‘Deciding to hire a SEO is a big decision that can potentially improve your site and save time, but [it] can also risk damage to your site and reputation’ – Google, 2016.

The world of SEO has changed … and continues to change the many ways companies digitally market themselves. Creating a SEO strategy for a company using its existing web site means that the company will be able to explore several distinct areas of the site and the changes to traffic (Rospigliosi, 2015). They could do this with a framework to analyse the results.

So what is exactly do you understand by the term SEO? Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is described as a cluster of strategies and techniques used to increase the amount of visitors to a website by obtaining a high-ranking placement in the search results page of a search engine (Parikh & Deshmukh, 2013). So basically, the aim of a SEO strategy is to increase the visitor traffic to a specific website and make them our customers.

But my question is, is it beneficial to all companies? What about small companies?  Surely, it’s a lot of work? The truth is SEO actually requires resources, time and money. And it’s continually evolving, which means companies must predict and anticipate changes in the future and need to create a SEO strategy that is prepared for these changes to succeed in the long run.

We look at the main drawbacks of SEO to small companies and look at a couple of examples of big organisations making small mistakes and resulting to big losses.

The Drawbacks
#1 New SEO strategy means new costs.
Creating a new SEO strategy for any organisation means time, investment and resources which for smaller companies means a cutback in spending etc. It is said that an expert is ideal in situations like this as they know how to align the SEO strategy with the company strategy, attitudes, aims etc. This therefore makes a long process and needs input for senior management, finance, marketing etc. SEO knowledge in businesses are fairly low, so any employees who may have impacted the website in the past may be reluctant to change it (Allin, 2016).

#2 Not all the data you need is in one place.
SEO data tools (e.g. Google Webmaster Tools, Moz, Panguin etc.) are currently not advanced enough to have all the data you need in one location. Each tool will provide you with different types of data so you must individually compare and contrast and look at how the company needs to optimise value and quality which is time consuming and costly.

#3 How can you define ‘a good quality’ SEO method?
It is difficult to define what has good quality, what is unique and what is useful in terms of SEO and a company’s pages. Everyone has different opinions/perceptions of techniques and some say it does more harm than good.

Matt Cutts from Google Webmasters addresses the idea of negative SEO and talks about how this can cause spam, fraud etc. You must also think about Black Hat techniques. Small companies must be aware of using “black hat” techniques. These are the techniques that can lead the search engines (like Google) to ban a site (Malaga, 2008).

If a small organisation uses SEO methods, it must be very aware not to violate any guidelines. But, although those techniques seem ‘unfair’, ‘unethical’ or ‘wrong’ to some, if it means more views and better results quicker and easier, why not? Right? I mean, what could go wrong?

So are there examples in the past to show how companies have used Black Hat techniques? Well the simple answer is yes. Big companies have been publicly fined but this happens fairly regularly. As it’s seen as the easy way, it is more common. So if large companies are being caught out, surely the same thing happens to smaller companies? We look at two Multi-national companies (MNCs) and look at their stories …

Toys R Us want Toys.com

In 2009, Toys R Us paid $5.1 million for the domain name ‘Toys.com’and it was simply because they didn’t have expert knowledge. Instead of transferring the domain name, the site was forwarded. Google noticed it and reindexed the domain, causing Toys R Us to lose its top ranking for the word ‘toys’.A report by Allemann (2009) writes “Now the value of ToysRUs’ $5.1M purchase of Toys.com has been relegated to type-in traffic and potentially some of the inbound links to Toys.com.’

Ideally, the plan was to use SEO cleverly so that when people searched for the word ‘toys’, it would direct them straight to their domain name. But that clearly isn’t what happened, the team who launched the new site, failed to redirect their old URLs and resulted to Google having to take action.

As for their domain name? Instead to climbing up; went falling down. The worst bit is they didn’t even use any ‘wrong’ or Black Hat techniques … they just made an error which costs them a lot of money. So surely if a large company can make this big of a mistake, anyone can; no?

Google vs. Google

But I suppose the biggest example is when Google received a penalty from no one other than Google. Yes, you heard me right.

In 2012, it was found that Google Chrome was benefitting from paid links which resulted to a two-month penalty from the company itself. Although it was technically an external party who had done this, it questions the idea of who you could trust to create and execute a SEO strategy for you?

Surely, if Google can make mistakes, so can we all?

So we’ve seen it, the drawbacks, the techniques and the examples. Although, it is wrong to say SEO never works; you have to think about if it holds value to your company. So no, it’s not a bad idea but just means to start it, you need time, effort and money and A LOT of it.