"What Would You Do With Hordes
Of Eager Buyers Arriving At Your Website Every Minute... And What If That Traffic Was All Free
?!? "
The cheesy headline above is the sort of hot-under-the-collar
appeal an SEO firm might use to get your business.
Unfortunately the implication that you can get unlimited free
traffic just by having your site optimized for the search engines is a fallacy, a
lie.
In fact, SEO, while a valuable investment in some ways for a
long-term online infrastructure for your business, produces unreliable
traffic.
One day you could be getting a lot of visitors. The next
day Google could do it's "dance" and your site is languishing on page 3... or
worse.
SEO Copywriting
Do not get the idea that ranking well on Google and being
able to get money-making results from your website are not the same
thing.
Not by a long shot...
The problem with writing your site to please the search engines
and to get people to take action and buy is the site structures Google prefers in terms of qualifying to rank
well and the site structures which work best for direct-response marketing (selling stuff) are so different
accomplishing both goals on one page is like trying to squeeze two people into one pair of
pants.
Ranking well will get you traffic. The things you need to
do on a site to rank well also work against your sales message in most
cases.
I don't wish to totally Poo-pooh SEO writing - it has it's place
- I do it and can be hired to do it by you.
The Dirty/Nasty Truth About "SEO
Copywriting"
First some stats about Google, the giant search engine most SEO
professionals look to first.
Google states that only 1 in 20 visitors to the average website finds
that website through using the Google search bar.
This means the
other 19 out of 20 visitors find sites in other
ways.
By far the most important and controllable of these ways for
web-users to find your site is from links and advertising on other sites.
Example:
Sell beef jerky?
Here's how to get a lot of
traffic: Advertise on sites serving the interests of outdoorsy
folk. You'll get a far larger volume of traffic using Google's content network to advertise your beef
jerky than you would by ranking number 1 on Google's search rankings for beef
jerky.
The big carrot the SEO firms and advocates dangle in
front of you, the business owner, is that there is a virtually unlimited supply of free traffic just out of
your reach and if you pay these firms a lot of money to get you to number 1 on Google all your advertising
problems will be instantly solved and you'll get rich.
For some keyphrases that's true. Keyphrases like:
"make money"
"lose weight"
"free porn"
and yes, "get rich"
Yet for most of these keyphrases that actually get huge amounts
of (what is called) "organic" search traffic the competition is so intense to even rank on page 1 it is very,
very arguable that it is not worth your effort to go for it unless you have a budget of say, $100,000 a year
or more for search engine optimization.
(I didn't always feel this way. I am in
fact proficient at SEO and at one time believed SEO traffic was worth all the work it usually
requires. Now I just look for how to trade $1 in advertising for $2
in profit.)
Am I saying ranking well for relevant keywords and phrases isn't
worthwhile? No, of course not.
What I am saying is that if you try to rank for a
high-competition phrase you'll be in for a battle - and if you go after easier phrases you'll probably get
less "buying traffic" than you hoped for.
That's just the reality of it.
One solution is to do a lot of keyword research and build a
business around targeting keyphrases with monetizable commercial value and less-than-heavy competition.
If you already have a business though this approach represents a change in
direction.
The whole phenomenon of the search engines has led business
owners to believe that the solution to internet marketing success is to get free advertising - this is just
wrong-headed.
The solution to success in internet marketing is, just like all
other forms of direct-response marketing, to have an OFFER that is so attractive to buyers that you CAN
actually afford to pay for traffic!
Such offers are, generally, "scalable" within limits determined
by the breadth of your appeal. For products within the truly huge niches
like:
-make money
-lose weight
-health
-fitness...
in these areas the supply of traffic is so massive you can
get wealthy if you learn how to put together and sell the kind of offers the millions of ready buyers
for these sorts of things respond to.
The money is out there. Billions and billions or dollars
- a river of cash accessible to you with the power of direct response
advertising.
SEO positioning for your company's website can be a valuable
PART of a traffic strategy. But the bigger you get, the more you want to squeeze maximum dollars out of
the marketplace, the smaller the roll SEO for your actual business site will play a roll in your online
marketing and the greater the volume of traffic you'll need to get from forms of advertising which
A) tap into mass demand and B) are not free.
By focusing on SEO only you cut-off your nose to spite your
face. Just search for the term "SEO" on Google and you will notice that firms are actually running PAID
advertising for that search term - and the sites those paid ads go to will generally look very
different and have far more compelling offers than the sites that rank well
"organically".
There is a powerful reason for
this:
Google, as a general rule, doesn't like to give good rankings to
the sites that are most-optimized to sell stuff.
Google, generally, tends to rank sites well which share
information relevant to searchers.
All this SEO stuff starts to get very complicated, which is
why it's very tempting to assume it must be a "magic bullet" solution to making millions with the
internet.
It's not that simple.
Neither is advertising.
Your straightest-path to rake in the cash with your websites is to have the ability to
advertise, at a measurable cost-per-visitor, and still make
money.
It's that simple. SEO is merely an (imperfect) means to
the end as all advertising - getting new customers and selling more of your
product.
When you have such offers (and salesletters, and products) then
you will be on your way to a "scalable" success with internet marketing.
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