Top 5 Internet Marketing Mistakes Schools Make

Let me begin by mentioning that I have been doing Internet marketing for secondary schools'websites for more than 6 years. Recently, it has become increasingly common to see schools makingsome very serious mistakes in regards to Internet marketing. For instance, it is common to seeschools using some sort of lead generation company to boost their leads.

These lead generation companies may seem convenient, but they often use unethical methods toproduce bad quality leads for the school. Observing these unethical methods and the problems arisefrom them, as well as seeing other easily avoidable pit falls prompted me to write this article aboutthe top 5 mistakes that schools make with regards to Internet Marketing.

1.Out of convenience, schools often hire the same company they purchase leads from to performSEO services as well. This presents a terrible conflict of interest and might be the biggest mistakeyou can make since the company you are hiring is actually your biggest competitor for the keywordsyou would like to rank for. If they are selling the school leads, it is naturally in their best interest tooutrank the schools site and sell the leads the school would otherwise be getting by optimizing itsown site.

2.Schools rarely monitor what lead aggregation companies are doing to produce the leads that theysell to the school. It very is important for a school to monitor exactly how a lead gen company getsits results because buy hiring that company, a school is essentially inviting them (and their 1000s ofaffiliates) to create a permanent footprint in the search engines responses for the schools name andmajor keywords.

Some tactics these companies commonly use involve bidding on the schools name in pay per clickcampaigns, making dummy sites that mimic the schools official website, and buying and redirectingmis-spellings of the schools domain name. All of these common practices potentially damage theschool's organic rankings and ability to generate their own leads. Even if a school ends theiraffiliation with the lead generation company, the old results will linger for years further hamperingorganic lead generation.

3.Schools often agree to let their web designers do SEO for them as well as design their websites.Many web designers claim they are effective Internet marketers when they actuality have little to noexperience in the industry and certainly do not have enough time to keep up with the latest trendsand methods. Subsequently, many schools believe they have an in-house expert managing theirwebsites when they do not. While the core principals of Internet marketing are fairly basic, theindustry is constantly changing and evolving making it extremely difficult for all but the mostdedicated marketers to keep ahead of the curve.

4.Many schools use one company for theirentire Internet marketing needs instead ofusing separate companies that focus on acertain aspect. Just because a company saysthey can do anything doesnt mean they can doeverything well. Often, the company has acore service (typically web design or leadgeneration) and branches out to other areasincluding SEO. Having a web design companydo SEO is the equivalent of having a reallygood electrician who dabbles in plumbing doall the plumbing in a school. Good organicresults for the competitive keywords thatschools often go after are extremely hard toachieve. Attaining those number one rankingsis not a job for a company that only dabbles inreal SEO.

5.Nine out of ten Schools are not optimized correctly for the search engines to index themthoroughly, let alone to achieve high rankings once they are indexed. This is because out of the fewschools that do incorporate Internet marketing focus a bulk of their efforts on buying traffic via PayPer click instead of focusing on raising their rankings organically. This is mistake organic rankingslead to higher quality leads and is a better overall long term strategy.

About the Author:

Phil Laboon, CEO and founder of Eyeflow InternetMarketing. Eyeflow is a search engine optimizationfirm that specializes in organic Internet marketing forsecondary schools and colleges across the country. Tolearn more on how to protect your school from leadgeneration companies as well as how to increase thenatural search engine traffic to your website visitwww.Eyeflow.com or call Phil directly at 1-866-8-

9-0740