Why Invest (college social network) in SEO?

September 9th, 2008 admin Posted in internet |

By Mercedes Aspland

Firstly lets consider the facts, the 2007 SEMPO State of the Market Survey states that approximately 10.5 percent of companies marketing budget is spent on search engine optimization whereas 87.4 percent is spent on pay per click advertising. This may seem reasonable to you however 60 to 70 percent of all clicks on search engines are on non-paid listings. Knowing this makes the budget allocation look skewed in completely the wrong direction.

So what are the reasons for companies not investing the correct amount in SEO? The first reason is a lack of knowledge, many people are not sure what SEO is and there are so many companies out there that claim to be SEO experts it can be hard to sort the wheat from the chaff. It is obviously much easier to set up an advertising campaign and know exactly where you are appearing and how effective that ad is. Whereas with SEO it may take some time to see results and there are no guarantees as to where you will appear in the search results.

So, what should you do when looking for an SEO consultant and how do you decide whether to work with them? Firstly we would always recommend discussing their services with them. Find out what they do and how they do it. Ask them for examples of sites they have optimized in the past and the results they have got. In addition get detailed information on the strategies they use. If they talk mainly about the main content on the site and textual changes then you are probably dealing with a company that knows very little. You should always make sure a company talks about onsite factors such as content, title tags and headers as well as offsite factors or link building. Find out how sites build links, do they use a variety of tactics that will also result in your site being seen? Make sure they stress the importance of anchor text to you, it is not necessary for you to know all about this but your SEO company should know it is one of the most important factors for ranking.

It is important to remember that SEO does not mean free traffic, even if you have someone in house doing the work you still need to pay them and their expenses. Think about what you are prepared to pay per click on your paid advertising and remember that unpaid links get a lot more clicks and are not limited by a daily budget. This means as long as you keep your SEO effort up you will always appear high in the results regardless of the time, day or week that you look. Just think of the extra traffic you will get for the money you spend out compared to your paid advertising.

Finally you need to think about how you are going to measure your SEO effort to determine the quality of it. The easiest way to do this is to use a similar method to that used for your paid advertising. If you spend 1,000 per month on your SEO effort and you can make money at a cost of 1 per click then you will need 1,000 clicks in a month to make money. When measuring your SEO effort use your analytics tools to see the traffic being driven to your site through unpaid search engine results. This will give you the most accurate pictures of how effective your campaign is.

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The Ultimate Internet Business Mistake
By Mark Kimathi

In the February issue of Entrepreneur magazine of the year 2004 was featured the Do’s and Don’ts of Start Ups. The article by Mark Henricks gleaned from the experience of John Osher, a serial entrepreneur that has created and sold several businesses. According to Osher, “After I sold my latest business to Habro I decided to make a list of everything I had done wrong and had seen other entrepreneurs do wrong.” He wanted to see if he could come up with the perfect company next time round. This was the source of an informal list of “16 mistakes start-ups make”, since expanded to 17. He did go on to create a perfect startup. And the list has even been used in a Harvard Business School case study.

Here we will dwell in what would arguably be the ultimate business error. According to Osher, the number one reason for failing in business is not spending enough time researching the business idea to see if it is viable. He infact calls it the most important mistake of all.

“Viability of the business” may sound all technical but probably the late Gary Harbert would make it more plain. Gary tells of a story of a friend that has a friend that had invented a gizmo that lets you make stuff out of wood the same way a key making machine makes keys from blank metal. His friend was looking at Harlbert, the guru in direct sales marketing, to help in promoting this invention. And though Harlbert was willing to help, he did note to him that he was making the most common mistake of mail order business. Indeed this is the ultimate error in all kinds of businesses. What mistake you ask? The mistake of first finding or developing a product or even a business system and then, looking for a market to sell to.

Immediately after discovering the opportunity of the internet, we nearly always are too quick to “go into business”. We assume because we find our idea novel that the market will also find it as such. But as an entrepreneur, you cannot afford to live in your own persuasions. As a business person you need to always think customer and what value you are giving the customer. If you have customers or a market, the only reason you fail in making profits is if your business system is flawed. And this can always be fixed. But having a product without customers is really a sticky situation many entrepreneurs find themselves in.

And since obvious markets already have stiff competition, researching a business adequately as recommended by John Osher will help you tell if you have a viable business. The market tells what it wants, how it wants it, when it wants and the price it wants it at. Simply creating a business system that satisfies these requirements will easily put you in the positive side of the profit and loss statement. Gary Harlbert summarizes it the best; to avoid the ultimate reason online businesses fail, find a hungry crowd and feed it. Do not make the food and then start asking around for those that are hungry.

The author recommends an All-in-One Small Online Business solution by SiteSell called Site Build It. Get a detailed review of SiteBuildIt here.

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