SEO 101 - The dangers of not doing SEO

®
SEO 101:
The Dangers of Not Doing SEO

®
SEO 101: The Dangers of Not Doing SEO

SEO 101:
The Dangers of Not Doing SEO
Table of Contents:
3  Introduction

4  Reason #1: Your Competitors are Doing SEO and They’re Going to Beat You

4  Reason #2: Do SEO Right or Else You’ll Wish You Had

6  Reason #3: Pursuing the Wrong SEO Strategies Can Be a Waste of Resources

7  Conclusion

2

OPTIFY, INC. 710 2ND AVE, SUITE 840 SEATTLE, WA 98104 WWW.OPTIFY.NET 1-877-2-OPTIFY
© 2012 OPTIFY, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

®

Introduction
SEO has become a buzzword for website builders and digital marketers but is it all that important to the health
of your business? Won’t great services, products, and customers’ experiences win out in the end? That’s a nice
thought, but in the age of the digital marketplace it’s not realistic. It doesn’t matter how good a product you have
or how good a customer experience you can provide. If customers searching online for your products or services
don’t find you, you’ll never get the chance to prove your superiority. Hence, SEO is critical and because the In-
ternet is in flux, you must be vigilant in maintaining your site’s SEO. There are three main reasons why not doing
SEO, or not doing it well, might hurt your business. This white paper will present all three of them with concrete,
real-life examples.

What is SEO?
Whenever you enter a query in a search engine and hit ‘enter’ you receive a list of results containing that query
term. Users tend to visit websites at the top of this list as they perceive them to be most relevant. Have you ever
wondered why these websites rank better than others? It is because of a powerful web marketing technique called
Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

Why SEO?
The goal of an SEO Campaign is to increase organic traffic and conversions (e.g. Registered Users, Free Trials,
Purchase Decisions) on your website. SEO campaigns focus on optimizing content and keywords, improving
website page performance and extending the networks of inbound links traffic, all which work in concert to help
you achieve your business goals. A typical SEO campaign starts with a focused keyword analysis and the
establishment of a target keywords strategy. It aims to optimize new and existing website content and pages,
and includes ongoing traffic measurement and analysis.

Jumpstart your Search Engine Optimization Campaign in 15 Minutes:
»»Watch our SEO Webinar Optify Best Practices at:
http://www.optify.net/whitepapers/build-seo-campaign-in-15-minutes

Reason #1: Your Competitors are doing SEO and They’re Going to Beat You
Without SEO, a website can get lost amidst the multitudes of others competing for similar customers. With SEO,
companies can build a path for web-surfing customers direct to their digital storefront. A classic example of a
company that has benefited tremendously from using smart, effective SEO tactics is Amazon.com. If we look at
the online book sales industry as a whole, we can see Amazon has consistently managed to win at the SEO game,
which has translated into sales and revenues while putting their competitors at a severe disadvantage.

One blog illustrates just how successful Amazon.com has been when it comes to search engine results of popular
books. The post’s author, Bill Slawski, selected fiction books from the New York Time’s best seller list of 2010. In
January of 2011 he typed the names of the books and authors into Google and recorded the

Introduction 3


®

placement of the top three retailers
within the ensuing search results. The
Book Title Amazon Barnes Noble Borders
chart to your right is fairly indemnify- AMERICAN ASSASINS 1 3 36

ing of Amazon’s competition: Slawski BIG GIRL 1 2 30
makes a bold statement in titling his
CHANGES 1 95 71
blog, “Real Problem with Borders
Books is Search.” One month after EVERY LAST ONE 2 14 108
the post was written, Borders filed for
CRESCENT DAWNS 1 3 2
bankruptcy. Was poor SEO entirely
responsible for their undoing? Most BREATHLESS 1 6 161

definitely not. The introduction of GETTING TO HAPPY 3 10 67
ebooks was a huge game-changer and
INNOCENT 1 9 228
there were extraneous factors at play
which Slawski notes. But, as he points
out the fact that Border’s best-selling books weren’t being found by online consumers contributed to Border’s
downfall.

Just as we can’t attribute Borders’ demise entirely to SEO, nor can we attribute all of Amazon’s success to SEO.
That said, Amazon did buttress their SEO position with a few highly effective practices. They facilitated the
creation of great content on their product details pages, leveraged their recommendations software to drive site
cross-links, and built a massive inbound links program using link widgets through their Affiliate network pro-
gram. These good SEO practices gave them an advantage when customers were seeking a specific book title
online. While Borders filed for bankruptcy, Amazon’s sales and revenues continued to rise. If the book industry
is any indication, companies who make SEO a priority will have a definitive leg-up on those do not. You have to
decide, do you want to be an Amazon or a Borders? You should assume that even if you aren’t maximizing your
SEO, your competitors are, and they will make the decision for you.

