South Africans speak out about SEO

My last blog post, “Internet Marketing in South Africa today“, discussed how the Internet has developed in South Africa and the impact this has had on online marketing. I took a look at what search words were picking up in popularity in the United States and through this study, advised that business owners employ SEO as an internet marketing strategy now.

To dig deeper into this subject, I have asked three South Africans connected to the SEO industry to share their thoughts on the state of SEO in South Africa today. The first interviewee is John Gardner. John is owner of travel website, Accommodation Hunter, who has used his knowledge of SEO to become one of the top-ranked travel websites in Google, South Africa. The second person I interviewed is Jonathan Andrews, eMarketing Strategist of AlterSage, a prominent SEO company based in Cape Town. Finally, the third interviewee is Webgrowth’s very own Neil Pursey, whose four years of experience in SEO has helped numerous local and UK companies climb Google’s search rankings to #1 positions.

1. What in your opinion is the best kind of online marketing campaign? (e.g. SEO, PPC, social media campaign etc.). Why?
   

   John: I think it is impossible to choose one. Each client has separate needs, more often than not they are also mistaken as to what those needs are. So you need to help them understand their product from a consumer’s perspective and from, there find the right balance that best satisfies the consumers of your clients. If you are selling an online product with a short shelf-life (e.g. the latest iPhone app), you would not dedicate resources to SEO but instead focus on a PPC campaign.

   Jonathan: It’s hard to pick just one, because “the best” solution would depend entirely on the nature of a campaign and its desired outcomes. The old maxim “when all you’ve got is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail” applies here. It’s better to know what you’re trying to achieve first and then you can choose the right tools with which to achieve it. As a general answer, I would say that a combination of channels normally has the most impact.

   Neil: All three bring a business different value to the table and also different skills sets to succeed, so it’s difficult to say. SEO is a long-term strategy and has the highest ROI. PPC is more short term and is used to attain instant results. I prefer to use it to test various keywords. If the keyword receives a lot of traffic through PPC then it’s worth implementing a SEO strategy around it. Social media is difficult to measure ROI at the moment but having a strong following base on platforms like Facebook and Twitter definitely holds a lot of value. I also believe Google is taking note of how many followers and/or fans a business has; I strongly believe this helps your SEO. So all roads lead to SEO, SEO is King! We can use various other tools to complement SEO.

2. In general, do you find South African web developers have a good understanding of SEO?
   

   John: A resounding NO! Almost all the developers that I have worked with are specialists at what they do and have taken years to learn what they know. “SEO” is a monster that requires your full attention, from week to week there are new developments in “SEO” and keeping abreast with these changes is the difference between average “SEO” and great “SEO” and in today’s world, that can be the difference between roaring success or failure of an online company.

   Jonathan: Sadly many do not. Most web developers these days claim to have SEO experience or offer SEO as a service with little understanding of what it is. This is a great pity because SEO is not just something that can be retro-fitted to a site at the end. In fact, an SEO campaign would have far greater success if developers worked with SEOs or built websites with sound SEO principles in mind. SEO considerations should be present prior to even commencing with development. Many things like the type of mark-up used, the website information architecture and the website’s keyword and content strategy all have an effect on a site’s optimisation and ultimately how it will rank.

   Neil: Let’s just say, to date, every website owner that has come to me needs their website re-developed because of poor coding. There are a few web developers out there that keep SEO in mind, but the bulk of them are still using old techniques which is very frustrating for business owners and SEO’ers alike.

3. What would you recommend as the number one SEO fundamental that a business owner should implement when building a website?
   

   John: Employ a reputable SEO company to guide you. SEO is so dynamic that, yes you can learn the basics in a couple of months. But what is the opportunity cost? Would not your time have been better spent on working on your core business?

   Jonathan: Make sure that your content is accessible to search engines. This means ensuring that you have decent (keyword-rich) text-based navigation and that your site’s pages aren’t excluding robots from crawling them by other means like incorrect robots.txt files, dynamic text or the use of elements like iFrames.

