Fast does not make you first...

Yesterday I had an interesting experience that got me to thinking. I was headed toward the ATM at my local bank to make a deposit. As I turned into the drive a woman in another car coming from the left inside the bank’s parking lot literally sped up nearly hitting me to get to the ATM first. I would like to tell you that the ATM was broken-it wasn’t.

The experience reminded me about a potential client who contacted me Sunday. They were interested in having me optimize their newly launched website and had gotten a quote from another company that "guaranteed" top 10 placement for their site.

Everyone these days seems to want things better, faster, now! But the reality is, not everything fits into that "fast food" mold. Search optimization is one of those things.

Good, ethical, white hat search engine optimization takes time.

• It takes time to go through each page of the website and make sure that the descriptions are accurate to the page content, that the title is unique, that the appropriate key phrase is used.
  
  
• It takes time to get the search engine to index (place) every page of the website, not just the "home" page.
  
  
• It takes time for people to start to visit your website in large numbers and start linking to you (one way the search engines determine how high to place the site).
  
  
• It takes the search engine time to move your site up the to the coveted high rankings area.
  

The only way to achieve instant top 10 placement is to pay for advertising on the website. But you should know, that although this does generate awareness and some traffic, the majority of search engine traffic (85 to 95%) comes from the organic listings.

Even Google gives good reason not to believe SEO's that guarantee top ten rankings:

Beware of SEOs that claim to guarantee rankings, allege a "special relationship" with Google, or advertise a "priority submit" to Google. . . Some SEOs will promise to rank you highly in search engines, but place you in the advertising section rather than in the search results. And lastly, some SEOs guarantee ranking, but only on obscure, long keyword phrases you would get anyway

I often ask my clients: Would you rather have 1million visitors who don't buy anything or 1000 visitors of which 50% buy something? It's an easy question and yet often surprises people. While I can guarantee an improvement in page rankings overall (you're site will move upwards), I am not foolish enough to think that I can put every client I have on the first page for every relevant key term.

Like fine wine, optimizing for search engines takes time and must be done in the most ethical way to ensure long lasting high rankings.

To view the full Google SEO guide, click here.

A Twitter Conundrum

I was thinking about this last night. Why is it such a great thing to have thousands of followers on Twitter? Who can keep up with it all? And why are there people with thousands of followers who don't follow any back? Why do they have klout?

I was looking at the followers I have yesterday, those I follow, those I don't etc. and thinking about who these people are, do I really know them? Have I conversed with them. It's nothing like Facebook where I can tell you exactly who each person is and why I am their friend and vice / versa.

Twitter can be great for making new friends but I think that it's getting to the point that there are far more people on twitter who just follow everyone for the sake of following and a lot less who follow only those that are of true interest to them. For example, last week I was followed by a large number of chess related tweeps. I don't talk about chess anywhere in my posts or my profile. Sure I've been known to play a game or two but nothing that would warrant follows from chess players, naked chess players included.

So is being on twitter and talking about your product or service a bit like throwing spaghetti on the wall or akin to advertising on tv - hoping your exact target is watching while your ad is running? It seems to me that it's getting that way.

In the beginnning the people who followed me actually talked to me. I followed people that had businesses I was really interested or people who had something to say worth reading. I wonder if the people following me really care anymore. I know I care about who I follow!

For example, I don't follow people who's profiles tout get rich quick schemes or promising to get you thousands of followers on twitter (go figure). I don't generally follow people from other countries unless they are really interesting because honestly, I won't ever have an opportunity to do business with them or they with me.

I also don't follow all those people who say they work in social media or internet marketing right after they tell you they are a teacher, a sales person, etc. I think all of us that really are in internet marketing know that you can't be one on a part time basis - you either do it all in or you're not successful.

I follow people who have something worth reading, who offer something I'm interested or who might be someone beneficial to work with / know. Sure that sounds selfish, but I would expect the same from any other tweep.

Here's the real conundrum, and interestingly there was a post I saw today that looks at this from a slightly different angle as well: If I don't have thousands of followers, people who want to hire someone who is good at social media will think I don't know about it...

Actually I know a lot about it. I am just choosy, not just for myself but for my clients as well, they aren't following everyone on the planet either. . . But the purpose behind that concept that will probably fall on deaf ears.