Reason #2: Do SEO Right or Else You’ll Wish You Had
Of course, like everything, there is a wrong way and a right way to practice good SEO. The right ways, involve
strategies that are considered credible and will keep your company in the good graces of search engines.
The wrong ways, also known as “black hat” SEO strategies, are considered unethical and punishable by
search engines.

In the “old days” webmasters filled their meta-tags with brainstormed words. Often the beginning these pages
were sloppy and web surfers would leave these poorly constructed pages as quickly as they came, annoyed that
they had to weed through poor quality in order to find what they needed.

Recently, search engines have gotten smarter, which means increased pressure on web-masters and other
content providers to provide high quality content that uses the durable elements of SEO in a natural way that will
keep web surfers from floating away onto someone else’s page. Many of the tricks that were once commonplace
on the web are now considered “black hat” and will incite popular search engines such as Google and Bing to
drop your site in their rankings.

Reason #2: Do SEO Right or Else You’ll WIsh You Had 4


®

One company to be taught a “black hat” lesson was JC Penney. Penney’s strategy consisted of getting a high
number of inbound links to jcpenney.com with anchor text like “bedding,” “area rugs” and “skinny jeans” from
sites with no content or relevancy around those items. In doing so, they broke one of the cardinal rules of search
engine optimization, which is that the content you create, the pages you build, and the links you acquire should
be both natural and relevant. Although many companies use this strategy to drive traffic to their Web sites, it is an
extremely risky proposition. The more inclined you are to acquire content or links outside of the search engines’
guidelines, the higher the probability you will get penalized (e.g. dropped rankings) or worse – put into the Google
Sandbox, where an entire domain is removed from the search index.

“Black Hat” SEO: Tactics To Avoid

Link Farms
A link farm is a group of Web sites that all link to every other site in the group. The primary purpose of
linking schemes is to manipulate search engines, as opposed to adding actual content to the Web. This
behavior can get you dropped or banned entirely from Google.

Cloaking
Search engines look at all text contained on a given Web page and use it to determine the
relevance of that page to a given search query. What search engines can see and what a person can see
on a given Web page, however, are not always the same. Cloaking involves adding text that is the same
color as the background, thus making it invisible to the human eye, while keeping it visible
for search engines.

Doorway Pages and Redirects
Doorway pages are fake pages (a/k/a spider food) that are designed to cater to search algorithms,
but are never actually seen by users. Doorway pages, and their sister tactic, redirects, are used for the
sole purpose of tricking search engines to get a higher ranking. This practice is strictly forbidden by almost
all search engines, and the penalties for those who get caught are stiff.

Irrelevant links
Some sites will allow businesses to buy links with whatever anchor text they want, regardless of whether it
is relevant to what they are actually selling. Among other questionable practices, J. C. Penney bought links
from sites that had nothing whatsoever to do with bedding, area rugs, or skinny jeans.

When uncertain as to whether or not an SEO strategy will land you in hot water, ask yourself, “Would I be able
to defend my actions if asked?” If the answer to this question is unequivocally yes, then you’re fine. If not, steer
clear. Remember your brand is your biggest long-term asset. This is especially true online where the speed of
conversations is increasing at an exponential rate. If you want people to do business with you online, you need to
present your brand in the most favorable light possible which means employing only above-board, “white hat” SEO
practices.

Reason #2: Do SEO Right or Else You’ll Wish You Had 5


®

“White Hat” SEO: Durable Elements Basic Keyword Rules

Basic Keyword SEO Rules
» Identify your target keyword(s) for each page
» Use the target keyword in the page name/URL
» Use the target keyword in the first four words of your title tag
» Keep your title tag to less than 65 characters and make it unique
» Use a single H1 style tag for your page headline
» Include your target keyword in the H1 tag
» Make sure the body copy includes the target keyword
» Write a unique, compelling meta description that includes the focus keywords
» Create a network of cross-linked pages wherever target keywords are used
» Use alt-text and descriptive file names for your images

Inbound Quality Links
Keep building your inbound links (using white hat practices!) through content syndication and promotions,
create unique content that people would want to reference and link to, and build relationship with other
web writers, so they will be aware of your content.

Authority
Authority signals determine how Google will treat a domain and an inbound link from a different domain
or a social signal (retweet, link within a tweet, Like) for a specific page in its ranking considerations.
Build your authority by creating unique content and follow white-hat practices. Build relationships with
other sites of authority and pursue links from them, as it will boost your authority.

