The concept of ensuring one’s website has been optimized for search is critical for any company doing business on the web. Essentially, search engines like Google and Yahoo look for specific things on every website to determine their "relevance" and thus page rank. For instance, it’s critical that every website have a site map, a contact page with a street address tied to google maps, and page names that relate to the content of the page. The list of these requirements goes on, but any competent web designer will know these things already and is able to make sure your site is in compliance.

Enter the snake oil salesmen. Anyone who claims to be able to guarantee you a google page rank is peddling false information. Companies that are doing this are getting banned from every reputable design and SEO directory (see more here).

There’s another flavor of marketer that is sometimes lumped into the same boat as people selling SEO and guaranteed Google rank. However, social media marketing specialists are NOT SEO experts. Social media marketers are simply new media marketers, and they provide a valuable service that can help you leverage your marketing dollars more effectively. Social media marketing is predicated on encouraging others to help people with their marketing mix. The idea is to inspire and empower evangelists for your brand. You attract the attention of a few people, who in turn pass that information along to a few friends, who in turn pass it along to a few more. Essentially what you are trying to do is encourage an organic advertising wave of communication driven not by spam messages or discrete ads, but rather by potential customers getting your message from trusted sources. It should be noted that the driving force of these "evangelists" has little to do with helping your company increase sales. They want to laugh, or learn, or save money, or solve a problem, or be inspired, or support a cause, or impress a friend, or scratch some other proverbial itch. The art in social media marketing is figuring out how you fit into the conversation and how you maximize it. Shouting “Buy me!” is the surest recipe for failure.

Site Image Studios offers you classes in SEO and will sit down with you and develop your virtual presence WITH YOU as part of every site we design. We want to EMPOWER you and your company’s development on the web. We believe that demystifying your company’s promotional campaign, tracking it statistically, and providing you with control will make you immune to the snake oil sales pitch.

If you are interested in learning more about SEO, I can’t recommend this post from Google enough. Who better to give you the real inside information on SEO?