Sorry, another stolen blog, this time from Greg Howlett and can be found at MarketingPilgrim With Google and other Search Engines becoming more intelligent and concentrating on human content for human searches, is SEO really worth it’s money in the long run or will there always be a need?

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According to Shoemoney, SEO has no future. I do not always agree with him, but in this case, he is dead right. Let me pull on my flame retardant suit before I explain why.First, understand that the only reason SEO has ever worked is because search engines were not advanced enough to always show relevant information. I remember when I started selling online. At the time, I had only a few competitors in my industry and it was easy to beat them in the SEO game. It took only a few metatags and such, and within weeks, I was dominant.That went on for years. Back in those days, a monkey could have dominated search engines rankings. We moved from metatags to inbound links with the right anchor text and continued our domination. How easy was it? I basically knew during that period how many inbound links we needed to achieve top three rankings, and the results were uncannily consistent.

Eventually, the search engines got smarter, and ended the concept of guaranteed SEO dominance. Some people are still in denial. I still have SEO snake oil salesmen calling me trying to sell me link trading services.

Here is why SEO as we know it is going to continue its death spiral. Search engines are too smart and they have a different agenda. They do not want to reward crummy companies that play SEO games–they want to give the top listings to the best companies. And they are quickly gaining access to the information they need to do exactly that. They will use traffic and buying stats to figure out who the top companies are.

Take my industry of health supplements. Do you think Google wants to reward the SEO contortions of unknown companies and affiliates with lots of free business? Of course not–they want to send their visitors to the top supplement sites in the industry.

Within a year or two, they will be good at it. I can predict what supplement companies will be showing on the first page of Google soon. They will be the companies that have strong brands and lots of business. If you are not in the top ten of your industry, you had better find a way to get there in a hurry if you want to be on the first page of Google.

Yes, this means that the rich will get richer and the poor will starve for SEO traffic. If you are not in the first category, you had better find a way to get there quick. The middle class is about to disappear.

In my last article, I wrote about the importance of branding on the conversion rate. If you want a long term SEO strategy, guess where your focus should be? Yes, your branding. Forget the typical SEO tricks; focus instead on building your brand to a position where Google WANTS you on the front page of results.

If you absolutely have to hire an SEO expert, hire one that understands this truth. I think, however, that you would be better served by largely forgetting about SEO and focusing instead on building your brand.

Brilliant article written by Guy Levine. Original text here. He explains the difference between SEO and Adwords, that both are good, but when to effectively apply them.

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Welcome to the great debate: “Do I pay every time someone clicks on one of my little adverts on Google, ranging from 5p to £25 per click, or do I hire an expert to dominate the natural listings (the free ones on the left hand side)?” Guy Levine. chief executive of Web Marketing Advisor, gives us the lowdown.

Pay per click, Google adwords, search engine marketing and sponsored listings are all names for pay per click. You choose a word or phrase you want, you bid a price, then an advert is displayed when someone types the word or phrase into Google. When someone clicks, you pay.

Search engine optimisation – or SEO to the cool young internet types – is the process of inducing “Google love”. Basically, tweaking the pages of a website to make the search engines love them. I know there are other search engines, but at the moment Big G rules!

On the other hand, pay per click allows hungry entrepreneurs to have their websites ranking on the front page of search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN) within as little as three hours. Yes, you have to pay but you get visibility. Another great benefit is that you can run multiple adverts, all 128 characters of them, to test the best hooks. Google will even tell you which one people love the most.

Search engine optimisation is the long game. You tweak your site, you wait for the search engines to update their listings, you tweak again, you wait. Sometimes you get it right, sometimes you get it wrong. But boy, when you get it right! The first result on page one is better than the icing on the cake, it’s internet nirvana.

Let me share one word of warning. It’s fine being number one, but you need to make sure you are number one for a word which people search when they want to buy, not just browse.

SEO, I love it, but my best advice is to always run a PPC campaign first. Choose your keywords, test them and make sure your site converts. When it does, crank up the SEO.

Get them both right and there’s gold there in them there hills!

Guy Levine is the chief executive of search engine optimisation firm Web Marketing Advisor.

Many people I speak to as potential clients are left in this situation. They’ve forked out for a nice (or not so nice) website, they’ve added it into the google thingy and now… nothing… not a sausage… or an enquiry.

If you want an egg to roll off the table into a bucket, you need to tip the table in the right direction and make sure the bucket is ready and in place to receive aforementioned egg.

How do you tip the table? There are a number of ways including paying Google for clicks to your site, through to a little tweaking to help position your website. (See Nikki Pilkington’s 299 steps to website heaven for some great tips, or talk to Nikki, another SEO specialist or even your web designer directly.

One easy way is to basically link to it. Make sure in the editing page of your Ecademy profile your web address is filled in. If you have a blog or other websites, link back to your main website with descriptive text. (don’t just call the link ‘Click Here’)

So the table’s been tipped, with any luck, the egg will start to roll. Any eggs placed on the table in future will also roll. Now how to get it into the bucket instead of on the floor?

Route your visitors through the site and make sure they finish up with a call to action. Come and see us, send me an email, call me for a no-obligation quote, speak to me for impartial advice.

When?

Call me NOW for a quote!

What’s the catch?

Call me now for a FREE instant quote!

Can what you do initially be done online? Do you sell widgets? Could you ship them to clients paying through the site? Can your quoting system be automated in the form of an online calculator? Could the site book appointments/viewings/meetings/rooms online? This makes the table slippy to make the egg slide better. Eggs don’t want to think, but they can break so make it easy.

You can of course complement table tipping with egg removal. This method involves picking up the egg you want in the bucket, and placing it directly inside. Make sure your website address is on every business card, letterhead, invoice, compliments slip, mailshot, newspaper ad, magazine, and catalogue you hand out. This method is easier individually than the table tipping method, but you can only move the eggs you’re targetting. Any eggs you miss will stay on the table.

Eggs are now starting to slide and more are being laid? Get some statistics for your website. I know it’s a load of numbers but they are useful numbers. Google Analytics provide a very nice, clean tool, sometimes they’re even built into your web hosting package. These statistics will show you how many eggs were laid on the table, how they slid and where they landed. If 90% of your eggs are leaving the table at the wrong side, maybe you need to adjust the tilt. If people are leaving when they read the ‘About Us’ page, what am I doing to scare them off? Change it, watch the stats, see if it’s made a difference. The more you offer value (depth of tilt) and the easier it is for eggs to slide, the more eggs will start flowing through.

Once the eggs are falling into the bucket, it’s then up to you to do what you do best to catch them.

How many people hit your site last month?
How many people used your enquiry form or called you whilst on the website?
How many of these enquiries turned into sales?

“But the website isn’t our main way of generating business”

It doesn’t have to the main way, but if you’re marketing to billions of people, you want to convert some surely. Otherwise they’re using your competitors.

Where are your eggs getting stuck?