Online marketing, in particular search marketing is one industry that is expected to have double digit growth despite the downward economy. When focused properly the ROI from online marketing can be significant, the premise being that you need to know what to focus on. While search marketing can lead to a lot of excitement and potential, beware of less than reputable professionals.
Red Flag 1 The Word “Guarantee:” The only thing an online marketing professional can promise you is to put forth a good faith effort and fulfill the obligations of the contract. The results of the efforts are a complete wildcard. Why is this?
Search engines constantly change their algorithms.
The agency or professional you are contracting with does not own the search engine, let alone have any authority of natural search results.
What can you do? This is where due diligence in the proposal stage becomes important. Check the company’s references and past clients. Learn about what successes the past client has observed and learn what advantages and try to uncover potential shortcomings of the agency or professional you are considering working with.
Red Flag 2 a New Website: New sites are exciting, but present many challenges for search marketing professionals. A brand new site, which to a SEO professional may include sites less than a year old, faces an instant uphill battle. At best you’ll be another website with a proposition of why your company performs something better, faster, or cheaper. At worst, you’ll be a website tailoring to a market with no search volume. In the case of the later, it might be easy for an SEO professional to get you ranking well, but it won’t do any good if you rank well for keywords that no one searches on.
New sites can be more work to rank than established sites that are at least 3 years old.
New sites will require a significant effort in the area of link building because by definition a new site will have almost no inbound links, a critical component of why websites rank well
New sites will need other mediums to attract visitors either offline, or online through pay per click, or affiliate marketing.
What can you do? Keyword research In an ideal world, before you hire a web designer, or consider content strategy you’ll know what keywords your website needs to discuss. Ideally you’ll map out the keywords to be discussed within plans of the website’s architecture.
Red Flag 3 Not Inquiring about your Call to Actions: The reason online marketing has grown so quickly and been embraced by companies of all different sizes is that the web has the ability to be tracked better than any of marketing medium. You would be surprised how many websites (and professionals) view success online in forms of visits. The metric that any professional needs to start with, and then work backwards, is around calls to action. What is the purpose of your site? Are you an e commerce site selling goods and services? Are you a brochureware site that is looking to receive inbound leads to hand off to sales? Ask yourself these questions:
Do you understand what your calls to action need to be?
Does your contractor understand your business?
Can your contractor provide reports of benefit of online marketing progress as it relates to your business’s calls to action?
What can you do? This is where experience matters. Having a professional working on your site that understands your business and has ideas around maximizing the efficiency of your calls to action is critical.
Search marketing is a fast expanding industry. The need to services is outpacing the ability to train highly skilled professionals that can have one on one client facing interactions. Look to spot the potential red flags of an inexperienced professional, or one that does not have a good fit for your company. Even within search marketing there are subsets that a professional typically focuses on, including: pay per click (PPC), organic (natural) search, content development, link building, and analytics, among others. Within these concentrations you might find a particular professional focuses on a particular channel such as brochureware, or e commerce within a B2B, B2C, or C2C environment.
There are a lot of inexperienced online marketing professionals that can do more harm than good. Though typically well intentioned, they either lack the experience to analysis your business or are likely to take shortcuts that go against SEO best practices because they guaranteed a particular result. Before you pick a search marketing professional, ensure you are selecting the professional that understands your business and has the capabilities to bring your website to the next level.
Author Resource:
A Sr. Account Manager at http://www.twentysix2.com/ Atlanta search marketing agency TwentySix2 Marketing, http://www.keithhanks.com/ Keith Hanks has a passion for http://www.twentysix2.com/online-marketing-services.html Atlanta online marketing services and content strategy services.
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