We can lead a horse to water but we can’t make him drink! I think many times people equate SEO with direct sales and it doesn’t always work that way depending how the services is acquired. Search engine optimization is the process of creating exposure, marketing a business and generally creating an inbound marketing stream of website traffic. If a search marketer is hired for just that there are certain things we have no control over at all. When it comes to sales, if people don’t like the product there is nothing we can do about that. If the market gets feisty and people are not spending there is nothing we can do about that either.
Here are 6 things and SEO has no control over:
Economic Market Conditions
Market conditions will directly dictate how people behave on your website. As an SEO we cannot control how your audience behaves due to market conditions. The best we can do is provide your website with the right pathways for your audience to find your business. After that it is entirely up to your product to make the sale. If we are not hired to address any conversion aspects of the website or tweak landing pages that it is up to your product, brand and service to communicate.
Poor Conversion Aspects
I have run into situations where website conversion aspects are so horrendous but nobody wants to listen, they think the site is the cat’s bag. We cannot control how your audience behaves on your site if our recommendations for website conversions fall under deaf ears. Sure you might know your audience best but I like to think many of us know how to communicate to a website user.
Stinky Products & Services
We didn’t come up with your products & services, you did. We were simply hired to create traffic and awareness in front of your target audience and let them know that you and your company exist in the digital space. If we are hired to assist with product development that would be another story but the product needs to be able to speak to your audience on its own. If we do our job by bringing the people to the party you need to have some music playing to make them smile if you catch my drift.
Upper Management That Won’t Listen
Do you ever go to the doctor or dentist and tell them what they are proposing will not work? I know I don’t. When I hire an expert in their field I trust what they are doing and saying. If we supply important recommendations and changes and upper management does not want to implement them leading to less than stellar results that is nobody’s fault but the companies. This can often time be one of the more challenging areas to address if you are a search marketer. Often time’s important website changes need to be made and red tape along with company politics holds that process up.
External Website Changes
When you pour your blood sweat and tears into sites like Twitter & Facebook you have to prepare for the fact that some of those sites do evolve and even disappear. Things change overtime and there could be a day where elements like Facebook fan pages simply go away. Companies pour millions of dollars into Facebook marketing but the reality is that someday you have to prepare for the fact that those fans might disappear overnight due to developmental changes. That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be there now I am just saying that things can change abruptly sometimes so you have to be prepared for those changes. Diversify, diversify and diversify some more. Do we kind of sound like a bad investing commercial?
Search Algorithm Updates
We cannot control when Google makes a wide sweeping change to how they rank website pages. A good search marketer will take a nice quality approach to web marketing where a blow to the algorithm will be felt a bit less but overall these things happen. Guess what? They are going to happen even more in the very near future because for every good SEO apple there are five bad apples.