Online Marketing Myths
When business owners try to take matters into their own hands they can become confused by the unreliable, conflicting information that is all over the internet. Here are some common web marketing myths to demonstrate;
Top Rankings on Google are all that Matters
This is possibly the worst mistake businesses make in their online marketing campaigns. They become so focused by Top 10 Google, they loose the ability to see the wider picture. For example, if you haven’t done your keyword research then you may spend all your time and efforts getting a key term PR for something that no-one searches for. You may ignore the fact that social media marketing may be the answer for your business, for example, if you are a party planner you are far better using facebook or you tube to generate traffic as it is an experience that you are selling. Facebook gets over a third of the number of unique visitors that Google does. And it continues to grow. When asked if ranking was dead, spokesperson for Google Matt Cutts replied, "The challenge is not to pay so much attention to ranking, pay attention to traffic, pay attention to conversions and keep building good content and don't worry about 'can I show people that I rank number one for my trophy phrase.”
The More Links the Better
With the latest Google algorithm changes it is paramount that you follow the quality not quantity rule. Google seem to be doing everything they can to stop spamming. Most of the social bookmarking sites now use the nofollow rule for example Digg announced that this was to be applicable to any external link they could not vouch for on 2nd Sept 2009. Gone are the days of using automated software to post to 1000 directories at a time. The criteria is extremely strict for a link to count. We use certain conditions to regulate linking to ensure that a clients site is never penalised or attributed to spam, link farming etc. Including to never post more than 5 links per day for a site.
When you have a good rank for your keyword you can stop optimisation of your website
It is relatively easy for a professional SEO company to achieve fast results when it comes to rankings. Whilst you may enjoy a honeymoon period if your site is new or has just had some major changes, 9 times out of 10 this does not last. It is as if the Google Spider says, hang on a minute, you don’t deserve to be up there! It feels it has been tricked and gets revenge by pushing you back down to page 6. There are no quick fixes, no get rich quick schemes and no instant rewards, sound search engine optimisation is lengthy, time consuming and difficult. Successful campaigns last months or years not weeks to give you sustainable search engine presence. I like to compare it with weight loss, the quicker you achieve it, the faster you put all the weight back on and you’re back to square one.
Search engines are the only channels to market your product
It is almost impossible to shake this misconception. While it is true that search engines can generate huge amounts of traffic for your website there are other marketing channels which may be worth exploring……….ever heard of E-Bay for example? Also countless other internet marketplaces and product comparison sites are worth exploring.
It is better to have good rankings for the term ‘shoes’ than for ‘size 3 ladies stiletto’
Give me P1 for ‘size 3 ladies stiletto’ any day! This is because people who search for long tail key terms such as this are ready to buy now. A person who just searches for shoes is the in first phase of internet searching…….Browsing. I would rather have 100 people who are ready to buy visit my shoe store than, 10000 people who are just looking. Another huge aspect to internet marketing is ensuring that you are getting the right traffic to your site. Furthermore, the length of search queries has increased last year. Longer search queries, five plus words on average, increased 10% between Jan 08 and Jan 09, 15% between Jan 09 and Jan 10 and 27% between Jan 10 and Jan 11