We’re probably not the only SEO company who has had to dispel SEO myths. In the past, it was easier to bat away doubts potential clients had – SEO is not about stuffing keywords into title tags, SEO is not about submitting to crap directories, SEO is not fast, etc.

These days, however, people are looking at SEO from a return on investment (ROI) perspective. Most clients are already up to speed about the basics of SEO, and what we’ve found is that the relevant myths are most tied into expectations of ROI. Here are two myths that you’ll want to dispel right away to save you a lot of explaining later on.

SEO Myth #1: Higher Rankings Guarantee More Sales

Look at it from the client’s perspective. “Here are three keywords that describe my company. This SEO company is telling me how important search engine optimization is for business. That means if I’m on Page 1, my sales are guaranteed to increase.”

This kind of logic is perfectly understandable. What’s missing from it are other major factors  necessary for increased sales.

• Conversion Rate: Yes, Page 1 rankings will increase traffic, but if the client has a website that doesn’t convert traffic, sales won’t increase at all.
• Customer Service: It’s not ideal to drive a lot of new traffic if a company isn’t ready to handle the extra volume. Poor customer service is the fastest way to lose customers and one of the major factors to driving and sustaining sales increases.
• Brand Awareness: SEO does increase brand awareness, but it doesn’t do much as much to build brand equity and interaction (Google doesn’t let you post your logo in the SERPs…not yet, anyway).

In case some readers are taking this the wrong way, here are a few reminders about the benefits of SEO:

• SEO does drive qualified, relevant traffic.
• SEO does increase visibility on the Web and provide an opportunity to obtain new customers.
• SEO does provide an opportunity to market your company as an authority in your industry.

SEO Myths

SEO Myth #2: SEO Replaces Marketing

This is a tough one, especially with the popularity of SEO. This myth suggests SEO has no limitations when there are actually quite a few. For example, SEO can’t create the same buzz as a traditional marketing campaign. A mistake that many companies make – especially the smaller ones – is to rely on SEO too much. Yes, SEO is a traffic driver, but it certainly isn’t the only one. E-blasts, print advertising campaigns, radio and television still perform remarkably well. We recommend companies take a holistic marketing approach, not just focus on a single promotion channel, no matter what the medium.

If the budget isn’t there, a company needs to decide what approach to take in regards to marketing. Do you want quick results and immediate traffic increases? Run a traditional advertising campaign and blast potential customers with your message. Do you want long-term results that bring in sustained, qualified traffic? Go with SEO.

There are obviously more, but we’ll leave that to another day. Any other SEO myths you want to dispel out there?

I think one of the best ways that I’ve heard SEO consultants described is as advocates for your website who make your case for a page #1 ranking to the search engines. 

Spring is here even though there are not many signs of it yet, (at least in Chicago where our SEO firm is located).  If you live in the northern part of the country, doesn’t every year make you feel like the winter is never ending and spring is never going to be here?  Then one day you wake up and look out the window and something is different; the grass is green, leaves are on the trees, the birds are singing, and the sun is shining. You think to yourself “huh, that wasn’t so bad I got through another winter.”

Twitter and how you can use it for business purposes is quite possibly the hottest topic in the search engine optimization and online marketing fields these days (of course, you can follow our SEO company at @SEOGroup).

It is no secret that Wikipedia pages tend to rank incredibly well in Google, making them highly coveted by SEO consultants and their clients.  In fact, any SEO company knows that if you have a client who is notable enough to merit a Wikipedia page, you’re likely going to have a much easier time getting their sites to rank.

Some SEO Consultants and SEO companies break the rules (the guidelines set out by the search engines) all the time - this is generally considered black hat or unethical SEO.  However, sometimes breaking the rules can lead to increased notoriety and popularity.

There are a lot of people who call them social media consultants or even social media experts in the online marketing field these days - and some of them even have real online marketing expertise!  However, when working with social media consultants or SEO consultants with social media credentials, it is essential to recognize that it takes more than having a couple hundred or even a few thousand Facebook friends or Twitter followers to understand how social media actually works.

With apologies to Aaron Wall, everyone’s got a friend’s cousin’s brother who has read SEOBook and thinks that this makes him an online marketing expert.  Now, while SEOBook is certainly a valuable resource and a great place for beginners to start, that bit of research alone is not going to teach you what works on the web - understanding how the search engines and how to get a website to rank for popular keywords requires more than just a little reading.

This month marks the tenth anniversary of Google’s existence - doesn’t it seem like we’ve all been Googling for answers to all our internet questions much longer than that? More importantly, Google has gone from a upstart search engine to perhaps the biggest player on the internet - and as an SEO company, we have a more…adversarial relationship with Google than most.