The battle between search marketers and “marketing people” has been going on in meeting rooms across the globe. I have seen great businesses lose out to their competition on the web by listening to bad advice from their Marketing department or PR firm.
Here are the top ten signs that your website might be under the influence of traditional marketing types or ego-driven business owners:
- The website has become an extension of someone’s ego instead of a source of revenue.
Your website looks like a page from a fairy tale with animated unicorns and rainbows, but there is no content for the search engines or the website visitors to read. No matter how successful your brand is, you still have to deliver content. Bells and whistles will not deliver converting traffic or grow your business online. - You pick a domain based on “coolness” and not keywords.
If you are launching a new business or product, this is a perfect opportunity for you to pick a strong domain name. Don’t pick something like www.imsocool.com because it’s catchier than www.yourproductnameandcityname.com. Keywords are everything! - You are more concerned with color than content.
Its probably repeated by search marketers a million times that “Content is King.” You don’t have to over-optimize your content, but please step away from the color palette and focus on what the website visitors are really going to care about. You have less than 4 seconds to capture their attention, so stop trying to hypnotize them with color schemes and start writing content! - Your team thinks the SEO content is “too wordy.”
Let’s be very clear here. If you plan to have less than 200-300 words on your web pages and still expect to rank for competitive keywords on the search engines, good luck! Don’t pay for optimization services and then throw the content away because it’s too wordy and not artful enough. SEO content writing is an art based on keyword research. It’s not supposed to sound like a marketing brochure, or the great American novel. Don’t do SEO because it is something all the cool kids are doing. Do it to use it! - Your website is very Flashy.
If your website has an intro, or takes a long time to load, you probably have not taken the advice of an SEO or usability expert. - You have music playing on your website.
If your prospective customer is quietly feeding money into your shopping cart at work, don’t repay her by blasting music that gets her in trouble with her boss!
- Your website is loaded with Flash and JavaScript instead humble HTML.
Optimizing Flash and JavaScript is possible, but only if you want to pay a lot of extra money. HTML may not be as glamorous, but it gets you a whole lot more bang for your buck. - You spent more on photography or print campaign than on your search marketing campaign.
Don’t think of your search marketing company as a miracle worker, and don’t make them beg for scraps after you’ve paid for the TV commercials, fancy brochures, and high-paid PR design firms. Those high-priced items may give you status, but search marketing offers ROI. - Don’t use your gut to select SEO keywords.
Business owners and marketing executives are the worst source of SEO keywords, because they think BIG. Searchers think SMALL and SPECIFIC. - You hear the words: “We don’t care about Google traffic” in your marketing meetings.
Let’s face it: if you’re not getting Google traffic, your website is useless. Don’t bother making an expensive website if no one can find it.
Please feel free to share your own marketing war stories with me.
