Feb/09
Search engine optimization is a topic that people ask me about literally each and every day. To be completely honest… it often pains me when I speak to clients about it. I’ll tell you why.
For those of you who know me, you know that I’ve been involved in search engine marketing for nearly 10 years now and I’m a total SEO junkie. Seeing how I’m only 26, the search engine game has been a huge part of my adult life.
The part that haunts me is how so many business/website owners have been sold on the idea that search engine optimization is some top secret formula that only true professionals can master. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not the business/website owners’ fault, it’s simply the same old jargon filled non-sense they’ve been sold on, by shiny shoe’d ‘know it alls’ in suits.
Search engine optimization isn’t about tricking search engines into ranking your website at the top of their listings, it’s about delivering relevant, well-presented content to search engines in the manner in which they prefer… period.
We all know that Google is the powerhouse search engine, and optimizing your website for Google is clearly the way to go. What many of these ‘know-it-alls’ won’t tell you, is that Google provides you with virtually all the tools you need to properly structure and optimize your website for their algorythym. I’m not saying that getting to the top of search engines is easy, the fact is it’s not. Any SEO company that promises you top rankings in search engines such as Google is simply lying to you. Nobody has that type of control over Google’s rankings.
Search engine optimization is a full-time job. It’s not something that is simply done once and forgotten about. It’s an on-going process. Whether it’s increasing your rankings in major search engines, or maintaining your current high rankings, the optimization process should be considered an integral part of your marketing efforts.
I’ll leave you with one piece of advice. If you’re interested in search engine optimization for your website, research it a little bit and familiarize yourself with the basic guidelines. There is nothing worse than going in blind.
A bad SEO experience can be fatally damaging to your website’s future exposure in search engines.