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SEO and the ROI Debacle

Clearing Up the One-Time Effort Myth

Some search engine optimization critics like to mislead companies into thinking that SEO is relatively easy or requires little more than a one-time concerted effort. SEO consultants get blasted for selling modern day snake oil and taking a year or more to apply it in small doses (collecting hefty monthly checks along the way).

Every industry - from paid advertising and car sales to insurance and medicine - has its share of bad apples or shady players surrounded by inept professionals who mean well but offer limited value.

Search engine optimization is no different.

It's absolutely true that a well-researched search engine optimization strategy can make a huge difference if implemented in a sound manner. But an initial spike isn't the same as continuous improvement. OK, so 8 of your 20 marquee search terms make it into the top 10 on Google and top 5 on MSN. What about the other terms? What about Yahoo! What about phrases ranking #8, #9 and #10 that need to be higher?

Of course it takes a long time - up to a year in some cases for some keywords depending on when updates are made (and how well). Even then, reasonable SEO activities can go on year after year as website owners and consultants refine efforts in light of discoveries about the way people search, search engine algorithmic changes, revised content, new products/services and new website designs.

Is SEO a cakewalk? Hardly.

Sometimes the ongoing effort takes a great deal of effort and communication between the client and a team of search engine optimization experts with different disciplines in SEO best practices, marketing, copywriting, design and programming.

David Pasternack, president and co-founder of Did-it, launched the latest volley of criticism with his DMNews article, "Troubled Times for SEO Firms." After being lambasted, he followed up with "An SEO Critic Answers His Critics."

Pasternack used a skin doctor analogy to describe SEO:

"If your doctor behaved the way many in the SEO crowd believe SEO firms should work, he'd run some tests, come up with a treatment plan, but wouldn't give you the medicine to rub on your skin. Hed keep this medicine (labeled "Super Secret SEO Sauce") locked up in a vault in his office. Then he'd make a series of appointments for you to come in so that he could rub this medicine on your skin, charging you hundreds, perhaps thousands of dollars for each visit."

Maybe a single doctor isn't apropos.

Fathom SEO believes our industry is akin to a team of medical specialists. We delight in receiving websites with serious ailments, maybe even operable cancer. We spend a lot of time with them because one or many of their conditions simply demands the effort. Ranking Paralysis requires a great deal of care over a long period as. Other diseases and injuries include Content Atrophy, Link Deficiency, Internal Source Code Bleeding, Second Degree Design Burns and many more.

Read excerpts from this SEO study online: