SMOKE AND MIRRORS
Elevating your results in the organic search engines results pages (SERP) is what optimising is all about—no one would argue that being number one has great advantages. But despite the good advice that comes from those interested in SEO, there have been some high profile examples of “black hat” techniques—essentially cheating in the eyes of the search engine.
In January, Google penalised car manufacturer BMW’s German Web site for using doorway pages—additional pages filled with keyword phrases that attract the search engine but redirect human visitors to another page (somewhat less friendly to the search spiders). Google’s response was to drop BMW’s PageRank to zero, meaning for many searches it would be far from the top.
It highlights that even now, SEO as an industry and market is still in its infancy—and it is an industry. Since the late 1990s people began realising that making changes to a Web site could affect its position on the SERP. In the last five years there has been an explosion in the number of businesses offering services in this area.
But the temptation to take some easy options is sometimes powerful. And despite real excitement about the benefits that SEO has to offer, examples like BMW (not just small and unknown companies) are still frequent enough to cast an uneasy light over optimisation strategies, and occasionally suspicion over proponents of it.
According to Gartner: “Unprofessional practices are not uncommon and threaten to damage the reputation of the entire industry. They are a frequent topic at conferences and discussed on industry Web sites, blogs and publications.”
Arnold likens a lot of SEO to the dot-com bubble a few years ago. “People were flogging the idea that there are quick fixes about how to be found on the Internet—that there are quick fixes to making money. In those days it was the magic domain name.”
He is also suspect of SEOs effectiveness, saying it is often greatly overrated. He suggests the advice out there is not anything more than good Web design.
“Its not clear that [consultants] are really doing anything more than advising you to do things like refresh your content, encourage people to link to your site, and actually have some real content on your site—this is all very nice but we’re not really talking rocket science here,” he says.
“You could well use your money better elsewhere. It’s just not cost effective. If you wanted recognition of your site you might well be better off using this money to do things like guerrilla advertising and so on. The SEO people might sneer at this, but in terms of consumer recognition and bang for your buck that might well be far more effective.
“People don’t always find Web sites just through search engines—they are very important yes, but so are things like print ads, business cards, t-shirts, etc. There is no single fix to point people in the right direction,” says Arnold.
SO IS IT WORTH WHILE?
Reputable consultants in the field urge that it is not through devilry or the “black hat” techniques that a Web site will see benefit. Indeed the search engines are becoming far more adept at detecting and punishing Web sites that operate such strategies. The very success of Google is testimony to its ability to actually return useful results.
Petryshen points out that the benefits of optimising varies with every industry, but there can be a real difference. “We’ve seen it return amazing results, in some cases even millions in revenue a month, and that’s in Australia. If you look at some of the bigger markets it’s probably more. There is a lot of money being made online and ultimately, if you’re doing it right, you see the results,” he says.
It really becomes a fundamental question of whether your site actually is a good quality site or not, and what sort of importance you see it having for your business. Optimising your site stems from good design, and while it may not be rocket science, tuning it based on real information—analytics—makes it scientific at the very least.
Search engine optimisation might boil down to be strategically applied common sense but with the vast majority of Internet surfers using search engines it cannot be ignored. If your customer doesn’t find you, he finds your competitor, and the difference between the two of you might be no more than a well-tuned Web site.
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