Web Presence, Your Marketing Dollar and The Search Oil Salesmen
In the world of internet services, what specific services a webmaster can offer a client covers a wide range and services can pop up, or become defunct, in what sometimes seems the blink of an eye.
The supposed internet marketing services the modern day snake oil salemen(aka SEO specialists, web marketing specialists and the like) offer for ridiculous fees knows few bounds.
I have had numerous people tell me that they got a great deal to “get on google”. Often, when I ask them exactly what services they raided their marketing budget for, they don’t really know and more often than not, they have tapped the marketing money, and continue to pay a recurring fee, for the promise of being included in Google search results.
Just to be clear, Google does not charge to include websites in their search results. To do so would be against their own best interests.
Google, just like Yahoo, MSN search(now known as Bing) and all the other search engines, include relevant websites in their listing when someone enters a search term. If they only included those that paid for entry into search results, internet search would soon lose eyes to newspaper classified listings and similar venues.
Google is the most popular of search engines because they have found a method for ranking and presenting the most relevant results for a keyword or keyphrase search(the words you put into the search bar). You can imagine what a terrible experience it would be if all you got when you searched were the ads you see in the columns and headers of the Google pages you pulled down. It’s doubtful you would use them if that’s what they always served up, right?
If you’re using your marketing budget to appear on Google, you should be on top, front and center and you should be getting proof of ranking.
It’s the people and organizations that placed ads that appear prominently in headers and in the columns, that have paid Google for the right to appear there. But that is an entirely different matter than simply “getting on Google”, which I’ll cover in another blogpost, later on. For now I’ll tell you that the ad construction, bidding for placement and the per-click costs can get quite expensive but the ROI on PPC(pay per click) campaigns can make it an excellent investment.
If you are paying simply for the rights to appear on Google, you’re wasting your money. If you have a website it will eventually start appearing in the Google listing when you type the name of the website into Google’s search bar, without anyone doing anything. In fact, in time it should start showing up at or near the top of page 1 on Google. That is the power of relevancy and the mission of search engines in general.
Case in point:
Below is a screen shot of a search I did for a DownRiver client, TroutFlyandTackle.com.
As you can see, we don’t even have to type in the name exactly, at this point(and to Google, there IS a difference between a “space” and no spave, between words. More on that, later) and TroutFlyandTackle.com shows up not just at #1, but in the second overall position, as well!
What doesn’t show in this cropped image is that TroutFlyandTackle.com is also competing against 319,000 competing listings. These rankings are natural, to a degree. Granted, we did some analysis before naming and launching this web presence for this purveyor of trout and fly fishing tackle but the fact is that with little effort, you will naturally achieve your listing and ranking on most search engines.
Now, to rank on page 1 for keywords and phrases that your prospects actually use? That is worth paying for, that’s online marketing money invested wisely but, again, is different than simply “getting on Google” and deserves a post of it’s own.
So, please, before you spend your marketing moolah on dubious web presence claims, contact us and we’ll offer worthwhile advice on web presence, getting the biggest bang for your marketing buck and getting found by the people who want and need what you have to offer. You’ll be glad you did!
