The search engine optimization part of Online Marketing can be a fantastic way to get new customers from a very large catchment area. It can of course open up your product or service to the whole technological world but sometimes the methods of optimization suggested by the experts are hard to slot into your site while maintaining it’s honesty as a decent site for a client to read.
There is no doubt that reaching a good Search Engine Placement listing, in particular a page 1 entry will really enhance your company – as long as it is suitable for online sales or can stimulate online enquiries. Page 1 placement can be reached in a couple of different ways, search engine optimization or pay per click advertising. Pay per click advertising does not alter your website in any way, it simply advertises it in the top “paid” area of the search results if you pay the right price for the page 1 listing. With search engine optimization however this is not the way it works. When this works properly your site will sit on page 1 (assuming the optimization has been carried out well) in the organic segment of the search results, making sure that you achieve at least 50% more visits to your site.
The cost comparison between the two varies quite considerably, with pay per click soaking up a lot of budget, whereas optimization can cost approximately ?15 per keyword on page 1 irrespective of how many visitors that keyword brings in. It does however involve alterations to your website and this is where care needs to be taken. Part of the optimization process involves the coding behind the page and most of the process is made up of promoting the site in other areas of the net. These areas do not of course have an impact on what the customer sees when he gets to your site. However it is the alterations that need to be made to the client visible text that are a worry to some website owners and rightly so if they have not chosen well in their SEO Company associate.
They are often asked to ditch the website entirely and start again from the beginning as the website is simply not designed with optimization in mind. Of course this is unpalatable as a lot of time, effort and money has been invested and a loyal client base has already been built up. If not that then some optimization advice insists that the company flood the pages with multitudes of keywords, harming the flow of the text and so turning the customer away.
Neither of these ideas are necessarily good ones and a decent and skilful seo company would take into account the investment made in a website, the number of clients it already has and weigh that up against the potential benefits in beginning again. In that circumstance the business can make an informed choice about which road to take and if the decision is made to stick with the original site the Website Optimization Company should be able to alter their process to that. The second suggestion of flooding the text on the website with lots of albeit relevant keywords will work to a certain degree. If there are not too many to alert the search engine into banning the site, then yes, more customers will land there. However, if they are put off by the absurd nature of the copy they will then go somewhere else.
As long as you pick an seo company who is prepared for long term business with you, both of these pitfalls should be avoided and a sensible compromise reached.
