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Search Engine Optimization, Google, and The Reptilian Code
By Jerry Bader (c) 2008

Search engine optimization dominates the thinking and to a large
degree the marketing efforts of many small and medium-sized
companies, but have you ever noticed that many of the largest
and most profitable companies in the world ignore many SEO
techniques.

Of course these companies have large advertising and marketing
budgets that drive traffic to their websites and generate leads,
sales, and most importantly customers; and they achieve these
results without having to twist their Web-marketing message out
of shape in order to satisfy search engine criteria.

Their prime interest is in delivering their finely crafted,
focused marketing message to their audience, not to search
robots. Last I heard search engines are in the business of
selling you their stuff not buying yours. But these companies
also know something that you don't; they have a secret that
makes their marketing work without the need for search engine
appeasement. This secret is not much of a secret, in fact it is
out there for all see; unfortunately most search engine crazed
entrepreneurs choose to ignore it and instead look for an easy
fix, a magic bullet, search engine nirvana.

Google's Mission

Google's success is based on two very simple facts: one, it is
the best way to find what people are looking for on the Web; and
two, it has parlayed this ability into a series of paid-for
services. Pretty obvious stuff until you delve deeper into why
and how this works. Google understands the same thing most
extraordinarily successful companies understand and that is they
know what you really want. The keyword here is 'really:' they
understand the unconscious primal need to survive, to be the
alpha-ape, to be first on page one of a search for whatever it
is you do, because in the SEO game, if you ain't on the leader
board you ain't in the money.

The Google Paradox

Here's the problem: Google can only be successful as long as
they deliver relevant search results to a vast Internet
audience. If they fail to deliver appropriate search results
people will stop using them and their paid-for services will
decline. On the other hand, you as a business executive want
access to Google's vast audience, and the only way you think
you can effectively gain this access is to appear on that first
search page as close to the top as possible; and you really
don't give a damn how you get there. Enter the search engine
optimization gurus, boffins, and Svengalis who provide the
promise of survival of the most index-able.

So now we have Google whose success is based on delivering
relevant searches and SEO companies intent on manipulating this
ability to place their clients on page one near the top. Google
of course being a smart bunch of guys foils the SEOs by
constantly changing their methods and algorithms and trumps them
by placing paid-for results in the most prominent places. And
the game continues, bringing in huge profits to Google and
wonderfully large fees to the search engine optimization
experts, leaving you paying the shot with little to show for
it.

Just as an aside, I can tell you that most of our website
traffic and subsequent inquiries and worldwide clients come from
Google searches, and our website is mostly Flash, concentrates
on Web-video and audio, and basically ignores most search
optimization tricks. We rely on providing our audience and
Google with relevant material.

Back to Basics

The lesson here is clear: sound marketing practices based on the
way people think and act should be your number one priority, not
blind faith in the manipulation of some constantly changing
mathematical formula that is increasingly playing second fiddle
to paid-for placement.

Persuasion Techniques

The ability to make money on the Web is not based on traffic but
rather on your ability to communicate. High volume expensive
traffic that leaves your site within seconds serves no financial
purpose. You should be spending your marketing dollars on
methods that grab visitors' attention and deliver a focused,
informative, entertaining and memorable marketing message that
resonates with your audience's unconscious desires formed in
the primitive reptilian portion of the brain.

The Lustication-Justification Process

Sales are generated by creating what Clotaire Rapaille, the
reigning superstar of market research, refers to as the process
of lustication and justification. Lustication is the
psychological trigger of desire that makes your audience want to
buy your product or service, while justification is merely the
rational excuse used to expend resources.

Decoding the Motivating Triggers

Rapaille's work is all about decoding the motivating triggers
that prompt a purchase. Once found, the job of the marketing
effort is to stay on code. The major research effort is to get
past the excuses, the justifications, the rational left brain
thinking that appeases the accountants, engineers and
programmers, and to get down to the nitty-gritty, the elements
and primal coding that make us tick.

Rapaille believes words carry more than their literal meaning
and are ripe with unconscious associations, not a surprising
revelation since all communication whether verbal or nonverbal
is based on the associations we make over a lifetime of
experience. These shared associations form the basis of the code
we are looking to play upon in our marketing.

Where most corporations and advertising agencies use focus
groups as an exercise designed to cover their collective asses,
Rapaille takes a different approach. As a trained psychiatrist,
he organizes his version of focus groups in stages. During the
first stage he allows his subjects to gain a sense of
accomplishment by justifying their reasoning through logical and
rational thinking that he completely ignores. In the second
stage, he pursues the more relevant hidden aspects of desire,
and that's the ultimate sales trigger he's looking for.

An Affordable Solution

Most businesses certainly can't afford the fees of someone like
Clotaire Rapaille, but if you free yourself from conventional
thinking and the need to justify and rationalize everything you
do then maybe you to can find the hidden triggers of desire that
form the code you need to base your marketing on.

Humans have two fundamental needs, survival and improvement;
these essential requirements are subdivided into our need for
food, shelter, reproduction, acceptance, community, status, and
knowledge; these are motivational triggers for everything your
audience does and for every cent they spend. While you're
knocking your brains out competing for top spot on a Google
search, the big boys are delivering what people really want, and
laughing all the way to the bank.

If you want your share of the Internet pie, you best discover
what really satisfies your audience's hunger, because that's
the basis for a marketing message and website presentation that
works.
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Jerry Bader is Senior Partner at MRPwebmedia, a website design
firm that specializes in Web-audio and Web-video. Visit
http://www.mrpwebmedia.com/ads, http://www.136words.com, and
http://www.sonicpersonality.com. Contact at info@mrpwebmedia.com
or telephone (905) 764-1246.
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