Is SEO a useful practice or a waste of money? | Internet, Technology ...

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There is a very common misconception that website optimization equals search engine optimization (SEO) The truth of the matter is that SEO is an important component but it is also one of the most expensive components towards proper optimization and it can dent your budget big time without any measurable return on investment, or real business improvement.

SEO?s main role is not to get you a high ranking or put your site on the first page of Google just for the sake of such great achievement (Something that most SEO vendors believe to be their ultimate mission!) SEO?s number one job is to get you traffic! i.e. more people visiting your site.

It is great to have many people visiting your site day in and day out and it is even better to see this number of visitors increase over the time, because no one has any chance to succeed online without high traffic of qualified visitors.

But have you really asked yourself the BIG question? ?Why do I want people to visit my site?? or the basic but inevitable question of: ?what is the purpose of my website??

The vast majority of businesses and entrepreneurs pay for SEO services without getting much return on their investment or seeing any core benefits or profits to brag about not because they did not get the promised traffic (which some actually don?t) , but it is mainly because they were not ready fo it!

Allow me to explain; Would you invite many friends and work mates over to your house for dinner, while the house is not organized, you do not have anyone to serve them and you do not have food available ? Do you like to be caught off-guard?If your answer is NO, then STOP doing this online too.

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Sending massive traffic to a website that is not ready to receive such traffic and deal with it properly is like allowing visitors to come to your house while you are still in boxer shorts and half asleep! And I am not talking about the technical or server power or the aesthetics of the website, look at your ?bounce rate? to get an idea of what I am trying to say.What is the business use of having 5000 people visit your site every day and spend less than 20 seconds on it before moving on and never coming back? Everyone loses and the only one who profits here would be your SEO agency.

Let?s think of it this way:

1. There are around 660 million websites in the world, NO ONE really cares about yours or mine!
2. Your website is an investment, you need to get a return on that investment.
3. Your website should generate money for your business either directly (selling products and services online) , or indirectly (giving qualified leads that will be converted offline)
4. The only other job of your website apart from generating money or leads, is to provide your customers, prospect customers with excellent customer service, or with engaging useful and fresh content
5. People come to the site looking for something (to solve a problem, to get useful information, to gain something, to communicate and be heard etc?)

5 steps you need to do first:

Make sure that the house is clean and dinner is cooked and ready to be served before inviting people So before engaging in SEO and link building:

1. Never send people to an unfinished site or a partial one
2. Spend more time on the content then the look and feel, insure frequent updates and avoid boring content (such as the chairman?s message or the mission statement that even your own employees will not read!)
3. Make sure the website is engaging and has a clear purpose
4. Make it easy for the site visitors to contact you
5. Have at least one clear ?call to action? above the fold (i.e. in the main area of the home page before scrolling down)

And finally get an expert website review, so that you can get a full report on the current situation and the road map to get this BUSINESS website optimized and ready rock! This is an essential and inexpensive step (compared to the cost of SEO services) that would eventually save you a lot of effort, money and disappointment too.

Good luck with your online optimization.
from the founder of: ViaWeb

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Tagged As: optimizing websites, Search optimization, seo, serch engine, Web Optimization, web presence

Source: http://www.amrselim.com/seo-useful-practice/

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