Search engine optimization (SEO) is probably one of the most misunderstood terms by small business owners. It’s a huge topic; many things go into optimizing a website for search. Unfortunately, nearly anyone can pass himself off as an SEO expert, and many small business owners are taken in by “experts,” only later to discover that there were some serious holes in the actual expertise.
SEO is an easy upsell for the web developer. When the benefits of SEO are spelled out clearly, no business owner in his right mind will say they don’t care about a search engine optimized website. Clearly, there’s a financial incentive to the developer to sell SEO services, but not every website developer has enough of a grasp on the basics for it to be of any real benefit to you.
Likewise and for the same reasons, SEO on existing websites is an easy sell for the search engine marketing firm. Either way, you want your website to be found prominently online, not as #106 in the search results. You’d think a firm that specializes in SEO would know what they’re doing, right? Many do, but others engage in practices that will actually hurt your website’s rankings … and it can be hard for the untrained eye to know the difference.
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If you build a better website, will the world beat a path to your door? I hate to disappoint anyone, but it’s not likely.