Why SEO experts are almost pointless.

Almost every marketing site you visit these days, RAVES about search engine optimisation or SEO. But the reality is, that for many small businesses, this approach to promoting your website is rather short-sighted and pointless when the search engines change their algorithms. In fact, many SEO companies charge from $200 to $1500 AUD up front, with continual monthly fees (not including your advertising expenses)! Not to mention the fact that many don't try to draw profitable traffic to your business.

At the very core, I believe that every organisation should design their site in accordance with Google's, Yahoo's and MSN's Mission Statements for their search engines. Why? Because that is what SEO is all about - Giving the search engines what they want to deliver to their users. Two programs which I have read and endorse, both advocate tailoring your site to meet the Mission statements of Major Search Engines. Those Programs are:

1. John Reese's Traffic Secrets and;
2. Jack Humphrey's Power Linking Book

Of course, you should always follow some of the tips many SEO experts use but it's just not worth the trouble of hiring someone to do something which can be easily done anyway. That is:

• You should find out the best keywords you need to use to target your audience
• Write your main keywords into your websites which match the content (but don't overdo it!)
• Link to other high ranked pages which have similar keywords and content
• Get other high-ranked pages who have similar content to you, to link to your site
• (I'll talk more about this another day...)
• Get an affiliate program going
• Submit you site to anywhere you can submit it to, (I particularly like this one here called FreeWebSubmission.com)

After that, continually update your content on the site, because we all know how much Google loves new stuff.