Jane’s Oak Web Design Blog

 Have you ever received an email similar to this one?

Hello and Good Day! I am xxx, Marketing Manager. I was surfing through your website and realized that despite having a good design; it was not ranking on any of the search engines for most of the keywords pertaining to your domain. I was wondering if you would be interested in getting the SEO done for your website.

Many of my clients receive these emails on a regular basis, and then forward them on to me asking for my opinion.

So I feel it is worth including my latest reply to a customer about this issue.

Here is how I responded to my clinet who owns www.adelaidefurnishedrentals.com.au

To be quite frank, these SEO offers from Indian companies are total bull. They simply pick random sites and send the same standard email to them. They do not appear to actually check the sites and see if the claims they make about them not coming up in search engines is correct. In the case of this domain adelaidefurnishedrentals.com.au, here are the Google facts for current searches: # Search Query Position 1 fully furnished rentals adelaide 5 2 adelaide furnished rentals 4 3 furnished rentals adelaide 9 4 fully furnished accommodation adelaide 11 5 short term rental adelaide hills 1 6 fully furnished adelaide 4 Updated Nov 1, 2009 What this means is that the most commonly search words are “fully furnished rentals adelaide” (position #1), and that for that search, your site is listed at number 5. For the search term “short term rentals adelaide hills” your site is in position number 1. That was the report as of 1 Nov 09, however, because Google is dynamic, there is always some change from exactly what is reported. I use Google Webmaster Tools to generate this information. So, as you can see, your site actually ranks very well

There is no doubt that Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is a vitally important part of web design and development.

SEO gets a lot of attention and rightly so - if your site does not rank well in searches then nobody can find it.

However, these random emails from overseas based companies are poorly thought out and, as the above example shows, clearly no prior research has been done before they are sent.

They are playing a numbers game - putting a lot of bait out in the water and hoping for a few nibbles.

And I should point out that there are dangers in using unreputable SEO companies too.

If you read this Whirlpool forum you will see that some clients have used SEO services with disasterous
and very expensive results.

There are even reports of sites being banned by Google for keyword spamming!

A post from a user called teegman puts it very well where she/he says in part:

“SEO is such a loose, undefined term to the extent that I feel it’s a completely inappropriate philosophy and approach
to any online marketing strategy.

At the end of the day, you’re building your site(s) to support and grow your business operations. To effectively do this
you need to have a holistic understanding of your marketing objectives (as well as fundamental marketing skills), your customer demographics and what drives them to use your services / buy your product.

Traditional SEO concepts are based around brute forcing your site to #1 for a keyphrase (which makes for an excellent
“I’m done” point for your SEO ‘expert’) which can deliver value, but often unbeknownst to the business is how unsustainable and untargetted the campaign is. Too bad that you’ve been blacklisted after hitting #1 for ‘melbourne accommodation’,
I guess it’s time to put those new high-rise apartments on hold… (read: short term success can cause long term damage to a company)

How to tackle this?

Basically, you need to have a base level understanding of SEO, what it entails and what your objectives are before you even begin talking to a consultant. You need to find out how the consultant plans on working with your business (to understand your business and customer base), what strategies they undertake and previous examples of successful, profitable campaigns.”

As I have said before, there is a lot of nonsense talked about SEO.

Attempting to get your site ranking at number one for every conceivable search query is an impossible task. Plus it will probably result in getting your site banned altogether from Google.

Getting your site to rank in the first 10 for appropriate search queries is both sensible and relatively easy. Any competent
web designer should be able to achieve this and include it as part of the site building budget.

If they don’t, or if they consider this to be a add-on service that they charge extra for, look for another designer!