26 Feb, 2009

Misunderstanding SEO

Posted by: Justin Parks In: SEO| Understanding SEO

People are confused and in other cases scared by SEO & SEO Experts and understandably so.

In essence, it is a complicated and analytical process covering a wide spectrum of disciplines and requirements. Most of these misunderstandings have developed because of these factors:

  • Technology develops at such a rate that it is difficult to stay on top of all the options.
  • There is a misconception that SEO is easy, that doing one or two things will work and when this does not happen frustration and disappointment prevail.
  • Very few people understand the full extent of what SEO involves and how the practice of SEO is actually implemented. A business simply wants effective results.
  • We all see how SEO is cheap, but when presented with the facts the reality becomes apparent that cheap SEO is a waste of money.
  • We see huge variations in prices for SEO and become suspicious at the super cheap and also the super expensive.
  • It is difficult for a business to understand the requirements of website design and development in relation to Search Engine Optimisation.
  • No one actually KNOWS categorically what SEO involves (Yes this sounds strange but I will expand upon this in another post).

Over the next few days I will be doing a series of posts expanding upon some of the areas involved in SEO and dispelling and clarifying these misconceptions.

Post 1: SEO Services and SEO Budgets
Post 2: SEO and Keyword Density
Post 3: Linking and Backlinking
Post 4: Writing content for your Visitor
Post 5: Is W3C validation worthwhile?
Post 6: Permalinks and Clean URLS
Post 7: Website Submission

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  • I totally agree Mississauga SEO and thanks for taking the time to share.

    Its totally true that people don't want to learn it, they should have an IDEA about it and have expectations managed however, congrats on realising and dealing with that so effectively.

    I think alot of us talk so much "SEO Speak" that we forget that the client isn't familiar with the terms or processes involved and frankly wont really care, they just want to be assured that the money they invest will be used to maximum effect, period.
  • Hi Justin,

    Good post I definitely resonate with it, so much so that I thought I would relate a kinda funny client story that illustrates the point.

    In order to build a client list, I offer a free one hour SEO consultation that I guarantee will provide insights that will allow a site owner to increase rankings on the SERPs.

    A lady took me up on that yesterday, so once we got on the phone we both fired up our browsers and went to her site. I confirmed with her that she wanted her site to generate leads for her business, not for ecommerce and we went from there.

    I talked for about 30 minutes with her taking notes and asking questions, sounding increasingly frustrated as she did so. All the stuff I was giving her were SEO basics (her site is pretty bad from an SEO perspective) and would help her rankings, but she seemed to be getting angry at me....

    I stopped and asked her if this was helping her or not and she replied that she had taken two pages of notes about stuff that she didn't understand and she just wanted her site to rank on page one of Google. She didn't want to have to LEARN this stuff....

    I calmed her down by telling her that I could handle the whole thing for her and we discussed pricing and payment terms. We both left the conversation happy, she now had a solution for an underperforming (badly!) web site and I had a new client.

    I relate the above story since it drove home to me how little people outside the SEO / internet industries actually know about SEO... stuff that is obvious to you or I takes hours to explain to a newbie and in the end, they just want results not details.

    That is the overall market pull for the SEO industry, people that want to rank high in the SERPs but have neither the time nor inclination to learn enough to do it themselves.

    I'm happy to help any of them with that!

    best regards,

    Jim Slinowsky

    PS - I did read your posting guidelines but Mississauga SEO is how I normally post on blogs.
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