SEO Your Website: Be Really Careful Afraid

By Matt Vanrock

Optimizing our websites for organic search is kind of like the Holy Grail for many. If they could only get on the first page in Google all would be right with the world. It is probably this sentiment with so many small businesses, fighting to survive and actually make a few bucks, that attracts all the sharks to the proverbial ship wreck.

As someone who markets primarily online, I’m contacted too often by companies offering to SEO my site and they always start off with the same ploy. “I noticed your website is not optimized for (some lame key word), and we can get you on the first page for this keyword in 3 months”.

Apparently, this approach is working because it hasn’t changed much over the last couple years. If you get these messages and don’t quite have a handle on whether or not to even have a conversation with these folks, I can say emphatically, the answer is no… At least for the keyword phrases they send to you as bait.

The reason is the keywords they send are typically “non-factor” keywords. In other words, you can get on the first page for these key words and never get any substantial traffic going to your website. In other words, few people are typing these keywords into the Google search bar. The reason they can optimize you so easily for them is for that very reason. There is no competition for them.

Also, you have to look at your overall business geography in relation to the keyword phrases. If you are geographically bound, optimizing for a general keyword phrase can be a very expensive proposition given that if indeed you do show up on the first page, with a general keyword phrase, you might have an effective market of only a fraction of the hits. If you are licensed or can only do business in Iowa, a general keyword phrase will attract national hits. So, you get 1/50th of possible business (using number of states to make the math easy).

I’ll say one last word for companies approaching you for SEO. Many assume you are clueless about SEO, and will talk in terms of the process being highly technical and one for gurus such as them. This is would be untrue. SEO is really pretty straight forward. This is not a forum to discuss how, but it is important that if you do have some inkling to go with a company, that you ask some basic questions and lots of them. Always ask “who”, “what”, “where”, “when”, and “why”. How they answer these questions can determine this company’s value to you.

If you plan on making a go at SEO, don’t leap before you look. There are many factors and plenty of research that goes into making the right decision. When you take the plunge and hire it out, it will cost from thousands to tens of thousands of dollars to get to the first page for a strong keyword phrase. And if you go it yourself, it will take hundreds and even thousands of man hours.
This is no place to be hasty.

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About The Author
Learning intelligent mortgage marketing vie the internet is one of the most important mortgage leads generation skills to have in the coming years. As younger people enter the marketplace they are continually responding to marketing online over other forms of tratitional mortgage marketing.