Every so called “marketer” with a system to sell emails me the pitch. This is not by accident. I am on some of the top marketers email lists. I like to keep up to date with the new SEO, Social Media, online marketing products and services being offered. Most of what I receive is over hyped, over priced junk that has been rehashed from other previously released “systems” and programs that promise riches and instant Internet businesses.
The only people getting rich from these offers are the guys that develop and sell these products.
One of the latest of these over promising offers caught my attention today as it deals with something I know very well. Local SEO.
A new product is being offered as a push button approach to providing local SEO to small local businesses across the world. The sales pitch says you will be able to make four to five figures a month in this new and expanding business. The cost? Six payments of $547.00 or one payment of $2,997.00. Yes for only $3K, you can learn to be a local SEO specialist like me.
Now I am not going to go into all of the details the 30 minute video on the site touches on. I want to get to the meat of the matter. By looking at the search result for “la jolla house painter” you can see some of the tactics this “system” uses. Utilizing social websites, especially video sites, is one way to rank for local search results for your local business or service. However, this approach is not going to work for every local business wanting to rank online.
Google’s emphasis on more localized search results means that local sites that have been online for many years are not going to be pushed aside by a handful of these community/sharing sites that may rank for a few days or weeks but will have no lasting place in a local search result. Yes, video is a great way to send traffic to your site and some local search results will list a You Tube video for the types of local business searches this program sells. However, that will not work for every local business.
If you really want to learn Local SEO, my SEO training is about 1/3 the price and does not rely on tactics that are hot now but really just a Google update away from being useless.
That’s my perspective. Feel free to comment below if you agree or disagree.
Link to this page
Nashville SEO, Google Places and Social Media Marketing. Serving small businesses in Nashville, Franklin, Brentwood Tennessee and every city across the US and Canada!
I disagree. Local SEO is about getting local searches directed to local businesses. Many of these businesses don’t have websites. Just updating google places can get a top listing. Plus one business can have can have 5 or 6 top 10 listings for a local search phrase. It’s really a different set of skills and effort.
The process of trying to get a local business listed by the use of other web properties will only work for a very short period of time. The sites used are not found in local business search results. Google sees these sites as search result manipulations and their staying power is very limited. For a local business search, Google wants to see sites that are truly local or that offer local business results. The techniques used in that over priced “training” have a very short lifespan. Also, there are almost no instances of a local business taking up more than two listings at most in a search for a local service. There would have to be literally no local competition for that business service for such results to be returned.
i think SEO is going to local optimization more and more everyday i remember when SEO was a breeze because it wasn’t very mainstream as it is today. Today their are so many companies out their promising the world and deliver little in results. I have seen companies string along a customer for months with a 2 place position change and the customer see’s that as an improvement. I am self taught and have taken classes but it really disgusts me to see people taken advantage of, hell almost anyone can do SEO with enough practice and education problem is not everyone has the time that is involved.
Bart mentioned that the tactics used by these expensive course are temporary, i believe that to be the case. If you want to have a solid SEO foundation keep the customer in mind and ask yourself “how will this help my customer find my service” If you can answer that correctly while optimizing i think google will favor your site and places page over maybe a tactic that is purely for SEO.