January 28, 2006
If you think about it for a moment, having a top search engine ranking has become the holy grail of internet marketing.
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Some people who are so convinced of this respond in two different ways. One is that they simply despair over it and believe that they will be unable to compete because they are finding it impossible to break into the top rankings. The second response I have seen is that it becomes so much of an obsession that they spend more time doing this than building the rest of their business or incorporating other excellent marketing strategies.
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Let’s face it, unless you are in a super small niche that only will produce a few results no matter what, you will struggle to get yourself on the first page of the results, let alone the top ten.
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You may think that I am wrong on this, but I know it from experience and also from a lot of my colleagues who say that same thing has occurred in their online experience. How can you ever be successful if you think that the only way you will be would be to land in the top ten of the search engine rankings? Does the eleventh business always fail? No! Neither will you. Don’t let this be one of the determining factors in your decision to start or continue an online business.a
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One of my fellow online marketers told me recently that they had landed at the top of a very hot market in the search engine rankings. How much traffic did they get as a result? Under 500 a month. And this marketer has hundreds of thousands of visitors a month on average.
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Every marketing strategy, no matter if it’s online or off does not do well by itself. This includes search engines also. The secret is that all successful marketing works when used in multiple formats, not as stand alone strategies. You will find that using various strategies will work far better than search engine position. So don’t let this be a discouragement or obsession in your marketing plans.
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This is going to be the last time I say what I am about to say for awhile on this blog: The key ingredient to marketing, is not the technique used, it’s the permeating of your plan and strategy with your USP. That is your only chance at success. Make sure you read what I said and do it! Once you are filled with this, your marketing plan will not be so intimidating or narrow in focus, but consistently followed and applied to give you the success you seek for.
comments
Good advice. But along with SEO comes website usability. More than half of visitors leave websites because of various usability problems. Yes, incorporate USP and keywords into the website, but if users have difficulty with your website, there are gone, with only 35% returning to try again.
Posted by: Stuart | January 31, 2006 05:33 PM | Permalink to Comment
Great observation Stuart. Your weren't reading my mind were you. When I got your comment, I was writing another post for the managersrealm.com blog I also write for here. I was dealing with that very issue in reference to managing developers specifically.
One of the great complaints I have heard from all my business colleagues has been what you have said. There is this big disconnect between developers' emphasis upon design over functionability.
Read those posts and let me know what you think.
Posted by: Anonymous | January 31, 2006 07:16 PM | Permalink to Comment