Why you will waste money on SEO this year.

SEO is the buzz word du jour amongst business people I speak to in Australia right now. Given the current economic situation SEO has been bumped way up the list of priorities for people as they work to wring every last bit of benefit from every single dollar that goes out the door. For most of you it will be a waste of time.

Why?

Because once you’ve had your copy written to maximise key words yet still read like a human being, paid for a bucket of links, got your page rank up to 6 or above, submitted to directories, optimised url’s and everything else your SEO expert asks you to do you will turn around and see that so has everyone else. In 2009 it’s the price of entry

So what can we do?!

Don’t panic.
Take a deep breath.
It’s pretty simple.

Add value by creating content worth consuming.
Content that shows off why someone would want to buy from you (no, not advertising -though it does have its place).
Content that engages or forms the basis of a community.

We are now in the age of Media Meritocracy and you have access to better, cheaper, easier to use tools and people for content creation than at any time in history. Oh, and by the way, all this stuff done well and in concert with your other SEO stuff will send you through the roof.

SEO is important. But stopping at just SEO is like launching a new car on the market and stopping at giving it four wheels.

(Image by: 3dom)

Back to the Future

On Monday the Australian Financial Review had an article about analysts predicting a decrease in advertising spend for 2009. According to a table I managed to snatch a glance at all media are going to suffer a reduction in spend except for On-line and Pay TV. Tends to make a pretty clear suggestion about where the eyeballs are – or where they think they are going to be.

Unfortunately there was no analysis about what the On-line spending would consist of, I’m sure they’re just thinking banner ads and more banner ads* as Social Media spending is probably not on the Fin Reviews radar yet. I say that because what happened when I tried to find the article later suggests that the Fin Review may be struggling to come to grips with changes in the on-line world.

The article was of great interest to me so of course I tried to look it up on-line the next day…not only was the it nigh on impossible to find anything in the Fin Review that was not TODAY when I did find other articles I wanted to look at – not download, print, or otherwise extract, just LOOK at – I was informed I would need to get a subscription.

Note to Fin Review – it’s 2008, not 1998.

The New York Times abandoned subscription content in 2007.
If Rupert reckons he can’t extract spondoolas for that content what dark secret are you harbouring to prove otherwise?

There is a fundamental reason why I think it’s a dumb approach.

Follow me here – it gets complex:

Newspapers make money from advertising.
Advertisers pay more for more eyeballs, clicks, action, whatever…just more.
Making it any harder for the reader to get your article (process, cost) means they will go elsewhere for their information (the internet is pretty good for that sort of stuff).
You now have less readers.
And less appeal for advertisers.

What happens next is pretty obvious, isn’t it?
Think you’re safe Fin Review? Bet the Chicago Tribune did too.

(Does anyone else see the irony of a newspaper reporting on a predicted decrease in newspaper advertising spend and then making it harder for a reader to see an article and the associated ads? Or is it just me?)

*And, according to the Nielsen Trust in Advertising report Oct 07,” …only consumer-generated media and branded web sites were trusted by more than half of all consumers.  Search engine and banner advertising, along  with text ads on mobile phones, each scored at the bottom  of the list with fewer than 35 percent of total respondents”.

(Photo by acidcookie)