Here’s the breakdown of visits to each of the top ten search results in Google:

Why is this significant? Google offers a keyword research tool popularly called the Google Adwords External Keyword Tool. This tool will estimate how many searches are performed for each phrase you may optimize a page for on your site.

For Example

In other words, if you sold racing bikes, you would perform a search that looks something like this. I entered in two phrases: racing bikes, and racing bicycles. Google offers an estimate of global monthly and national searches for those and related keywords.

Now it’s time to do the math. Keeping in mind that Google’s only offering estimates, we can at least get a picture of what kind of traffic we could expect should we achieve Page 1 rankings for these terms.

Take a Deeper Look

If 12,100 people around the world are monthly searching for road racing bicycles, then I know approximately how many visitors I would get if my website ranks #1 for that term. 18.2% of 12,100 is 2,202. So if a page of my site ranks #1 on Google for that term, I will expect somewhere in the ballpark of 2,202 visits per month.

If I am doing my due diligence, I can now go through all the many keyword phrases and subsets of phrases to see what kind of traffic each will drive. This gives me a preliminary summary model of my marketing efforts. If I get 2,202 monthly Google-referred visitors and 3% convert into paying customers, then I have approximately 66 monthly sales for my efforts. Depending on how much it cost me to arrive at the #1 position on Google, I may or may not have just made a ton of money.

The conversion rate on-site will of course vary for each website and fluctuate based on successful A/B testing. The smallest design or content changes can dramatically improve your conversion rate, but you’ll never know until you experiment.

Putting It All Together

Now that you have that information, you can at least make an informed judgment call on which terms to target and how much to spend.

Obviously, all of the numbers gathered through research are estimates and could be wildly off. But if you’re hesitant to spend money on SEO because you’re not sure why it’s so important, this should give you some insight into the possibilities.

Approaching SEO

The importance of SEO is to have established goals. Did I mention reasonable goals? While we don’t have time to go into it today, you can’t get #1 rankings for a few hundred dollars (or maybe even a few thousand dollars) per month. Your competition may have hundreds or thousands more links than you. It will take hard work and considerable resources to accomplish your goals.

A seasoned SEO Specialist should be able to tell you when your expectations are completely unreasonable. There’s no hard and fast rule on how much it will take to reach the #1 spot. There are a thousand modified approaches to improving your rankings, and each one will have differing levels of success at different rates of time.

The Moral of the Story

If nothing else, the purpose of this post is to make it clear that there is SOLID traffic and potential business out there that you’re letting someone else have when you don’t pursue SEO with gusto.

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The Limitations

As the name implies, SERM is limited to search results. To be more precise, it’s usually limited to page one of search engine results. I’ve consulted for a company, for example, whose primary business model is to sell stakes in various investment opportunities. This company has had negative search result appear on page one every time anyone searches for the CEO’s name in Google, Yahoo, Ask, or Bing. Now, it’s not my job to prove his innocence, though I strongly believe he was an innocent party involved in what the negative result claims. But he came to me to see what I could do about pushing that negative result back to page two by any means necessary.

The Purpose

The idea here is that when selling investments or any high dollar item, people are more likely to do some background research on their own before making the plunge. And if, in the course of a simple Google search, a person were to find a highly suspicious accusation or complaint against a leader or leaders of the company, consumer confidence drops to zero. Hence, bad search results lead to tarnished reputations and lost profits.

By promoting other positive pages and mentions until they rank higher than the negative mention(s), one could “push” the negative results back to page two or even page three, depending on the scope of the engagement.

The Assumption

The assumption here is that people only look at page one of search results (statistically proven). But if you think that sweeping the problem under the rug solves the problem, think again. There are dozens of ways people find information, and hiding negative results leaves the backdoor wide open.

What if the negative comment was made on a blog? Readers can find that post or comment through RSS feeds, internal links, external links, blog directories, social media promotion, etc.

On a forum? People looking for topic specific forums will encounter negative comments on a regular basis before ever encountering a negative search engine result. Forum members may be well versed on your company’s or employee’s soiled reputation and may share what they know both online and off.

In other searches? If I’m looking for research on a type of machine and it leads me to results that also mention something negative about a brand, person, or product, I will be influenced by what I’ve read. It won’t matter that I was looking for x. I also got y and z. My first impression of Brand Y or Employee Z was negative. It’s passive search influence, but it’s very real.

