The SEO process is a strategic effort to reach the top of the search engine rankings where your potential clients and customers will be able to find you. This process is different from most traditional advertising campaigns because it must adapt to the Internet mentality which is, in fact, different than more common commercialism and consumerism.
Compare the Internet consumer to the brick and mortar consumer. When a customer wanders the mall or other shopping center they have a vague idea that they may buy something... say, shoes. They will go from store to store and try a few things on and if they come across a great pair, or if they are presented with an incredible deal of some sort they may just buy.
Then there is the Internet customer. They get online and search for, say, "blue expensive shoes." This means that they are far more likely to purchase the first blue and expensive shoes they see... or they are at least more likely compared to a customer wandering from store to store. So here is the first thing SEO must consider: the potential customers have probably already made the decision to buy something. Now you have to cater to that mindset.
How do you do that? By taking into account the second Internet mentality SEO must address to be successful. And that is the intensely short attention span of the average visitor.
Everyone knows that SEO is trying to get a website to rank better because most people who use a search engine are unwilling to look past the third page of results to find the site they want. But SEO needs to think of more than that. They need to consider the searcher's intent.
When the searcher and potential customer clicks on your listing that you have worked so diligently to move up the rankings, will they see what they really expected to see? Will they find what they were really looking for?
If not, then it's just a simple click to immediately leave the site again.
Search engine optimization has a growing history and reputation, and not all of it is good. Black Hat SEO, those optimization techniques that are less than ethical, has made the Internet market a careful and suspicious one. Many customers have found themselves on a website they had no interest in, or might have even been completely opposed to. But they went there because someone had gotten it to the first page of results.
The Internet mentality won't let a customer be satisfied with clicking away in frustration. Nor will they be happy with warning a few friends about your questionable practices, not when there is so much more they can do to cause you at least as many headaches as you cased them. Popular options these days include blog posts, jamming your own forums with bad reviews, posting on other sites, and even reporting you to the search engines who will act more quickly and more brutally than the Better Business Bureau ever did.
Currently there is a big SEO push to try and take advantage of the social mentality on the Internet. Some of these have been more effective than others. The underlying idea was sound. In the social networking model the plan is to get one consumer to recommend the product or service to another customer. Or, at least, to make it look like the recommendation comes from another customer.
But this, like any other SEO tactic, can backfire when it's done wrong. Communities are very protective of their own, and if they find that someone has tried to infiltrate their community in the name of base commerce, you will alienate yourself from that group completely.
When you undertake an SEO campaign, remembering the Internet mentality is one of the foundational aspects that can help you build true, long-term success.
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