Recently a client contacted me with a question – “How can I do SEO on my website?” They’d been contacted by one of the many snake oil salesmen lurking around the internet, who’d promised the world for (of course) an exorbitant ongoing monthly fee.
I was happy to advise the client – “You’re already doing it!”
First – what is SEO?
Well, there’s SEO, and then there’s SEM, and it’s important to understand the difference.
SEO is Search Engine Optimisation. Search engines want to provide the best results for user queries. SEO is about making your website easy for search engines to find, understand and index, so you can be included in their best results.
SEM is Search Engine Marketing. This is about purchasing advertising space, so your website will appear in relevant search results.
A lot of the time, these people are actually trying to sell you SEM, not SEO. They want to run ads for you (and take a healthy cut off the top).
Who should do SEO?
The best person to do SEO is your website developer. The problem is, it’s now easy to build a quick, cheap website using one of the many DIY platforms out there. Too often, these sites aren’t planned with SEO in mind and people think they can just whip up a site, throw together some ads and voila! Instant riches!
Unfortunately, not. In the words of Steve Jobs:
Inevitably, one day the cheap website owner will want more traffic and think they need to invest in SEM. But SEM alone is rarely a successful long-term strategy. If you’re a large company with a huge marketing budget, expensive SEM can help attract eyes – but for most small businesses, it’s not sustainable.
Getting SEO right from the start makes a real difference
If people can find your website without an ad, that’s better than the alternative.
No amount of SEM will improve the SEO of a poorly designed website. If someone offers you SEM without a strategy, you’re effectively just handing over your hard-earned money. Google uses over 200 algorithms to determine search results. While they’ll happily take your money and show your ads, as soon as the ads stop, so does your exposure – unless your SEO is solid.
The good news is, SEO isn’t that hard, especially if it’s built into the site from the beginning. We have plenty of client sites that rank well on Google without spending a cent on SEM.
Each page can be appropriately tagged for indexing, and once the site includes features like an SSL certificate, a site map, some Google tweaks and a few other essentials, you’re well on your way
If your website is well designed, you’re already doing SEO!
So the choice is yours:
- A cheap site plus expensive SEM; or
- A professional site with inbuilt SEO that doesn’t rely entirely on paid ads for exposure.
If your choice is (2), we’re here to help.
Need help improving your website’s SEO? Get in touch.
