search engine rankings, a near infinity of factors come into play as you look for ways to improve traffic, draw targeted visitors and improve conversion rates. The interesting thing about SEO, and even website marketing as a whole, is that making a change or two here or there may not make much, if any, difference. But it's the combination of changes that often total up to create a meaningful result. Sometimes its about hitting the right combination of changes, other times it's just a matter of changing a few things that you know tend to work time after time. Successful SEO requires a tremendous investment of time. To say that SEO is a full time job is a vast understatement. One can spend weeks or months dedicated to learning and employing just the more common aspects of SEO. Add to that the learning curve in credible implementation of copywriting, link building, usability testing, data analysis, and the myriad of social networking opportunities that seem to spring up over night, and you can see why today's SEO is not just one, but several, full time jobs! Get into the investment mindset Because of the overwhelming number of options SEO presents, many small business are like a dear caught in the headlights. They don't know where to begin or even how to start the process of finding some help. Hiring a good consultant or firm for a short-term SEO campaign can cost more than a small business owner has in their total yearly marketing budget. On the other hand, to attempt to perform optimization in house, one finds that there is often an insufficient amount of time available for both that and running the business effectively. There are only so many hours in the day! The small business owner has three options: Do it yourself, hire someone to do it, or hire someone to teach them how to do it. The path chosen is most often dictated by money and time. Money: If the small business has the money, the route most often chosen is hire someone to perform the SEO for them. This frees up the time needed for the business owner to run the business. The cost of SEO should not be considered without a full understanding the value behind the work being performed. Such value should be determined by the quality of the information gathered, the skill of the person implementing the information and the ability of the implementation to achieve positive results. Paying more does not necessarily mean that you get more value. On the other hand, rarely can you find great value on the cheap. It's important to ensure that you're paying only for what is necessary. There are a lot of components to SEO, but not all of them will be needed at any particular time, if at all. The most successful SEO campaigns utilize various forms of online marketing, but success itself is not determined merely by doing everything possible. Success comes from doing the right things at the right time in the right way. If you can determine what avenues of SEO need to be pursued for your campaign, then you'll ultimately reduce the "cost" involved in getting results. Time: Continue reading this article. About the Author: Stoney deGeyter is president of Pole Position Marketing (www.PolePositionMarketing.com), a search engine optimization / marketing firm providing SEO and website marketing services since 1998. Stoney is also a part-time instructor at Truckee Meadows Community College, as well as a moderator in the Small Business Ideas Forum. He is the author of his E-Marketing Performance eBook and contributes daily to the E-Marketing Performance (www.eMarketingPerformance.com) marketing blog. |
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