What do you Mean SEO Competition?
Getting a good result in search engine marketing is challenging but getting a good result when you don’t understand what you are up against is much harder.
This article stems from over 13 years of continuous calls from people with a similar problem. The calls are so similar it sends a chill up my spine. “We hired an SEO company ## months ago and our results are horrible.” Some feel ripped off and others are frustrated and want the issue fixed. I often feel sorry for them but reality is my feeling sorry doesn’t fix the problem.
So now I am going to explain what the actual problem is and you can decide to listen or not; that is your choice, but we have been able to increase revenues in a number of well established companies to over 10 times what they where when they came to us.
Here is what you need to know to win:
Understand the goal
Most tend to think the goal is simply to be listed #1 in Google.
While ultimately true at its core, this is not really a goal. The real goal of SEO is to get the search engines to understand fully what you offer and this will in turn, provide great results for your website’s most relevant terms by helping them to show up in the search results ahead of the millions of other competing pages.
You and your SEO Company are competing against all the other websites that use even similar words that you want to be found for. There are often millions of websites listed for similar terms and many of them have hired SEO Companies or are performing SEO themselves and their goal is the same; to get great results for their website’s most relevant terms out of the millions of other competing pages.
Understand the Competition
The SEO Company has been hired to refine the impression the search engines have about your website. Website rankings are based on the reputation your website has established to be more informative, more authoritative or more relevant than all the other websites that are related to or discuss the same topic.
This can be thought of as a competition much like any sports event where the SEO Company is the trainer and the website is the athlete. To win it requires the athlete (website in this case) give maximum effort and then perform at its peak. The best results are always attained from great coaching and top performing athletes (website) and if either party doesn’t perform you can’t possibly win. I am often amazed at how many companies are not willing to put any effort into their own success.
Understand Your Involvement
Yes I said you are included in this process as well. So many times the person heading the project is unwilling or unable to contribute anything to the cause. It is your business that will be affected by an SEO campaign and if you can help out by providing your Unique Selling Proposition (USP), a good SEO company can use this information to provide an edge against your competitors.
Like traditional marketing, it is always easier to get a good result if you have something to offer that differentiates you from the other competitors out there. The best success is achieved by working on providing something of value to the visitor. If you have something of value to offer, you will find that other websites will actually help make you more popular. Remember, the search engine’s main goal is to place desirable websites in front of the people searching for them. They need a reason to help you though!
Hiring your favorite SEO Company to optimize your website, then waiting for your phone to ring and orders to pour in is seldom successful. Success will come when you realize that you and your website are actually what is being trained.
Chris Genge
