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Michael
Cheney talks about how SEO has become so complicated and how placing
the burden upon one person to do their job AND SEO has become impractical
and unrealistic. Lycos and AskJeeves are the latest to jump into
the SEO arena. Find out how much this will cost you.
Would You Let A Dog Or A Butler Market Your Website?
The latest news to hit the Internet's 'water cooler' is that Lycos
and Ask Jeeves are to begin their own SEO services..
Search engine optimisation (or SEO) is any practice related to
the end goal of improving your website’s positioning in the search
engines.
The brief history of SEO is that it first started out solely as
the remit of the developers themselves. This was back in the day
when one person designed, built, maintained, hosted and marketed
a website.
The Ever-Changing Internet Landscape
During the past few years, however, the entire Internet industry
has divided up into a myriad divisions to such an extent that SEO
is now a booming sector in its own right. Entering the term "seo"
on Google returns nearly 20 million results!
Now businesses recognise that it is no longer possible to expect
one individual or company to possess all the necessary skills ‘under
one roof’ to be able to achieve great results on the graphic design,
technical construction AND marketing of their website.
This has led to the trend of bringing in specialist search engine
marketing consultants or companies to assist.
As Google and the like are spending millions every year on developing
their tools to accurately sift through the billions of web pages
that exist it really is a full time occupation just keeping track
of what has an effect on search engine ranking and which strategies
work best.
Everyone Wants 'Organic' Nowadays!
Ask Jeeves and Lycos are now offering their SEO service to help
companies get found in the ‘organic’ results of search engines.
‘Organic’ results are those results in a search engine listing
that are non-paid. Almost all search engines now offer businesses
the shortcut of simply paying to get an ad listed whereas as a latest
study indicates that only 28% of searchers will click on an advertisement
as opposed to one of the ‘organic’ results (on Google).
This is the reason we’re all fighting for high rankings in the
‘organic’ results. This demand from businesses is also presumably
the main driving factor behind Ask Jeeves and Lycos starting to
offer their own Search Engine Optimisation services.
Money Well Spent?
In short - I’m not sure.
If you have a 50 page website, getting Lycos to provide you with
SEO services will cost you a tidy $10,000. They also include the
questionable tactic of re-submitting your website over and over
to search engines which is both pointless and risky as some will
act against those that submit more than once.
$10,000 sounds like a lot to me for a service that is only dealing
with search engines and which talks of ‘recommendations’ that you
then have to implement yourself.
Really though - it comes down to what you are trying to achieve
with your website.
My two cents on this is that the Lycos service doesn’t devote enough
attention to links - your money may be better spent on getting more
high quality in-bound links or on a well-managed Pay Per Click Campaign.
Ask Jeeves
http://www.askjeeves.com
Lycos' SEO Service
http://ranking.lycos.com/sitesidemore.html
Search Engine Users Survey
http://www.clickz.com/stats/sectors/software/article.php/3348071
About the Author
Michael Cheney is Author of The Website Marketing BibleTM. Take
the Free 7-Part Course "Internet Marketing Made Easy"
and get your free sampler of 'The Bible' here: http://www.websitemarketingbible.com/marketing/
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