Online Marketing in Ireland

I have read a lot recently about online marketing in Ireland, most of it written by other SEO’ers. There seems to be two main complaints from them.

The lack of knowledge about search engine optimisation in Ireland
The low level of knowledge of many offering this service

Knowledge about SEO seems to something that most web users are ignorant of, and really why should they know about SEO? SEO only really comes into play when you need to get business from the web site that you have put up. Now let’s face the facts, Ireland has not been a very competitive place for the last ten years. There often appears to be too much money chasing too few services, hence the people selling these services have not been too bothered with ROI as long as the cash keeps flowing in.

This leads me to a pet theory. SEO in Ireland will take off as the economy becomes more competitive. If I was in a business where I was working all the hours I wanted, making the money I wanted, and generally enjoying life, would I be the least bit bothered by that web site I paid for a few years ago, the one that no-one visits. But, when anyone asks about my web site or if I have one, I can give them the address.

The first page of Google should be the most competitive real estate in all countries. In Ireland it is not. A quick search for “dublin solicitor” and I find that Google firstly gives me less than 1 million pages in the results. The top result is John Glynn Solicitors from Tallaght with only 217 links to their site, (Yahoo! as it lists the most links). Let’s be serious folks, this is not competition; this could be blown out so easily. A search “solicitor glasgow” (my home town), and the first on the page has 2,470 links – now there is someone who is using their web site in a competitive market.

In essence most Irish businesses don’t need or want SEO right now. For the forward thinking building up your web site right now in this market will give a great advantage over others that try to do the same much later. Time is on your side, and Google loves time.

The second grip is the lack of knowledge that most SEO’ers exhibit. This does seems to be a valid point. Almost every web design company now is also offering Search Engine Optimisation Services. Many are just offering on page; just doing on-page optimisation will not help except in a very small niche market, (and there is not many of them left). It is something that has to be done when marketing your web site – but alone it is almost useless.

Off-page optimisation is where the money is. Getting others to link to your web site, getting essentially free traffic from search engines, this is always my goal. Knowing what anchor text to use as links, knowing where to get links for clients, having an idea of the available traffic for certain key words or phrases, doing competition research, and much more – this is where a good SEO’er earns his money.

I always get paid part of my fee on results, I don’t mind this even though part of the fee is a few months down the road. I tell a client what I think I can do with the money they are willing to spend – and then I do it. I have no fear attached to not achieving the results I lay out in the plan at the start and getting paid the rest of my fee, this I think can in some way differentiate SEO’ers.

However a line sticks from one of my Irish law classes many years ago – buyer beware…

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