It is that time of the year again my friends. The streets all over the world are flooded with Christmas commercials, gift ideas and predictions on what this years number one Christmas present will be. This is at least for most of you – For us in SEO Christmas has been around the corner for the past 2 months in regards to keyword research, landing page optimisation and URL structures. Putting the business of Christmas in motion online is an arduous exercise and for most of us SEO in the heavily competitive fields Christmas starts around the first week of September.
One bizarre thing I have noticed in this years fight for Christmas is our clients lack of understanding of even the simplest commercial concept. I can not vouch for everyone in the SEO industry, but for me it has had a lot to do with iPhones, iPads and other fancy gadgets new for this year. These keywords are highly commercial, extremely well searched and excellent money makers, so one would not think twice about clients that want to rank for these keywords – That is until you find out that they are not even in the electronics industry, but in the beverage industry. That is one of the most extreme requests I have had during 2010, but it is far from the only one where the clients does not even have the product, the website or in any way is related to the product they wish to rank for.
Now, I know I got some skills in SEO, but I am not a magician. We are still bound by certain principles (or laws if you like) in the SEO world. Like matching content with message. If you do not even have the keyword on your website, how can you expect to achieve number one position in the search results? Let alone, how disappointed will not the users be when they found out in the middle of the Christmas rush that someone wasted their time – on purpose? Ranking number one in the search results has a lot more to it than “tricking/manipulating/working” Google until you are in the top spot, Google knows this and have as such taken in to account what the users actually do once they come to your website.
I am curious, are there more of you SEO out there that has had the same requests recently? …and more so, do we have some kind of responsibility toward the searchers, helping them find value (or as in this case the real item or product)?
This is very true. I have a builder hosted by my hosting company, they want to rank highly for their building skills, but have so few words on their website and don’t want to add more.
I have also starting hosting a page for a piano teacher. She understood about having a short catchy domain name and put quite a few words with were relevant to what she actually does. She ranked in google almost immediately!
Just as it should be. You will love my next article, I actually got that information just a few hours ago and I am still composing the article to protect innocent names.
Back to topic however – It seems to be a common idea online today, people want a website and then they want to be found first for just about anything and this is without having to put in the work required to get there. Only similar metaphor I can think of is like trying to build a car but without parts such as tires, engine and steering wheel.
21. Hello to you, I received your write-up through my friend and she is true, your write-up is extremely fascinating and I was touch by every phrase you select especially on how you engage them.
The issue of responsibility is a bit elusive, as in, well yeh, we have it, but where do you draw the line? How do you measure and dictate who has crossed it?
In the Guardian’s article I sent you it clearly specifies how unethical SEO’s are rendering Google less useful for given articles. Google is pretty much everything our career is based on, so should be really???? Similar to the way we treat our planet I guess, lol