SEO Snake Oil

“Psst. Hey, kid.  Wanna be at the top of the Google rankings?  Gimme $1000.  I'll get ya there.”

The Snake Oil SEO “gurus” who sell this type of product intentionally keep one thing from their would-be customers...

If your website is at the top of the Google search pages, but doesn't provide useful information to your potential customers, it is useless.  If your potential clients click on your site and don't get immediately drawn in by your knowledge about your products and the problems they solve, they'll hit the “back” button quicker than you can say “SEO is dead.” 

Your website is a reflection of your business.  Is your front desk littered with random comments and advertisements, or does it have a theme?  Do you provide valuable information and service to people once they arrive in your door, or do you continue to shout at them until they purchase something or walk out?

According to Bob Burg, author of “Go-Giver,” All things being equal, people will do business with those that they know, like and trust. Your website represents an opportunity to create a base of fans that listen to what you say and who grow to know who you are.  This then leads to business down the road.  No SEO service will create this – only valuable, well-written content that provides service and knowledge to your visitors does this.  This type of information is not created by people who specialize in “tricking” Google, but by people who have the time and inclination to learn your business, its needs, the needs of your potential customers and who can write excellent copy.

Renew your brilliance

Just the other day, I was driving my daughter home from school when she saw a strange box by the side of a road on a pole. The box had something inside and a blue handset on the outside.

“Dad, what's that?”
“That is a pay phone!”
“What is a 'pay phone?'”
“People put money in the phone to call people they need to talk to.”
(eye roll) “Why don't they just text?”

At age 9, my daughter is a Facebook master and she has her own blog. Grandma knows that she responds nearly instantaneously to emails, and she is much more natural and interested via email than on the phone. Her other grandparents struggle with this – I recently set them up on facebook so they could keep in touch with the family and see our pictures – but it has been a long and difficult battle to persuade them to use the new technology that would connect them to the family they so love.

New technology scares us. We aren't at all sure how to use it – and we are fearful of “messing it up.” Companies sell identity theft security programs to an older generation by preying on this fear and making the internet seem much more dangerous than it actually is. However, as individuals and in business, we must evolve and learn to use this new technology... or suffer the fate of the pay phones.

I am now going to offer a bit of inspiration to anyone who remains fearful of social networks, internet marketing or “content marketing.” Ironically, this inspiration is derived from a 400-year-old work, The Art of Worldly Wisdom. In it, the monk Baltasar Gracian y Morales states:

Renew your Brilliance

'Tis the privilege of the Phoenix. Ability is wont to grow old, and with it fame. The staleness of custom weakens admiration, and a mediocrity that's new often eclipses the highest excellence grown old. Try therefore to be born again in valor, in genius, in fortune, in all. Display startling novelties, rise afresh like the sun every day. Change too the scene on which you shine, so that your loss may be felt in the old scenes of your triumph, while the novelty of your powers wins you applause in the new.

It is much better to be mediocre when trying something new than to continue to rely on one's older perfections. Reach out, learn and embrace the new. Whether as an individual or as a business owner, let your light shine in previously unexplored space. The internet and social networks are a vastly expanding space right now. We will all either expand into it or be eclipsed by it – the choice is ours.

(Our blog is written by Matt D'Rion and/or Chad Lane, owners of Worry Free Consulting... if you know Matt you know he doesn't have a daughter, we will let you guess which one of the guys wrote this one. Feel free to contact either of them Matt's Email and Chad's Email or comment below.)

How to get people to unsubscribe from your email list

I'm a big fan of subscribing to other's email lists. It gives me an opportunity to watch my own actions as a "consumer" of information. Which emails do I open? Which do I auto-delete? Worse, which cause me to unsubscribe?

 At the top of the "unsubscribe" list are those most annoying "Fooled ya!" Re: lines. They go something like this:

re: Thank you for subscribing to our premium service! You can bet I open those fast, heart pounding. I quickly scroll through the email, sure that I've been the victim of identity theft - because I sure as hell didn't subscribe to a premium service... I barely opened the other emails you sent me. Then truth outs - I (or someone pretending to be me) did not subscribe. Rather, I've been tricked into reading through a sales pitch that extols the virtues of the premium service.

Guess what? I just became an unsubscriber. Any organization that feels the need to trick me to get me to open their emails is not an organization from which I wish to receive further communication.

I understand the difficulty. I empathize with you and your crappy re lines that no one wants to open. Maybe you even have a good idea or two - but guess what? You have to learn how to hook me - not trick me.

There is a technology to writing decent hooks - and good copy. Fooling people plays no part in it, "Mad men" to the contrary. Enthusiasm. Reality. Interest. Without these things, your emails are little digital fliers that have been tossed to the winds of overfilled inboxes.