dustin.net

Writing by Nick Stamoulis on Saturday, November 14, 2009

Over the last few years the search engine optimization industry has really taken the business community by storm. Some understand the process, some don’t have a clue and many are still left scratching their heads wondering what it really is and how it can help their business. The industry has become tougher and tougher over the years because there doesn’t seem to be any industry standards in place on how to get from point A to point B making the education process challenging. There are however some things that all search engine optimization people (yes, this includes all SEO experts, consultants, firms, agencies and wanna be SEOs) should never do. This list below may seem like common sense or business 101, but I felt it was time for me to write a post to the SEO industry folks who read this blog on a regular basis!

1. Beat an Effort into the Ground: Over the years we have found things that work and things that don’t work. The worst thing someone can do is to find that one little technique and beat it into the ground over and over. This is not marketing, just manipulation of search results. In today’s market place it takes a variety of efforts at the same time to bring an online marketing campaign together.
2. Focus on Just Rankings: Yes rankings are important but rankings alone don’t grow a business successfully. It is important to focus on marketing a business or website for the sake of growing the business and brand naturally. The goal of every website is to grow as a business should. There are many different ways to build a business online and rankings are just one ingredient. Potential customers and clients need to see you in multiple areas before they actually make that purchase.
3. Blowing Off Clients: You never want to blow off clients for any reason. If you anticipate a not so nice phone call it doesn’t matter. Communication in this industry is very important. Things change very quickly and easily in the internet marketing industry so if you are leaving your clients in the dark you could find yourself without clients very quickly.
4. Be Sneaky: SEO is not a secret sauce anymore. Many industry people have had a hard time revealing their efforts to clients leaving a certain mysterious undertone throughout the entire industry making things worse for everyone. It is not rocket science. Simply put it is quality proactive marketing that ultimately leads to your website being an authority figure in the search engines and as a result achieving high rankings in search results.
5. Give Guarantees: Any established search engine optimization expert will tell you that you cannot give guarantees of rankings in this industry. Things change sometimes over night and at the end of the day nobody has control over the search engines and how they behave except for the search engines themselves. Giving guarantees to people and not following through, which happens very often, only creates jaded businesses and business owners leaving a tainted image of the entire industry in the eyes of those clients.