3 Reasons Why SEO Companies Fail

SEO Companies Fall Short on the Inbound Marketing Front

-When it comes to getting results with Inbound Marketing, SEO Companies are woefully inadequate. Designed to build a web presence for high volumes of search traffic, SEO is not really a ?targeted? process. In most cases, the companies utilizing SEO as their primary marketing strategy have a specific formula that doesn?t vary from client to client.

Quantity Should Never Be More Important than Quality

SEO Companies focus on quantity over quality

Search Engine Optimization is a marketing technique that involves heavy link building through directory submissions and social media bookmarking. There is an element where web design and website optimization are a part of the process, but these services aren?t what actually drives traffic. In theory, website optimization can increase Conversion numbers, but those numbers will still be low if the quality of visits is low.

Focusing on quantity over quality is Problem Number One for SEO firms. Volume does not necessarily lead to successful conversion and sale numbers. A search marketing benchmark report released by MarketingSherpa in 2012 reports that SEO median conversion rates are roughly 4%. With PPC traffic, conversion rates are 3.5%. Both of these methods focus on high volume, not niche targeting.

Analytics and Metrics for SEO are Not Accurate

What exactly drives the traffic to your website? With Hubspot analytics, you can view the source of each visit and the path the visitor took on your site, but you can?t determine which SEO action generated that visit. A mix of automated social bookmarking and directory submissions is the most common technique used in SEO link building. Each action is a bulk action, so specific targeting is not there to be measured.

With Inbound Marketing Solutions, it?s possible to measure specific actions because each submission or post contains a tracking code. Hits from links that bring visits to your website can be analyzed to determine whether that source is worth going back to. The inability to do this is Problem Number Two with SEO firms. Inbound Marketing campaigns, because they are content centric, don?t have this issue.

Problem Number Three: Google has Changed the Rules

Google’s Panda Update penalized many SEO Companies

The release of Google Panda and the follow up of Google Penguin crippled a number of SEO companies because they were simply doing it wrong. Panda, a Google algorithm change released originally in April 2011, penalized for poor website quality and over-optimization. Penguin, released a year later, specifically targeted SEO companies that use ?Black Hat? techniques such as cloaking, keyword stuffing, duplicate content, and posting to ?Link Farms?.

The changes at Google were implemented to ensure higher quality sites show up at the top of Google search results. To adjust, SEO firms have to evolve, and many of them have. Others have recreated themselves as Content Marketing Firms. Doing that effectively does produce measurable results.

Inbound Marketing as an Alternative to SEO

You may be asking at this point, ?What is Inbound Marketing?? and ?How is that better than SEO?? Inbound Marketing is a system that implements targeted and tracked actions using mainly content creation and lead nurturing.

The most effective content is that which is informative or educational, not promotional or sales copy. The objective is to give away something of value, bringing new visitors to your site (top of the funnel) and nurturing them until their ready to be a paying customer or subscriber.

Are you ready to implement an Inbound Marketing program? You can start the process today with an Inbound Marketing Assessment of your website. You can also visit our ?What is Hubspot?? page to learn more about Hubspot analytics and marketing programs.

Marketing Matters Inbound?is an inbound marketing firm specializing in online conversions, content?strategy, call-to-action mapping and traditional media placement. Our experience in?B2B digital?marketing?and traditional media allows us to deliver results through a strategic media mix. We believe in?aligning and merging marketing and sales/operations for optimal return on your marketing investment.