   Neil: Get your on-site optimisation correct. Basic knowledge of title tag, meta description and content optimisation is crucial. If search engines can’t navigate through your website correctly then the website will fail. If I can add to this and say that a close second is design/aesthetics of a website. Link building is crucial and it makes life much easier when searching for incoming links for a sexy looking website.

4. Where do you think SEO is going in the future?
   

   John: I believe that “SEO” is one of the vital building blocks of a good website. With this being said, Social media is very quickly becoming the fastest horse in the “SEO” stable, but if you don’t know how to shape it and make it work for you, it will just be a pretty horse.

   Jonathan: Increasing numbers of people are using search engines to find what they are looking for. The internet has recently clocked the zettabyte mark (a million million gigabytes) and the planets digital content grew by 62% last year – that’s a lot of data. Search engines are still the most efficient way to find what you’re looking for amongst this chaos. And as more businesses are realising the importance of being visible online, the battle amongst competitors for rankings (and visibility) is getting fiercer. This means it’s more important than ever to ensure that you optimise every element of your site fully. While I wouldn’t say that any market vertical is completely saturated, I do think that those who chose to ignore digital as part of their broader marketing strategy are already missing out. Organic search marketing or SEO will always have a place in the online marketing mix.

   Neil: SEO has only been prevalent in South Africa for the last 2 years. In the US, it started when Google was born, roughly 12 years ago. So we have a lot to learn still in terms of knowledge, but with the expanse of our bandwidth, it is a growing industry. Unfortunately there are few fly-by nighters popping up and giving SEO a bad rep but in time they will be quickly exposed. There’s no hiding on the internet! There is still a lot of room for growth. The only industry that is proving very competitive is the travel industry. Other industries like the building industry are picking up speed and competition will grow. All in all, as long as we have a need for search and internet connectivity there will always be a need for SEO.  It will just evolve and manifest in different forms over the coming years.

5. Do you believe there to be any synergy between SEO and social media?
   

   John: Yes, Social media is the biggest part of SEO, but it is also the hardest one to work. When you get it right, it will be your best marketing tool, with huge cost reward factors.

   Jonathan: SEO and social media can definitely complement each other. In fact, it’s well worth looking at ways to optimise your social media outputs too. Search Engines like Google have been making use of a type of universal search in their SERPs for a long time now. You’ll notice when you search on Google, that in addition to the usual web results, you’ll probably also see results for shopping, blogs, images, tweets, videos and a whole manner of things as well. I now notice that Google are also including “results from your social circle” in their search engines results pages too.  Social media is definitely becoming “searchable” and most certainly works very well in conjunction with SEO as an online marketing tool. This just highlights the fact that it’s more important than ever to optimise every element of your digital campaigns.

   Neil: Definitely, with Facebook overtaking Google’s traffic in the beginning of 2010. How can Google ignore such a website? Where there is traffic, there is value, and businesses are clamouring for ideas to expose their brand on Facebook. With incoming links being ‘eaten up’ by Twitter, it is becoming even more difficult to get incoming links to a website. If you can have a good following on social media platforms, you will notice that links will start arriving organically through personal blogs and networks you belong to.

Responses like these only serve to increase my confidence in SEO as a vital part of an online marketing campaign. If your business is interested in bringing SEO into your internet marketing campaign, consult an SEO specialist for more information and learn how SEO can benefit your company. When deciding on an SEO specialist, consider the following:

• How many years have they been running for, and in that time, how many projects have they successfully worked on?
• Can you speak to their clients?
• How hard is it to find their clients in Google?

Once you’ve chosen an SEO specialist that works for your company, don’t assume you’ll be seeing results the following day. SEO is a slow process and one that requires patience. But when the results do start to come, you’ll soon see that the wait was all worth it.

About Margot

Margot Knight has written 8 post in this blog.

Margot is the newest member of the WebGrowth team. She is passionate about copywriting and has an inspired desire to grow her knowledge of online marketing.

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