It seems that all of us Manchester SEOs could soon be out of a job. In recent weeks a website has shown up in the Google UK listings boasting of how it has out-ranked all of the major SEO companies and professionals for the term ‘SEO Manchester’. And do you know what? It has.
At the time of writing www.seomanchester.org.uk is sitting comfortably at the 4 spot in the Google UK listings, but has previously boasted of sitting at the top of the tree at number 1! And what an excellent job it has done – it even offers SEO tips for anyone else that fancies getting into the business. So it seems that anyone can do this job – even someone that is new to the trade – and achieve results than those who have been slaving away for years.
Can you hear the sound of every SEO in Manchester collectively filing down the job centre? Me neither.
The site’s owner may have been well meaning in his attempts to learn a new skill, however bragging about ranking for a phrase that just isn’t competitive is to miss the point entirely. Is it generating anything in the way of relevant (whatever that would mean for this site) traffic? Is it making any money? Has it brought in any new clients?
The simple fact is that ranking well for ’seo manchester’ is like one of those people that tries to get into the Guinness book of Records by eating an aeroplane – no one is trying to beat you. The statistics show that the site only has 18 external links pointing to it which demonstrates how little link building needs to be done in order to rank well for such niche uncompetitive terms. Don’t forget that strong rankings are far from a guarantee of high traffic volume.
A few weeks ago a Keyboard Cat blog post I wrote ranked number 1 in the Google UK listings for – ooh….about a day – and all I did was include ‘keyboard cat’ in the title and the body text along with a few videos. The blog got a large volume of traffic – but no one stuck around to check out the rest of the site. This was entirely understandable as what sort of person who is interested in a cat playing a keyboard is going to be interested in reading about an online digital marketing agency? The post was done for a bit of fun and took all of 5 minutes to write so there was no clear intention with it to begin with – other than to allow other people to laugh at a cat.
It’s difficult enough to help clients understand the principles and technicalities involved in producing a meaningful SEO campaign that will bring them a return on their investment. It really doesn’t help the industry’s reputation when sites like this muddy the water and demonstrate that even some of it’s practitioners don’t understand it’s workings. Sadly, the industry is littered with such people who charge their clients for their services. It is only after realising that these people haven’t helped their company one bit do the clients realise that they have been ripped off.
If you feel like you are one of these people then do get in touch and we will happily discuss how we can help.
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