User Experience
Keep your site updated, measure your bounce rate and page load speed and create clear alignment
between the keywords you target, your content and the experience you’re creating for your visitors.

Read more about the durable elements of SEO

Reason #3: Pursuing the Wrong SEO Strategies Can Be a Waste of
Resources
Content serves as a way to draw people to your site—great content can spread far and wide drawing new visitors
to your site, improving your SEO and expanding your lead generation potential. We’ve established that like
Amazon you’d be wise to pursue SEO in order to stay ahead or at the very least, abreast of your competition. You’d
be even wiser to employ sound “white hat” SEO practices so that your site and brand don’t get penalized. Last,
but not least, when pursuing these kosher practices, be sure you are getting good advice. Poor advice might not
land you in hot-water like “black hat” tactics, but it can cause you to spend time and energy on SEO strategies
that don’t yield results.

Reason #3: Pursuing the Wrong SEO Strategies Can Be a Waste of Resources 6


®

Here’s a great example of misleading SEO advice, which at first glance seems reasonable, but according to experts
is irrelevant. In this blog post webmaster Jake Ludington claims the latest version of Google was penalizing his
site for sending out an email newsletter with a large number of non-active followers. In his advice to other web-
masters, Ludington recommends they scrub their email distribution lists and pull any “dead” subscribers in order
to improve their rankings. According to Matt Cutts, the head of Google’s Webspam team, Ludington’s site was
marked manually as spam for prior bad link building practices and its drop in the rankings had “nothing to do with
[his] site’s email reputation.” Additional SEO experts concur that “Email marketing does not impact your rankings
generally.”Let’s say, like some of his blog followers, you were to follow Ludington’s SEO advice without realizing it
was erroneous. If so, your energies would be misspent. You’d be wasting valuable time on a tactic that would have
no effect on your SEO results. Granted, no one will fault you for scrubbing your email distribution list. You won’t be
penalized. But, if you have limited resources to spend specifically on SEO improvements, you will be squandering
them. The lesson? SEO “advisors” are a dime a dozen but actual experts, who have data to back up their claims,
are much harder to come by. If SEO is not your core competency, you’d be wise to seek out resources who
have quantifiable, proven results.

Conclusion
SEO may seem like an aside, which you’d prefer not to have to spend time or resources on. However, not optimiz-
ing your site for search engines will put you at a competitive disadvantage. While you may not need a dedicated
SEO specialist on staff, you do need to know the differences between “white hat” and “black hat” strategies and
only pursue the ones that are viewed as legitimate. If not, you risk tarnishing your search results and your brand
integrity. Finally, when setting out to employ SEO and make changes to your site, be sure to make moves ground-
ed in quantifiable research and results. If you don’t know what changes will yield real results, seek out credible
experts that will. SEO is an online marketing strategy that companies should pursue wholeheartedly, but with a
conservative approach to methodology.

Conclusion 7


®

About Optify

Optify delivers an integrated top-of-the-funnel solution for marketers responsible for fuelling their company’s
growth. Optify helps B2B marketers reach more buyers and generate more demand for their products or services
month-after-month. The Optify Inbound Marketing Software Suite brings together the enterprise-class SEO and
social marketing tools that marketers need to increase awareness of their business, influence buyers across social
networks, and engage with prospects at the earliest point of their buyer’s journey.

Optify’s solution includes

Inbound Demand: create a sustainable flow of inbound leads into your
marketing funnel with enterprise-class SEO and social marketing.

Sales Enablement: help sales reach prospects and engage with them INBOUND DEMAND
early in the sales process with visitor intelligence and prospect alerts. Enterprise-class SEO and
social marketing to reach
Tracking Analytics: get more of the prospects you want with full in- more buyers and generate
more leads.
sight into what influences your buyers and the path they take to find and
evaluate you during their research process.

Optify offers a fully-featured free trial; learn more at www.optify.net

SALES ENABLEMENT

Visitor intelligence and
prospect alerts help sales
reach prospects while
they’re hot.

TRACKING ANALYTICS

Insight into what
influences your buyers
so you can get more
buyers into your funnel.

About Optify 8


SEO 101 - The dangers of not doing SEO

Recommandé

Recommandé

Contenu connexe

Tendances

Tendances (19)

Similaire à SEO 101 - The dangers of not doing SEO

Similaire à SEO 101 - The dangers of not doing SEO (20)

Plus de BullsEye Internet Marketing

Plus de BullsEye Internet Marketing (20)

SEO 101 - The dangers of not doing SEO