The Answer

As with all incomplete marketing and PR initiatives, the problem begins with a lack of vision, which is the result of a lack of understanding the situation and its consequences. SERM by itself solves nothing. It’s serves as a PR band aid on a gaping wound. Most people might not see the wound, but those who do will see the festering mess that continues to go unaddressed over time.

The answer is to develop a more robust internet reputation management strategy. When I say “more robust strategy”, I’m not tossing out SERM as a bad idea. Not at all. But if you’re dying of poison and only take some Advil, it’s no fault of the Advil that you still die. Advil is a painkiller. Not a detoxifier. Cringe at the dollar signs if you must, but do what it takes to monitor, manage, and build your reputation as though your business depends on it because, well, it does.

SERM is a superficial face-saving strategy, but not a solution. It is SEO for pages other than your primary site in the hopes of promoting 10 positive results to encompass page one of search results for products, people’s names, and other trademarked items. Combine SERM with other best practice ORM strategies and you’ll find that instead of just whitewashing your brand, you can actually strenghten brand perception and customer loyalty. Like everything in business, you get out of it what you put in.

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What does that mean?

SEO is the popular acronym used for web marketing strategies employed to draw more visits to a particular website. I’ll break it down very simply and in plain English, and then provide additional resources for you to read further on the subject.

Back in the 90′s designing websites in FLASH became all the rage, because of the cool little tricks you could make your website do. The problem was that search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN, and Ask (back then Lycos, AlltheWeb, and others) couldn’t read the text contained within the FLASH files in order to index / archive them. All the search engine could see was a FLASH file, and so it moved on, not able to share any information from that website with readers who might be interested in that topic.

Not all sites were built in FLASH, but those that did had the biggest challenge ahead of them. Webmasters faced the reality that an attractive looking website did not guarantee anyone could find it on the Web to benefit from it. The question then became HOW to help people find websites offering information that was relevant to their questions, wants, and needs. Search engines were doing what they could to help Internet users find information, but website owners had to take matters into their own hands in order to compete with other websites who might show up in search results ahead of them.

Through much speculation, testing, analysis, and discuss, SEO professionals emerged with an understanding of how to help any website earn better rankings from search engines. These professionals networked like crazy and began offering their services to business owners looking to get ahead of the curve.

If you have realized that your website isn’t getting enough visitors and ultimately sales/conversions, SEO is an ideal place to start. You already have a website in this hypothetical, so you need a professional consultant to review your site, your web analytics (data about where your visitors come from and their behavior on your site), and your competition, who will then make a list of initial recommendations for you to discuss and implement on your website to begin optimizing your site.

To compete in most industries, you will need monthly search engine optimization consulting and implementation. There is no one-time fix. There are dozens of strategies for increasing your bottom line via your website, and you owe it to your business to take this process seriously.

Redesigning and redeveloping your website may very well be necessary to reach your site’s potential. Your budget will obviously play a major role in the execution of this possibility, but PLEASE know that investing in a well-built and well-designed website is essential to online success. There is no way around that. You are competing with many other companies and individuals. The only way to win is to provide killer content in an attractive and easy-to-use format that people enjoy. If customers enjoy using your website, they will likely revisit again later.

As always, my virtual door is open to answer your questions or to help steer you in the right direction. I DO offer SEO services personally, but my schedule is very limited and I do not often accept new engagements. I CAN, however, recommend very reliable experts to you should you need SEO and I do not have the time available to handle it myself.

For more background reading on SEO, visit these two pages:

Why You Need to Know SEO Basics, Even if You Outsource, by Jessica Bowman

Beginner’s Guide to SEO, by SEOMoz

I will likely offer more SEO tips and explanations for beginners in the future. For now, your primary objectives are to educate yourself and hire a competent professional. All sites listed in the column to the right are excellent information resources as well.

Best to you and yours.

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Some companies have trouble allocating funds to a marketing strategy they’ve never tried before. That’s why it’s important to find an agency who will review your website, listen to your budget constraints, and at least help you get started.

Regardless of the number of pages on your site, you don’t have to optimize every page at once. You can start with optimizing twenty pages. Consider it a litmus test. If you’ve chosen a quality agency, they should be able to show you return on your investment within a few months at a very reasonable price. Once you’ve seen how your SEO marketing dollars can convert, you’ll be ready to increase your investment in order to optimize your site further. Step by step, you’ll see that you’re gaining traffic and converting (getting the desired result from) more visitors, and that ultimately leads to success.

