Marketing Your Business on the Internet :: the Importance of SEO

[Irony]

Marketing Your Business on the Internet :: the Importance of SEO

September 26, 2004

by Irina Ponomareva © 2004-2005

Advertising, Positioning & General Marketing Advice

Being lucky enough to live in the Internet era, we all realise, of course, that this new worldwide phenomenon brings us immense opportunities where advertising and positioning of our businesses are concerned – the opportunities that were unrealised and even unthinkable in the past. How to utilise these opportunities with the maximum of effectiveness? That is a question with many possible answers but none of them is absolutely true in all cases. Good advice never hurts, so here we will cover again the importance of the search engine optimisation factor in the process of marketing yourself on the web.

Search engine optimisation (SEO) is one of the best covered parts of the Internet Marketing science, yet the nature of the industry is so complicated and questionable, not a day ever passes without another heated debate on the subject.

Does SEO help you with positioning yourself on the market? Won’t the signs of SEO work done on your web site ruin your image and harm your overall Internet marketing campaign? When you are buying text links on other sites – is it advertising or will it be considered link spam by search engines? Do link pages on your site hurt your business? Do keywords reduce the quality of your marketing-oriented, promotional copy?

Agreed, sometimes the borderlines are hard to detect, and the subtle art is to deliver advice that will work in all cases. But, fortunately, however, common sense is one tool that will help you answer all your questions above and can be applied in every case. Essentially, if it appears too good to be true, or your gut instinct is telling you otherwise, then listen and apply the common sense approach.

The only true indication of the quality of your SEO :: "Am I making the Internet a better place?"

That’s the question you should ask yourself when considering your SEO-related or marketing-oriented actions on the Internet. Very often it makes your choice obvious. Does SEO help with your market positioning? The answer is yes – but only if you do not use any quick-fix solutions and pollute the Net with poor quality SEO, doorway pages being the most obvious examples.

Won’t the signs of SEO work done on your web site ruin your image and harm your overall Internet marketing campaign? The answer is no, but only if you use quality and ethical SEO practices.

Poor quality, doorway-based SEO is sure to kill your marketing efforts. How? Imagine your potential client staring dubiously at a meaningless page with a lot of keywords on it, unrelated to each other. Perhaps, it was supposed to flash away as soon as the visitor opened it. Unfortunately, this visitor has turned JavaScript off and the redirect on your doorway was handled via JavaScript - not the best solution for marketing your business online. It demonstrates, at once, that you are not serious about your site’s quality. It will make your potential customer think you are not serious about the service you offer, as well. However, if your business copy is written by a professional SEO copywriter, it will combine good marketing pitch with general SEO factors, as well as all the relevant and necessary information. Your sales are sure to grow, as all site visitors will be very pleased browsing through your well optimised site. It means user friendly, accurate information containing brief, descriptive titles and sub-headers with links to relevant resources thoroughly reviewed for quality. In this case you simply won’t need doorways.

Effective SEO work completed on your site makes it friendly to your visitors, shows your respect to everyone who comes to learn about your services – and that surely means marketing success. Lets not forget the growth in visitors due to improved positioning with the search engines!

Now, when you are buying text links on other sites is it advertising or will it be considered link by search engines? That depends on how you approach the process. If you just search for a link broker that takes your money for placing your text link across a huge network of sites, regardless of their quality and relevancy you could not realistically expect your target audience to visit your site via those links. It is done solely for link popularity’s sake, and that means, search engines most likely won’t be too impressed. So, when you are considering buying text link advertising, search for sites that belong to your niche and negotiate the deal yourself. This way you control the process from the start and can determine how your ad will look and where it will be placed.

Do link pages on your site damage your business? No, if they do not link to sites that look unprofessional, contain nothing of value or employ spam technologies. On the contrary, your visitors will be grateful for the provision of this information for their convenience, provided you choose carefully what you are recommending. No need to restrict these pages’ purpose to showing reciprocal links; an occasional one-way link to a really good resource will improve the quality of your resource page.

Do keywords reduce the quality of your marketing-oriented, promotional copy? Again, no, if the copywriting is done by a true SEO professional. SEO copywriting is, perhaps, the most complicated art of the whole online marketing process but when done well, it certainly improves your search engine positions. Additionally, it will advertise your business as successful and respectable, highlighting your professional approach to everything you undertake.

[Taylor]

Now, when you are buying text links on other sites is it advertising or will it be considered link by search engines? That depends on how you approach the process. If you just search for a link broker that takes your money for placing your text link across a huge network of sites, regardless of their quality and relevancy you could not realistically expect your target audience to visit your site via those links. It is done solely for link popularity’s sake, and that means, search engines most likely won’t be too impressed. So, when you are considering buying text link advertising, search for sites that belong to your niche and negotiate the deal yourself. This way you control the process from the start and can determine how your ad will look and where it will be placed

Very well... key:target audience especially if paying!

[boohlick]

well thanks irony for the info

[markus]

very informative irony thanks!

[keisuke takahashi]

That adds to my knowledge. Thanks a lot