I find it ironic that SEO firms are drawing moralistic lines in the sand. As I have stated my controversial opinion here before, SEO is bunk. “White Hat”, “Black Hat”, whatever, it is bunk.
A bold statement that is sure to anger many here as it has in the past.
While certain techniques will boost you in the results for this or that search engine, the implied promise of many SEO firms is to increase traffic to your site with the subsequent implication that this will increase your business. It really doesn’t matter how much traffic you get to your site, if the visitors don’t buy and don’t return.
On top of that, the little known fact that most visitors do not find your site via a search engine. Don’t get me wrong, being number one for a generic search term is a good thing. However, it is not the only thing.
I also like to point out that doing a search for “search engine optimization” (minus the quotes) returns over 7 million hits in Google. Close to the top in both Google and Yahoo is seoinc.com. So, I really see only one clear winner as far as SEO firms are concerned. What’s their “secret”? Spam and links. Yep. The term “search engine optimization” is found about 64 times in their source code for their Home page alone and there are 18,000 sites linking to them.
However, there are also other sites that are high in the results that are completely the opposite of this. My favorite real-world example is:
http://www.adiamondisforever.com/
It’s up there for the terms “diamond” and “diamond ring” (minus the quotes). Yet, look at their source code. It’s awful! Plus, there is no spam. What’s their secret? Links. Lots of links pointing to their site.
So, both of these unrelated, high placing sites have one thing in common: links. Adding links to other sites pointing to your site does not “optimize” your site. It doesn’t optimize the search engines. Maybe “PR” shouldn’t stand for page rank at all. Maybe it would be more up front for “popularity rank.”
So, what does a company like seoinc.com offer? You pay them a lot of money and they will add you to Yahoo’s express inclusion. Well, that’s something you can do yourself. They offer PPC. Again, something you can do yourself. They offer keyword research. You have to be a complete moron not to be able to figure out what keywords are used to find your type of business. They offer reciprocal linking. Again, something you can do yourself.
Outside of using the keywords, which is something that a site built with the visitor in mind should be doing anyway, little of what they offer “optimizes” your site.
All in all, your money would be better invested on producing a quality web site and traditional marketing/advertising. Like dieting, there is no magic pill no matter how much you are promised nor how much you believe or want to believe.
Dan Prinzing, a.k.a. DrTandem, is a web page designer in Encinitas, CA. He specializes in building sites for small businesses. Offering free critiques as time permits as well as information for the novice webmaster. You can visit his site at http://www.DrTandem.com.
