| 19 August 2008
Big business is learning the hard way that there are no quick-fixes for attracting quality search traffic. Stephen Murphy looks at how smaller businesses can avoid the same mistakes.
When search engine marketing emerged as an industry, practitioners fell into two distinct camps: white hats – ethical companies that abided by the specific search engine rules; and black hats – companies that specialised in tricking, keyword stuffing or spamming for short-term results. These days, most black-hat techniques are ineffective, thanks to highly sophisticated search engine technologies.
Many Australian online marketing agencies suffer from wear-many-hats syndrome. This is when they profess to provide search engine marketing and search engine optimisation techniques. Many digital companies – including web developers, media buyers and affiliate marketers – say they offer paid search and natural search campaigns. The offerings between each service type and agency vary greatly in technique, depth, performance and ultimately return on investment. So how can you tell if they’re any good at it?
Some people fall for the idea that all you need is good software. If that’s the case, you can buy a package off the shelf that claims to have everything you need to deliver top-10 results in Google.
While you’re dealing with a digital world, the consumer is still human. You still need the human intelligence of usability experts and copywriters. Search engine optimisation tools are useful to a point, but they cannot replace human analysis in determining strategic directions.
Unfortunately, most business owners don’t understand the science and art of search engine optimisation and some agencies take advantage of this.
