Posted on by Crammer
Anybody who has attempted to navigate the world of SEO probably has some war stories. The industry as it stands today is a mix of various characters with variable motivations. Now most SEO providers are likely upstanding operators. But it is worth knowing that there are some internet marketing sharks. Unfortunately, this is much more true with SEO then it is with other Web service providers.
1st, we need to understand the history of internet marketing and how it was born out of a kind of SEO black market.
Google, as well as the other big search engines, did not want anybody to know anything about how searches were ranked. They wanted to sample the internet without outside forces screwing results. While this is still somewhat true today, they have come a long way in revealing how internet marketing searches are ranked. This secret did not stop the masses from trying to crack the mysterious secrets behind search and left the market opened for fortune tellers and circus gypsies, bogus claims and wild theories. It is an internet marketing industry that was born from people who are attracted to pretending to be in the know, defeating a system or simply make money from thin value propositions.
2nd, for some reason the field of marketing often attracts folks that confuse sales with internet marketing.
Internet marketing is something that really focuses on satisfying a need, delivering a product and communicating value. Sales focuses on simply fast talk and getting a sale. One you can learn in a prestigious university and the other you learn on the street. I don’t mean to diminish sales folks but they need to know, they are not marketeers. SEO is ripe with sales folks who not only tend to ignore entirely the field of academic internet marketing but they often go so far as to say it is irrelevant in the world of SEO. It is just time someone spoke up about internet marketing and I guess thats me. SEO without the field of internet marketing is sales.
Now, it is important that I mention there are some very serious and professional internet marketing providers that are able to understand SEO in the context of a marketing mix.
But the internet marketing industry is still very rich with its sodden past. Weeding out the professional internet marketing folks from the salesy players is often as easy as avoiding big promises and guaranteed results. As Google, along with other major search engines, have begun to share more information about internet marketing searches, the industry has attracted more and more professional internet marketing providers.
This has shifted the market into identifying itself by 2 key terms. The terms known as black hat and white hat SEO is simply a concept of distinguishing good business practices from bad. Black hat is the world of unsolicited spam, toolbars that magically appear in your browser and sometimes even more malicious internet marketing techniques like trojans. White hat would relate to things like optimizing your site so that the search engine robots can read easily and therefore exploit any ranking value already existing on the site.
There is another trend with internet marketing that I have seen which in some cases is good and in other cases is bad.
This trend is where folks are selling video tutorials about the secrets of internet marketing and SEO. Now, I have researched this. There are no new ideas. It just like everything else in life. It takes work. Some of these tutorials have developed a fairly effective step-by-step system of SEO. But they have not invented anything new. They may tell you that they’re very good at what they do and often times I find that to be true. However, other providers will offer big claims with tools, software packages and techniques which are pretty much known and un-revolutionary.
The truth is that internet marketing is simply a matter of work, not secrets.
Either you learn how to do internet marketing and do the work yourself, which it is not very difficult to do. Or, you spend a lot of time doing your homework to find a quality internet marketing provider and fork over the cash so that they can do the necessary work to produce good results.
I have a great sympathy for people who have a passion for internet marketing.
I know a lot of people who really enjoy this field. It seems to be popular occupation for the serious trolls which is my social group. They are professional internet marketing folks, hard-working and really want to do great things with great results for their clients. But at the beginning of every engagement they find themselves explaining to their clients how they are not snake oil salesman. They cannot promise 100% guarantees. They can’t commit to big claims of ranking #1. internet marketing pros can’t do package for $99.99 a month and produce good results. And yes, quality internet marketing folks lose business because they told the truth. It seems many people just don’t realize that SEO is about hard work and determination. There is not a secret, a magic formula or even a person who is successful in SEO because they know more than everyone else. No, they just work harder than everyone else! They may tell you what you wan’t to hear that they are unique or special or posses the magical oracle. The truth is, if they are good at internet marketing folks, they hard workers.
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