Internet Marketing for Older Adults

Despite the fact that SEO has been around for a while, there are still a few commonly believed myths that continue to be passed around. No matter how great your effort, these myths are not going to help you increase your search placement.

Myth 1 – Organic vs. Paid Search

There are many people who tend to either focus on SEO for organic search results or paid advertising for traffic because they don’t believe that the two methods can work together. A rare few seek a balance between the two.

In 2013, Resolution Media, one of the largest search agencies in the world, and Kenshoo, a digital marketing technology company, created a white paper for Hewlett Packard (HP) entitled, “The Search Sandbox: Paid Plays Well with Organic.” They were able to determine that running paid advertising in conjunction with organic search results provided a positive value.

“This research puts to rest the controversy over running paid search advertising for brands that have strong organic coverage, said Aaron Goldman, chief marketing officer at Kenshoo. “Our study shows that visitors arriving from paid search are more profitable than those arriving from organic search, even when you take into account traffic acquisition costs.”

The report determined that paid search drives higher net revenue per visit (NRPV) than organic search. Even when there was an organic search result in the number one position, searchers still clicked and converted on a paid advertisement 39.6 percent of the time. Paid search is even more valuable, and your only option, when you don’t rank on the first page organically.

Even when you do rank organically on the first page for a keyword, an additional link on the page, through paid search, is very beneficial. However, a good practice is to continue working on SEO to achieve first page results organically for various keywords and then filling in the gaps with paid search.

Myth 2 – SEO Is for the Search Engines and Not for Visitors

Search engines are evolving and so is the way in which they are able to interpret the data. Search engines are able to view a website much like a person, and with semantics, they are getting a better understanding of the content.

Much of what search engines look for on a page creates a better user experience for the visitor as well. User experience is now a part of SEO and not mutually exclusive of it.

Myth 3 – Social Is Not the New SEO

Social signals are an important part of SEO today. You need to create quality content for SEO; quality content provides a good user experience; visitors are more likely to share quality content. SEO and social are becoming more intertwined with one another. Additional proof is that Google is now indexing Twitter once again.

People want to be able to interact with the brands they support and follow. The Internet is becoming more relationship based and by nurturing those relationships, you will be rewarded with higher traffic and search placement.

Myth 4 – SEOs are Scammers

The frontiers of SEO are still a bit like the Wild West in that there is no governing body to oversee it and many businesses do rely on for-profit SEO firms to get them on the front page of the rankings. In the past, there have been a lot of black hat and gray hat firms that have sullied the name of SEO, but these firms are not able to withstand the sands of time and eventually fade away.

Legitimate SEO firms are able to do great things for businesses in need of SEO.

There is not a one-size-fits-all approach to SEO and many aspects of SEO can elusive, but with education and understanding, you can dispel the SEO myths and create a strategy for your site to get to the top of the search results.