We know that not every company in today’s culture is perfectly branded. We know that your business may not be the elite provider of your industry’s service or product. You still have a quality product or service to offer, and increased exposure to your target audience will grant you this. Whether you’re the leading home furniture manufacturer and distributor or a Dallas liposculpture clinic, you can benefit from some level of web site SEO optimization.

If you have any questions about search marketing and optimization, let us know.

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SEO isn’t like mathematics – the principles are not universal or timeless. They shift, morph, and change over time. How do we know this? Because search engines like Google and Yahoo! are updating their algorithms and methods for ranking individual terms based on experience, complaints, and mistakes. Google is constantly evolving. Not nearly as quickly as some would like to think (this isn’t anywhere near artificial intelligence), yet still faster than many SEO companies and independents can keep up.

Here are 5 signs that you’re dealing with an SEO. If the person or agency you’re dealing with makes these statements, they do NOT understand up to date best practices.

5 Outdated and Stone Age Ideas for SEO:

#1 Search Engine Submissions
This should go without saying. DO NOT PAY ANYONE TO SUBMIT YOUR SITE TO SEARCH ENGINES! This is a scam or an idiot. Either way, save yourself some time and money and move on. Any SEO worth a grain of salt doesn’t waste money on search engine submissions. I’ve discussed this in another post, so I won’t belabor the point.

A second issue here is the number of search engines these scammers supposedly submit to. There is ABSOLUTELY no need to submit to 20 search engines, much less 200. In this day and age, you do not need to even think about more than four search engines, and that’s pushing it. The only four worth considering at this point in time are Google, Yahoo!, MSN Live, and Ask. You’ll get more traffic from a directory like Business.com than the rest of those less popular search engines (and probably more than Ask also).

#2 Google Sandbox
The age of the Google Sandbox is over. Deal with it. Yes, brand new websites used to not exist on search results for six months or so. It’s very true. This happened to my first website. It suddenly appeared after a few months (yet still had no backlinks). The key phrase here is “used to.” With the mad blog craze and the dependency on search to deliver timely news results, Google has since altered its algorithm to include new sites and content almost immediately. This is part of Google’s attempt to deliver timely and accurate results for up to the minute news.

#3 Reciprocal Linking
Dozens of companies posing as professional SEO agencies are pushing reciprocal linking or “link swapping” on ignorant webmasters and marketing managers. This is an outdated process. Google learned how to tell the difference between reciprocal and one way links and at some point penalizes sites for participating in swapping links. Just as with link buying, Google disapproves of any practice that muddies the waters of its link-based algorithm. While there are supposedly hundreds of factors contributing to the ultimate ranking of results, links have always been and always will be a very important factor in determining rank.

Each link pointing to an external web page is supposed to be a statement of importance and relevance by the person adding the link. Throw in link swapping and links become worthless. Suddenly everyone can have as many links as they want. All they have to do is trade, thus rendering Google’s algorithm mostly useless.

#4 Google Pagerank
Anyone can install the Google Pagerank add-on for Firefox or Google “page rank checker” and find 10 different sites that will tell you your site’s pagerank. Google knows this, and that’s why higher Pagerank does not equal better rankings. There are simply too many factors used to determine search rankings for obsessing over pagerank to be worthwhile.

#5 Ranking Reports
If a monthly ranking report is all you have to show for your SEO dollars, something could be wrong. Ranking reports aren’t bad, of course, and neither are they meaningless. But they are growing increasingly irrelevant in today’s online culture. Ranking reports are beneficial primarily in tandem with analytics reporting and interpretation. After all, though we may tend to obsess over our rankings, we’re really after the traffic, right? And if there’s a better way to drive traffic to a particular page or site, wouldn’t you rather know than throw money at something less effective?

Example: some websites really don’t need much organic SEO work done unless new content is created. If your site contains 10 pages or less, you can only target so many popular phrases. The rest go untargeted because you lack the content to successfully go after any more. In this case, your money is better spent on copywriting, blogging, and PR.

Another example is this one company that sells satellite photo services for large land owners as a security measure. This company’s marketing manager was happy with the traffic received on most pages, and wasn’t willing to spend any more on SEO. Because his target audience is so small, he found other ways to reach them effectively. There is a certain website where his type of audience goes, and he simply pays for a banner ad at the top of the homepage. This simple technique drives excellent leads to his  website. Again, not a solution for everyone, but experimentation CAN pay off.

Well, there you have it. As always, you can ask any question you have and I’ll do my best to deliver a quick and complete reply. And if you know of other stone age practices you want to call to our attention, feel free to add them in the comments section.

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