4 Secrets About SEO the SEOs Never Tell You

Question of the day.

How many websites were there by end of 2012?

1. 6.3 million


2. 630 million


3. 6.3 billion

Correct answer? 630 million (src).

Granted that a lot of domains are owned by squatters, even if 10% of them were owned by legitimate businesses, that would be staggering 63 MILLION websites that are looking for traffic.

What’s interesting is that out of that 630 million, about 10% were added in 2012 ALONE. In other words, the rate at which websites are coming online is increasing exponentially.

Of course, what does every website owner want? More traffic! (Even though more traffic doesn’t always mean more customers.)

For some reason, people are taught the old ways of doing SEO, as in the stuff that used to work before all these crazy updates and sometimes even before the mighty search giant Google.

Why? I have no idea.

My guess is that there are SEO “gurus” that are still making money off selling old SEO tactics that used to work in late 90′s. (That’s why you should STOP listening to gurus and run tests yourself to see what really works). People read them and think they are still valid.

Whatever the reason maybe, here are some facts to consider if you’re thinking of investing in SEO. (whatever that means)

SEO is really a content game

(Get it? “Content game”)

No matter what anyone tells you, without content, no one is going to link to you.

Makes sense, right? Linking to a website or a page is like giving a “praise” to a speaker at a conference. But if you don’t open your mouth and give people good content (i.e. media), why on earth would anyone clap for you?

Newbie SEOs or SEO agencies will tell you things like onsite optimization, proper keywords, good navigation, etc etc. Problem is that all that stuff is now handled by most CMS (content management system) is like WordPress and Blogger, and you really don’t need to do any of that.

You need LINKS. Lots of them.

And there are only 3 ways to get them

• spam the hell out of people – which never works long term


• ask people to link to you – very tiring & manually intensive


• make good content and persuade people to link to you

What are good “baits” to get people to link to you?

• Guest blogging (provided that you actually write stuff people want to read)


• Infographics (like this one about how SEO is dying)


• Be an expert & know your stuff down cold


• Freebies (example: turning freebies into revenue)


• Case Studies – (example: starting a “zero risk” business)

But what’s interesting is that now, the content has to be more than just good… they have to be GREAT.

Moz did a research on number of keywords in content that occupy the top positions of Google rankings, and they found that there’s a correlation between length & position.

Why is this the case?

Simply because more words = more likelihood that you’ll attract higher quantity of links.

And this is why the ROI on SEO (if you actually spend money on outsourcing) is tough because the odds are that you are writing your content for your site, while having people elsewhere link to them. Not to mention if you are doing PR, TV/radio ads, social media and so on, how can you really say that the SEO rankings were result of their action vs yours?

And that’s why I don’t “do” SEO for clients.

Without landing page optimization, no amount of SEO will help you

If there’s NOTHING you get from reading this, know that online marketing is TWO sided.

1) Driving traffic

and

2) Converting traffic

Problem with most “marketers” is that they’re so focused on the top side of the funnel: driving traffic. It’s like clapping with one hand.

Without proper landing page & copywriting, you might as well be driving traffic to your competitor because no one is going to take any action. Remember, each page on your website is a chance for you to convince them to do business with you. (And this is WHY i advocate so strongly on people learning copywriting).

Here’s a perfect example from ShoeMoney (where I guest blog regularly)

Three years ago at Webmaster World Pubcon there was a site clinic where top search engine blogger – Danny Sullivan and Google Search Engineer – Matt Cutts were giving advice to people who wanted tips manipulating the Google search results to rank their website higher then it currently (naturally/organically) was.

Dr David Klein stood up and gave out his website. He said he wanted to rank for “San Diego Chiropractic”. After bringing up Dr Klein’s website Danny Sullivan cracked a joke that he might want to have “San Diego Chiropractic” in the title of the website if you want to be ranked. Which also inspired the crowd to have a good laugh at Dr Klein’s ignorance of SEO.

