SEO: Dying, Dead, or None of the Above? by Foster Web Marketing
There has been some talk about SEO being dead or dying, but is that really the case?
Truth: While the number of “SEO firms” and “SEO experts”continue to multiply and the industry as a whole gains more exposure (and more people think that working at home doing SEO is their ticket to freedom), there will be, as a result, more naysayers. And in all reality, when it comes down to it, when every site is optimized with a high number of back links and good on-page content, what will it really come down to?
That one word we always preach about: more CONTENT.
SEO isn’t the process of manipulating search engines and other webmasters that your page should be number one for a specific keyword. It’s more like putting your brand and your site in the best position to gain the most exposure. When it really comes down to it, proper content development (and a little bit of online networking skills) is all a web site needs to succeed.
I always get a laugh when I see people bragging about what keywords they rank #1 for. “I rank number one for ‘guy sues Taco Bell in Winchester Virginia on August 27th 2008″. That’s great, but are you number one rankings converting?
Next time you’re in Google Analytics, see what keywords are being used to find your web site. Sometimes it’s comical.
For instance, this blog itself, despite being only a month or two old, ranks for some converting keywords like “different ways to market law services” and “attorney SEO blog”. But it also ranks for some pretty ridiculous ones, like “linking building firm” and “unknown twitter followers”. Big surprise that those last two have a 100% bounce rate, while the others have a lot lower BR with a higher amount of pages per visit.
Was it our strategy to rank for these? Of course not, but it’s just a positive benefit of continuously adding content and developing a website. And by the way, this blog is also one of the top sources of traffic to the Foster Web Marketing site as well. Another top referring site? Twitter.
When it really comes down to it, SEO “experts” who spend all of their time targeting specific keywords and building links to a website that only has a total of 10 pages are wasting their time. It’s true that there are some shady people in this industry who will stand there with their hands out and tell you this is the best way to “BE NUMBER ONE!”, but then what? You rank #1 for 10 keywords and are getting a few visits a day and hardly any leads, so what’s next in your online strategy after you just paid someone $5,000 to get you number one rankings in 6 months?
Web Strategy is a buzzword that I wish was used more. “Online reputation management”, “Online Public Relations Specialist”,
In response to the fact that many have gone from “SEO experts” to “social media experts” to whatever is next, that’s nothing different from any other industry. As users begin to evolve and find and use other websites, whether it be to find an attorney or share their favorite blog posts and news stories with others, the “experts” who will succeed are those who stay up on these latest trends and put their clients in the right position to best capture an audience and utilize these sites.
Explaining this to attorneys can be hard sometimes because many of them (that Foster Web Marketing deals with at least) are smaller firms or solo practitioners, which means seeing a return on investment is very important to them. “Why should I spend an hour or two a day on Twitter or Facebook when I’m not getting any clients?”.
Being passionate about what you’re marketing is important as well, but even more important is having knowledge of the product you are marketing. Are you really prepared to take on that local roofing company as a client when you know about as much about home improvement as your great aunt? Are you seriously considering taking on a women’s shoe retailer when you couldn’t write a 500 word article on anything relevant if your life depended on it?
The “typical SEO process”, taking a web page and changing its titles, inbound and external linking, and “optimizing the content” is dying. But developing a proper web strategy for a client (possessing knowledge about the product/brand, building a network of others in the industry, utilizing social media and other sites that are relevant to what’s being offered, and helping the client properly develop content and develop other sites such as blogs and wikis) while integrating SEO is not going anywhere for a while.
Posted Under: SEO tips for attorneys, Social Media for Attorneys Tags: SEO for attorneys, Social Media for Attorneys
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