Search Engine Marketing Hype Killing Small Businesses
Article by john
k about the first thingyou ever heard about marketing a website on the web. 99% of the timethe first words anyone ever hears are search engine marketing. Or somesemblance of the phrase.
And from that point on, the hammering of misinformation never letsup. You are led to believe that your business will die a terrible deathwithout the search engines. You are led to believe that only people whocan guide you through the mine field of search engine optimization arethe SEO experts.
Also you are told time and again that the only way to marketonline PERIOD is through the search engines. You are conditioned overtime to focus most, if not all, of your efforts on tricking the searchengines into liking your site above all your competitors for searchterms where there can be only one.
Well, heres a wake up call: The vast majority of small businessstartups will never have the resources, time, or know-how to turn anidea into a profitable online business focusing only on search engines.
Just look at the deluge of information there is out there onGoogle and how to rank well with them. People are picking apart theirranking patent application right now to try an glean a websitepromotion strategy based upon what Google reveals in their applicationabout their ranking system.
Is this information valuable to a small business wanting to sellits wares to a whole market rather than just the part of that marketwhich uses one of the big search engines?
It is in extreme moderation, yes. In a well balanced marketingcampaign that focuses on many ways to bring in targeted traffic, searchengine marketing has its place. You do what you can, and you move on toall the other ways there are to promote your business.
Yet, so many people are falling victim to the gleam and glitter ofsearch engine riches being pushed on them by SEO firms and peopleselling search engine how-to manuals.
It is not long before a new business finds itself wrapped up in a game where the only winners are the geeks and deep pockets.
If you do not fall into either of those categories, your businessis doomed from the start if you hop right off the porch to play withthose big dogs.
But I hired a big dog SEO firm to make my business stand out and compete with the geeks in my market niche.
More power to you. In actuality, unfortunately, you probably justhired a teenager from India with an internet connection in his parentshouse. Most small business start ups cannot come close to affording amajor SEO firm. They charge corporate-level premiums to be able toaccess their services.
Everyone else in the SEO world is practically working out of their garage in comparison.
Scared yet? You dont have to be as long as you are spreading yourmarketing around to the non-search engine traffic you should begetting.
Writing articles and syndicating them in your market is a directtraffic strategy that has nothing to do with search engines. Exceptthat search engines find your site through those links as well. But youshould be doing it solely for DIRECT TRAFFIC from readers on othersites and taking the search engine traffic boost as mere icing on thecake.
You see, as people spam the search engines, they must adjust howthey rank sites in order to compensate. This means a lot of good sitestake a hit when Google changes the way it ranks sites.
You could have done everything completely on the up and up andgotten dropped in the engines because they made a new rule thateveryone who registers their domains only for one year is a possiblespammer. There goes your legit site. Hope you werent planning on searchengine traffic for your SOLE source of traffic.
Can you see how dangerous it is to get bitten by the search enginebug? YES you can propel your business overnight from a profitless deadzone to a glamorous profit machine with one top ranking.
Of course that is possible. It is not likely.
People who are turning their small online businesses into successstories are doing one thing across the board: Conducting amulti-faceted marketing campaign that includes search engines alongwith a good mix of other non-search engine marketing such as reciprocaland non-reciprocal linking tactics too numerous to mention here.
If you want long-term success online, you must be willing to lookpast all the sleeze merchants selling you dreams of riches throughsearch engine marketing.
Search engines care about one thing: Their own hides. You shouldcare more about your hide than anything else and use a well-planned,disciplined marketing strategy that puts search engines in their place.Not in the epicenter of your marketing campaign, but just another toolin your toolbox for bringing in targeted traffic.
Do this, and you will escape the fate of thousands of startupsthis year who will realize too late that they hung their hopes on thewrong marketing strategy as their engine for profits.
Copyright 2005 Jack Humphrey
Jack Humphrey explains his proven marketing strategies in the allnew Power Linking 2005 at http://power-linking-profits.com Jack isproudly NOT a search engine expert
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