I remember feeling really bad for Dr Klein and evidently so did many others because pretty much every SEO on the planet came out of the woodwork to help him. Now keep in mind before this conference he was not found anywhere for “San Diego Chiropractic”. But soon after… with the help of all the top SEO’s in the world including a post by Matt Cutts containing 8 links to Dr Klein’s San Diego Chiropractic website, he was ranking #1 for San Diego Chiropractic in no time.

3 years later he still holds that #1 listing.

Ok sounds great right? Google ‘s top gun (Matt Cutts) and all the best SEO’s in the world have advised him how to manipulate Google ‘s results to make his website show up #1.

But there is only one problem. When DK (Dr David Klein) came to me for help converting web visitors into customers he told me he was not getting any customers from his website. And honestly a quick look at the website shows you why.

Its not very user friendly and there is no real call to action or incentive to book an appointment.

I told DK we would have to do some serious design changes to get some conversion. But he had no interest in that. He said he did not want to lose his #1 ranking for San Diego Chiropractic by making changes to the website….. even if it delivered him zero actual sales or customers.

If SEO is a marketing channel and it produces NO customers, why keep investing in it?

What’s the point of getting the clicks if no one takes any action?

Social profile / brand is a huge SEO factor

This is probably the GREATEST thing ever that Google has done

Few days ago, I managed to set of my car alarm after losing my car alarm remote. The car honked non stop for 5-10 minutes while I was frantically trying to look for solution. I was so frustrated that I physically removed the car battery (btw.. bad idea, because the alarm is 100x louder without the hood suppressing the sound… do this at your own risk.)

Of course, I started googling for answers.

Back in the old days, search engine results (even Google’s) were littered with links with REALLY crappy content (like most of eHow), where there’s 5% content and rest are ads. In some verticals (like “how to fix car alarm”) is still plagued with crappy content that provides zero content.

But now, thanks to Google authorship, you can tell if an article has been written by an actual person or if it was written by bunch of content farm slaves who know nothing about the topic yet claim to be “experts” just because they have nice looking website.

In fact, “SEO”-d articles with the author’s face next to it gets WAY more clicks:

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That’s a heatmap of where people are clicking on search the engines.

Notice the red (i.e. more clicks) are focused around links that have PICTURES next to them because we are genetically programmed to look at faces, not text.

In another ranking #1 in SEO isn’t the only sole factor in getting clicks, but rather your social profile.

Make sense right? You want to read stuff from people who are doing it every day, not just some “how” articles that gives you 5 sentences on what you should do, followed by 4 pages of ads.

Some verticals are close to impossible rank #1

(…. with the amount of time/money you’re investing in)

If you refer back to the source above that mentions how many websites there are on the internet, you’ll notice a fascinating statistic about spam:

144 billion – Total email traffic per day worldwide.

68.8% – Percentage of all email traffic that was spam.

50.76% – Percentage of all spam that was about pharmaceuticals, the top category of all spam.

If you do the math, that’s 144 BILLION x 68.9% x 50.76% = 50.36 BILLION email spams that get sent daily to sell people viagra, prozac, or whatever the flavor of the month is.

Why?

Because ranking #1 for some of these verticals (even for blackhats) is insanely competitive.

There are entrenched companies who spend millions, if not tens of millions, of dollar pumping out content, doing crazy linkbuilding, PR releases, link baits, etc. etc. to make sure they rank #1.

Here’s a 2012 Moz blog post of some of the most competitive keywords by vertical:

If you’re an insurance sales guy in LA trying to rank #1 for “insurance”, good luck. You’re going head to head against every insurance company in the country. The smarter thing to do is go after long tail keywords like “los angeles insurance company” (which is still competitive, but not as bad as one or two word keywords).

For those local businesses seeking local leads,… unless they want to be in the business of doing SEO, the better bet is to use search marketing to get local customers instead.

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