Online Marketing: The Key to Manipulation

Don’t Cheat!

You would probably expect someone who tout’s himself as the master of all things digital to claim to have some super cheat code to search engine optimization and Social Media Marketing right? Hire me and I’ll let you into my “SEO cool club” and you too can get thousands of visitors a day to your website and money will fall from the sky. That sounds good to me too! But it couldn’t be further from reality.

Watch Out For The Phony!

It may surprise you to know, but few real SEO experts out there ever refer to themselves as experts. They don’t guarantee “top placement in all major search engines” and they don’t charge $199/month if you “don’t have the time to do your own SEO?”. They will also NEVER, EVER send you an e-mail with two or three search phrases that you might not happen to rank for and then use this as a basis for your success or failure regarding SEO. If you see this, RUN!

The Key is a Four Letter Word…

It all comes down to work. Sorry, no secret formula’s here. The best online marketing campaigns today work because they resemble the natural progression a well respected website should have. This is why the best consultants won’t promise you that you’re 10 year old website which has poor site structure will be ranking in no time. If you are unwilling to do the basics the right way, an SEO professional will be limited in the results they can provide to you. Bottom line: There are no real short cuts. An SEO professional simply has the tools and knowledge to aid in getting the maximum exposure possible for your site based in its quality and content. We can do in hours, days and months, what would take years to happen naturally.

DIY

So if all it comes down to is work, then why not do it yourself? You can! It really depends how much time you can invest and for how long. One of my most successful websites is this Nissan Dealer. It is one of the most highly trafficked single point dealer website’s in the country. I, along with the help of other resources and industry professionals have created over 49,392 inbound links to this dealer. Imagine how long it would take you to do this by yourself all while trying to learn the difference between a good link and a link that can actually hurt your initiative. Can it be done? Absolutely. The question is, are you willing to dedicate the resources necessary to doing it right?

Surprise!

Believe it or not, I advise most clients to take this approach when possible! It is in YOUR best interest to have someone like myself train one of your staff to do this every day as opposed to just hiring my company to do it for you – forever. I am perfectly happy to accept a check month after month to do your online marketing for you. But I don’t work in your business day to day. I don’t know what interesting thing just happened or the charity you just got involved with. You need to provide me with the information to craft your marketing. You have to tell me what you already know in order for me to deliver the best result.

Now What?

Keep Learning! I will be taking part in a 16 week study involving several control groups who will be testing a number of techniques for increasing their businesses online presence. I will be leading the most aggressive of those groups in order to find the most effective marketing techniques today. Stay tuned as I will be sharing our results on this blog!