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Sales are down for many businesses due to the slow economy. Business owners and CEOs are looking for that one thing that can pull them through the hard times and keep them afloat. When times get tough, many turn to SEO, hoping that it will be the ticket to increased sales. While SEO is almost always a good idea, if you’re counting on it to save a failing business, you may want to rethink things.
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from footinmouthdisease 502 Days ago #
Votes: 0

This is particuarly true in the online real estate sphere...with the mortgage meltdown and the real estate sphere all of the Realtors are turning to the internet for salvation...and then complain when they actually have to do the work to get their site ranking.

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from iBrian 501 Days ago #
Votes: 1

Good post, Jill - I think the point about planning needs underlining, not least making SEO part of an integrated approach from the start of the development process.

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from JeffMHoward 501 Days ago #
Votes: 0

What I hope to see during the downturn is that companies at least put search marketing on their radar as a good alternative based on potential ROI. After all, business owners will now be looking to cut costs and find new ways of marketing that might be more effective. Inevitably some clients won’t get it, some clients won’t do what they thought. But, hopefully when marketing budgets increase again search marketing will find itself closer to the top through the increase in awareness received from the recession.

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from JohnHGohde 501 Days ago #
Votes: -4

I will remember this advice, Jill, if I ever manage to have a failing business.

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from monitis 499 Days ago #
Votes: 1

Useful advice, Jill!  "If your business is doing fairly well without SEO, that’s the best time to get into it and start collecting that extra targeted traffic!"  Thanks

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from MikeDammann 496 Days ago #
Votes: 0

I have seen minimal initial traffic jump start sites into success with very little SEO effort necessary and other sites ranking for great terms but the business not doing well.SEO needs to be used for branding. Otherwise you will struggle.

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from Webtones 467 Days ago #
Votes: 0

Yes I must agree. We are finding in the online travel industry that our site is still heavily visited when money is tight. People are more inclined to shop around for travel bargains & look for cheap deals. The trick for us is to turn it into conversions.  

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