Weak and unstructured search engine optimisation will cost far more than you think

It is difficult to think of a recognised marketing sector other than search engine marketing where making the wrong choice of agency could potentially cost you so much without you realising until it is too late.

Website leads not converting in high enough numbers? Try simplifying navigation; adding landing pages that answer specific queries can also transform response. Offline you can catch mediocre copy and design and change it fast. But weak search engine optimisaion, or worse, SEO that cuts corners, will compromise results, overall ranking positions and in extreme cases, might even get you bounced from the search engines altogether.

Yet companies are discovering unheard of returns on investment and with more people than ever turning to the Internet for solutions, surely this is one wave crest that deserves to be ridden for all it is worth.

However, even with its new found respectability many decision makers find the choice of SEO agents baffling. There is no regulatory body to judge standards by, and all marketers looking to enhance their website’s presence in the search engines will have read horror stories of established rankings dropping like stones overnight.
From a corporate perspective, the only way to view the success of your search engine optimisation campaign is from the results it achieves, be that in awareness, more sales leads, or simply communication with your company.

An SEO firm has to balance that with their knowledge and the basic premise of what search engines are all about and the subsequent rules and algorithms they live by. Think of it from the search engine’s perspective, their overall value depends on consistently serving up the most informed and relevant answers to queries their visitors are asking.

This might sound obvious, but then consider how many inferior websites might be in front of yours right now in the search engines, and that’s before you consider those sites which have no place in those results anyway.

The trouble is, wherever there is code or a system, you can guarantee some people will try and break it, or at least try and fool the search engines into delivering results that will keep their clients happy.
The truth of it is that climbing rankings can be done ethically, by so called “white hat” SEO companies, or you can visit the dark side - the so called “black hat” brigade. Taking those risks is one thing; it’s when client companies don’t realise what they are involved in that things get really dangerous.

Take link building, for instance. Here’s a legitimate SEO technique that done properly, will stablise and grow the popularity of a website as incoming links from relevant and respected websites are seen as a ‘vote on confidence’ in yours. It’s not unusual for a successful, well ranked website to have many thousands of links.

But what happens when your SEO suggests buying links? Or sourcing hundreds of new links from so called link-farms? Reciprocal links are an excellent way of building popularity, but again, even this is open to abuse if only low ranking or rather tenuous links are sought from those other companies.

Short term gains may splutter and plateau at a disappointingly low rate; badly thought out optimisation recommendations to the source code of your site and those you can see may fail to ignite the search engine spiders or might even act against your site.

Vertical Leap provides a structured, ethical service that is wholly managed. Backed up with Apollo, its proprietary campaign management system, clients are assured of proactive campaign implementation with the focus unwaveringly fixed on results. This is search engine marketing, not the loosely defined, task based effort that is still so typical even now.

Like the mobile phone business, customer churn is a big issue for many seo companies. Many expect to lose well over half the clients they sign up as they become disillusioned with promises or even guarantees that fail to materialise.

But who is the real victim here? For sure the SEO agency might lose you as a client, but you have potentially lost much more. First there’s the unknown cost of lost sales leads as those motivated buyers simply haven’t been introduced to your site; but you have also lost something much more precious: time. Sound, ethical organic search engine optimisation is a long term commitment and any company gambles with that at their peril.