Why is SEO so confusing?
I promise you, search engine optimisation is NOT confusing and its not difficult. You just need to know the right way to do things or more importantly what not to do!
I believe there are two reasons why SEO appears confusing.
Too Much Has Been Written
There’s been way too much written about SEO (just look what I’m doing!) and its a minefield of personal opinions based on what ‘experts’ think works and a lot of it contradicts itself.
There’s the guru, ninja and alchemist (!) who all have an opinion and claim fast results because they are desperate to attract new customers. Fast doesn’t happen (see below). Search the net, there are thousands of people writing even more blog posts and confusing the crap out of everyone.
Then there’s the academic SEO who spends their life deep in spreadsheets and analytics software trying to figure out how Google ranks sites. There’s a lot of good stuff about (Look at Moz.com) but for the average person writing for their website this is OTT and confusing.
Increasing the percentage of something on your page is not going to make a blind bit of difference if the quality of the content is low to medium.
If you write for your company website or have a blog then there’s a lot of simple things you can do before you get totally baffled by academic SEO.
It’s not difficult. SEO has a lot to do with writing properly for the web, making sure the structure of your site is correct and targeting your content well.
We Want It Fast
We live in a world where we want instant results. So many people have been writing about how they’ve done this and that and its given them fast results that have made them millions. It really doesn’t work like that and if anyone has experienced it then its probably just luck.
SEO is tedious work and does not bring in instant results. If it was easy and fast I’d be on a beach and not writing this!
Naturally, we’ll be attracted by these fast-result-techniques, who wouldn’t be. Why wait months for results when you can get them now. Our brain will start to believe all these tips and get confused.
You want it instant then advertise!
At the end of the day….
….there’s not really two reasons for being confused its just one.
We want results quickly, we know it’s not going to happen so we believe all the people saying they can do it and this advice is so contradictory we get confused.
SEO is just one part of a big promotional picture but you do need to get it right. It is what it says on the tin, optimising your website so the search engines can understand it.
Ten years ago you may have been able to get away with just SEO to get great results but not any more. You need to build in social media, offline & online marketing and have an holistic approach to your marketing in general.
SEO is very much a part of marketing.
I hope I haven’t confused you!! Get in touch if you fancy some SEO Training and learn how to get your site in the best possible shape to be ranked well.