SEO –  Search Engine Optimization.  Currently, it seems like it is all some Israel website owners are thinking about. Until the next buzzword or trend comes around (soon it is going to be video – hint, hint). Over the years, I have come to notice three types of clients in Israel.

1. Mr. Katan Ali
Katan Ali thinks if he could just be on the top of the search engine results his business will boom. You know the type. He is sure that whatever it is he sells, it is the next best thing to sliced bread. And no matter what, if a visitor will just land on his site, he will buy.  Katan Ali may fill his site with all kinds of valuable information, but with little thought to what the customer experience needs to be. He is sure that his product is so innovative, visitors will take time to figure out how it will be useful to their business.

2. Mr. MicroManage
MM knows he needs a nice site. He even attends the design meetings and has input about the colors and fonts used. He wants the web development company that his Marcom Manager chose to include SEO in the project – mostly because he knows “SEO” is a hot topic these days online and, like any good Israeli business manager, he wants to get the most he can out of his vendor. But MM is unable to see the big picture because he is always looking at the details and staying up close to everything that goes on in the company. MM will tell you that, in HIS business, the website is not where he is going to get his real leads and certainly not the place where in his market business gets done. MM has a hard time with change and fears losing control.

Katan Ali and MicroManage are great salesmen. They travel around the world, close deals and know their markets well. But they don’t yet recognize the opportunity to move their businesses forward online. Don’t get me wrong. It’s not that we think face to face meetings are no longer relevant or that exhibitions will simply cease to take place, but today, there is virtually no industry in which companies are not finding success online. If you are not already doing so, I guarantee that some of your competitors are. The Internet is another venue where you can generate and conduct business. And if you are not doing it today, you are losing potential customers to a competitor.

3. Mr. Wise
Wise has some online business experience and he is familiar with just how much the right online presence can boost their bottom line. He wants his website SEO’d and it is very important to him to reach top search positions in Google. But he also understands that he needs an overall online marketing strategy, in which website optimization is a part of an overall tactical plan. Wise puts trust in those around him. He knows that his business will be enhanced by good, solid online marketing. But he does not sweat the details. He recognizes the trend and leaves it to professionals to guide his business towards real online business results.

A wide variety of SEO experts have popped up in Israel. Many seem to talk a lot about the Google algorithm, measuring traffic, and some even make it sound like a mysterious combination of science and voodoo. They even refuse to explain what they are doing to their clients (or else they will have to shoot them?). I personally am bored with talk of the Google algorithm and I have never practiced any technique that I could not easily explain to any client who cares to listen. I reach page 1 of Google for incredibly competitive terms over and over. But even more importantly, I achieve conversions from those efforts. SEO is mostly an art of communication. It is about building a website that effectively communicates with the search engines to “explain” what they are about. It should be a part of you overall online marketing plan– not a separate tactic that you zero in on for some brief period by paying an engineer $5k to “SEO your site”. What should you zero in on? Achieving results. Once you accept that, you can start building a real tactical plan for your Internet marketing.