Why SEO Doesn’t Work - Part 1 of 5

February 6th, 2008

Ten Reasons Why SEO Doesn’t & Won’t Work
by Laura Thieme
UPDATED February 7, 2010

Are you engaged in an SEO program, or about to engage in an SEO Program?
Don’t be guilty of the following mistakes:

1) Hiring someone who has merely “read” about SEO or can talk SEO but has never led an SEO initiative in its entirety, from start to finish to success (success means business - measurable business that the client wanted, and can prove it in black and white);

2) Hiring a consultant who lacks at least one search-related certification (Google Adwords, Yahoo Ambassador, OSU’s Marketing 754 or SEMPO or any industry-standard certification);

3) Assigning your IT person (non-marketing person) to head up the search efforts, and thinking you as the marketing person can walk away from this project. The Marketing Person, or the Marketing Team needs to continue to have a presence at the meetings or in the teleconferences;

4) If you hired a search marketing expert, but you’re not meeting or teleconferencing with your search expert on a bi-weekly basis about initiatives; and once a month about key performance indicators (KPIs), improvements, drops and your overall business results;

5) If you hired an expert, but you’re guilty of not implementing the updates to your website within one week or worst case scenario - two weeks; OR if your company’s website admin tool does not have the ability to implement changes within a timely fashion (at least metadata, page titles, page headings and minor content updates);

6) If you’re preventing your SEO from gaining access to your website; admin tools; a Google Webmaster Account; Google Adwords; and Google Analytics (if you’re feeling vulnerable; get things in writing; do reference checks; check them out on LinkedIn; on Google; and be able to lock them out if things sour down the road);

7) If you’re not heeding their advice regarding URL rewrites, page titles, and metatags - yes, you really do have to change, update, and continuously update. SEO requires a lot of work on the site.

8) If you think you don’t have to change your content, no, significantly change your content;

9) If you think you don’t have to write robots.txt files to exclude duplicate content;

10) If you are obsessed with your top ranked competitor and want to do everything that they do

Don’t expect SEO to work. Don’t expect a strong relationship with your vendor. Tomorrow, I’ll focus on search marketing campaign solutions.

Good luck though, if you’re in this category and guilty of one or more of the above points - I can try to pull you out of the ditch, but I can’t guarantee success if you don’t grab a hold of the rope and be willing to get yourself a little dirty in the process.

Posted in Search Optimization (SEO).

 

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2 Responses to “Why SEO Doesn’t Work - Part 1 of 5”

  1. Why SEO Doesn’t Work - Part 2 — Bizresearch - Search Engine Marketing Blog Says:
    February 10th, 2008 at 8:49 pm

    […] you read my first post? If not, read before continuing. If yes, continue […]

  2. Why SEO Doesn’t Work - Part 4 of 5 Part Series — Bizresearch - Search Engine Marketing Blog Says:
    January 21st, 2009 at 12:13 am

    […] Part One - Top Ten Reasons SEO Doesn’t Work […]