What do you think of when you hear the words “Wal-Mart?”  Discount retailer?  Grocery store?  Evil corporate giant? 

How about “Search Engine Specialists?”  Yeah, me neither.  But that’s not stopping them from trying to sell you SEO services.  SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization.  It’s the process of rewriting your website’s code and content to better communicate with the search engines–the end result being that you rank better on search engines like Google for your targeted keyword phrases. 

We know a bit about SEO–and by “a bit” I mean “a great deal”–and we’ve helped many clients acheive higher rankings for their website.  It’s not rocket science, but it’s a time-consuming, detailed process that can take plenty of time.  The industry average for cost on a typical SEO project is well over $1000.

Wal-Mart is selling “Online Marketing” services for as low as $30/month. Think about that. 

Honestly, I shouldn’t have expected anything different from them.  I have bought jeans from Wal-Mart just because they can offer me jeans at a rock-bottom price (usually under $15).  They’ve built their business on rock-bottom prices.  Usually they can do so because they are buying in bulk and they’re buying cheap products that are (often) made in China. 

But is SEO work the same as buying a pair of jeans? Wal-Mart is fine for buying my Cheetos, my Wranglers, and my deodorant.  But I like a little expertise and value from my marketing expenses, thank you very much.

Let’s look at their website for more detail.  It says that, for your $30/month, you get the following:

-Profile creation tool with unlimited updates  
-Profile distribution to major search engines and online Yellow Page directories like YPGuides.
-Hand submission of your website URL to the major search engines and directories

Now allow me, for a moment, to take these one by one.  First of all, what is a “profile?”  I have no idea.  It is a Wal-Mart creation.  I’m assuming they will build a profile of your company in their own database and allow you to update it.  But it’s not a common SEO term.  It’s fluff.

The second item they give you for your thirty bucks is…drumroll please….submission of your business profile to a bunch of yellow pages directories.  Ugh.  Look, you can follow your heart here, but I don’t think yellow pages websites are much of a value.  People who trust the yellow pages brand name are just using the book.  People who have embraced the web as an information-finder are savvy enough to be using Google and Yahoo, and they’re not just going to the yellow pages site out of some sort of brand loyalty.  So, ultimately, I don’t think having your “profile” (whatever that is) submitted to the yellow pages sites is worth your time or money.

Lastly, they’re promising to “hand-submit” your site to the major search engines.  Wow.  Okay, so hand-submitting a site to Google or Yahoo used to be a common SEO step.  But the engines have evolved to a point where it’s no longer necessary.  If you launch a site, the engines will find it.  You simply don’t need to hand-submit.  Even if you did need to (or want to), once you’re included in the index of a search engine there really isn’t any reason to submit again.  So Wal-Mart is going to sell you a monthly service that no longer needs to be done, and when it did need to be done it was only a one-time thing. 

Save your money.  I know $30 a month sounds like a deal, but try to resist.  I mean, I’ll sell you some bottled  air for $30–one new bottle of air each month for one low monthly price.  You’d get about the same value as you would with Wal-Mart’s SEO services. 

SEO is a time-consuming thing.  It’s an ongoing thing.  It’s not a quick-fix.  And it’s WAY more than just creating a mysterious profile, sending that profile to spammy yellow pages sites, and performing the archaic and unnecessary task of hand-submitting a site to the engines.  SEO is done on the page…on your actual site. You can’t just submit your site to some yellow pages and expect to rank on the first page for anything you want.  There’s a reason your site doesn’t rank number 1…and that’s because someone else who paid more than $30/month got an experienced SEO Specialist to move ahead of you and into that spot. 

I don’t know what’s more ridiculous… that Wal-Mart is selling SEO services, or that many people will buy this worthless service because it’s cheap and it’s from Wal-Mart.  If you want  your website marketing to come from the company that specializes in cheap prices and long lines, then by all means…go right ahead.  Just know that you’re reading the blog of a company that can offer professional SEO services–services that will actually make a dent in your search rankings… services that we will fully explain and lay out in advance.  It will cost you more than $30 a month, but you’ll get a lot more value.