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Breaking the SEO Stereotype

There’s no other way around it, SEO’s receive a tremendous amount of bad press. What is really irritating is that most SEO’s are grouped together based on a minority using black hat techniques. It hardly seems fair that SEO’s are always accused of selling a false service that tries to game a system when the fact of the matter is that good SEO practises actually help to improve the user experience. It’s a shame that due to the stigma surrounding SEO, there are people that won’t even give it a chance when it could prove to be extremely beneficial to their company. The idea behind this post is to show this argument from a genuine white hat SEO’s point of view.

Why don’t people trust SEO?

Unless within the internet marketing world, SEO is usually seen as a spammy process designed to fool the search engines. It’s easy to see how this opinion is so widespread as there are a lot that carry out SEO in this way, although not all.

How are you meant to trust something that’s always changing? Due to the adaptive nature of the industry, a lot of people struggle to trust SEO as a service. This is because one technique can get you very high rankings one week but if the algorithm changes, all these rankings can drop. However this is only the case if you’re using cheap techniques. Search engines never create an algorithm that will punish people using ethical techniques.

There is a lot that goes in to an SEO campaign and a lot that is bespoke to each campaign. Because of this, it can be very difficult to calculate the expected ROI. Each campaign is unique and the costs will vary. SEO only affects the rankings and so depending on how attractive your site is will determine the amount of sales that your site drives. A good SEO company will always provide advice on how to increase the conversion rate of your website.

Google and the other search engines are always releasing algorithms to punish sites that are attempting to gain rankings through unethical means. This is leading to people neglecting SEO companies for fear of their site being blacklisted. People that don’t understand or aren’t involved with the industry have reason to be scared because they won’t know that the only way to get blacklisted is to repeatedly go against the Google guidelines, something that no ethical SEO company with the right seo training will ever do.

As a technical industry there is a lot of jargon that goes with SEO. This can put off a lot of people, it’s difficult to trust something that you don’t really understand.

Whether or not you like SEO, it will always be there

Thanks to the driving force that is Google, search engines don’t charge for appearing in their natural results. This has and is predicted to always be the case. This means that there will always be competition for the high rankings. The general consensus of SEOs is that we’re all spammers on the internet. There are, however more people that use ethical and genuine techniques that aren’t recognised by the masses. It would be perfect if everyone switched to white-hat SEO techniques, but this just isn’t going to happen.

There will always be opportunities in SEO for making money and as long as this is the case, there will always be good and bad SEO companies out there. Google and other search engines still offer the chance of receiving enormous quantities of traffic through the search results. This means that people will always be willing to spend money to achieve these rankings.

If done correctly, SEO provides users with exactly what they’re looking for

The main point of SEO is to allow pages to be found for specific keywords relating to what that page offers. As long as everything is kept ethical, SEO increases the page quality so that people are finding information they’re actually looking for. This is of course if done by an ethical company. Black hat SEO techniques are designed to fool the search engines and may result in pages that appear completely random to the search phrases they rank for.

When SEO is carried out correctly, it provides users with exactly what search engines are trying to give users. A search engines main objective is to provide users with relevant and quality results based on search terms. Well when a site has had SEO integrated correctly and ethically, this is exactly what the result is.

Contrary to popular belief, SEO actually eliminates site errors

Setting up an SEO campaign and implementing techniques on a site is a very complex process and one that must be carried out to the strictest of standards. There are a number of common errors that can occur on sites across the internet. These errors are easy to make and are made every day by large web design companies. It’s not their fault and they’re usually picked up on quite quickly.

If an error is made on a site commissioned for SEO, any errors will be picked up and eliminated in the process. SEO requires a lot of analytical tools to record traffic and bounce rate details. If a site has a broken anchor text link or a faulty permalink structure, then these will be instantly picked up on and corrected. This is because SEO requires that everything is done perfectly so that it is compatible with the search engine spiders. Even all the spelling on a site is corrected.

SEO also ensures that there is no instance of duplicated content throughout the site. This is because duplicated or copied content is the worst enemy of any ethical SEO enthusiast. Not only that, but nobody wants to read the same thing over and over.

White hat SEO lowers bounce rate

Ensuring that a site is optimised using white hat only techniques will help your site seem more attractive. When a site is over optimised, it can have a negative effect because often it is full of content with very little imagery. Well Google and the other search engines can read more than just content, they take images, videos, functionality, banners and more in to consideration with their rankings. This is why white hat techniques target more than just content, ensuring that your site is full of multimedia attention grabbing content.

Having a site that grabs the initial attention of users can mean all the difference when it comes to sales and conversion figures. A site’s bounce rate is the rate at which people are leaving a page within the first 5 seconds. It is because of this that it’s important to have a site that grabs the attention of the user and retains it long enough for them to stay on the site. The unfortunate fact is that most internet users are lazy and won’t hang around on a site if it’s taking time.

SEO works to optimise the site so that it is as fast as possible, whilst retaining all of its splendour and functionality. This helps to lower the bounce rate and direct users through the site to the point of sale. It is a very effective way of retaining high sales figures from an increased conversion rate.

Conclusion

As an SEO, I do think it’s a shame that all SEO’s are usually grouped in with the black hat bunch. It’s mainly because most SEO companies only employ ethical techniques as these are the only type that are going to work. Black hat SEO is a thing of the past with the developments that search engines have made in recent years. Not only that, but more often than not, it’s not worth the risk of having a site blacklisted. It is for these and other reasons that most companies will only ever employ ethical white hat SEO techniques. These honest and genuine companies want to help their clients and increase their rankings. It is time for the stereotype surrounding SEO’s to die and make way for the true and genuine reputation to shine through.