As an example, the good folks who provide our bandwidth have lost quite a bit of money lately. It is mostly due to some Internet based companies going under. Many of these site owners were provided Internet bandwidth at almost no cost for the first few years, because they couldn’t afford the monthly fees normally charged up front. However, there was an agreement in place to raise the monthly fees over time, when hopefully the site owners could afford it. Unfortunately it didn’t really work out, and many, if not most of these clients never could pay the rising fees, and they just abandoned their sites and moved on. These site owners are now pretty upset at our vendors, and feel like they got tricked into having a site in the first place. Now I ask, how could our vendor know these individuals, who couldn’t afford to pay to start, would not be able to pay later? It is impossible to predict, and it would have been unfair if these economically challenged citizens didn’t have the same opportunities others who could afford the services were enjoying. Just as a note, I must say I love this vendor’s facilities, they are simply gorgeous. All decked out with the finest leather and fixtures. It is really an amazing place. You should see the entrance, breathtaking. And wow, they take care of their management team, every one of them has a BMW leased for them by the company. What a great idea. It would be a pretty sweet life to work there. All that being said, SoloSEO doesn’t want them to fail. Too many other companies might have to find services elsewhere, and that would be a bit difficult. Or worse yet, what if some other competitor heard of our vendor’s financial troubles, and just came along and offered to buy this vendor’s assets and accounts for pennies on the dollar? That would be a shame. Anyway, we must not let this happen.

Another one of our struggling vendors provides our servers for us, and they build them right here in the good USA. Now while the quality of their servers isn’t the best, and their features are a little behind the times, and their servers are a little more expensive than ones made by foreign owned firms, it really isn’t their fault they are bankrupt. We have learned that the contract our vendor has in place with the union factory workers is almost 100% higher than the agreements the same unions have with foreign owned, US-based server manufactures. How can we expect our vendor to compete fairly in such a hostile marketplace? It isn’t fair, they need more money to make another go of it, and be hopefully be profitable this time. Now we aren’t dumb, we are requiring this company come up with a plan to repay us. We hope it works, and we hope we will get your money back eventually. One the other hand, the bandwidth guys are free to use the money for us anyway they want, they just need to promise they will pay us back eventually. They were essentially forced to give away bandwidth to these failed clients in the first place by some of our managers, so we have to cut them some slack. And, just so our vendors know, if more funding is needed in the future, we will be able to take our more loans our people’s names, and also the rest of their retirement funds to help you, we are sure they will understand.

Now, unfortunately our employees have no choice as to how much or when we take their cash, and it doesn’t matter if they disagree with us, we are a team. And as a team of managers, we have decided we are going to do this, and believe us, it is in all your best interest in the long term.

Oh, oh, oh, I almost forgot… Some great news, we did work something pretty cool out with our failing, borrowing vendors. If any of our employees need a little financial help from time to time, they will be able to borrow some money from our vendors!!! For this service, they will need to pay some interest on the money they borrow to the vendor. Then the vendor will have more revenue to help them pay us off. Don’t worry about it. Just think of it this way, the loans we are taking out in your names to fund all this, you won’t even have to pay all the way off. No these loans are so large, that they will need to be passed on from generation to generation. So your kids and grandkids will be paying the bulk of all this money, not you!! Brilliant huh?

Now I know there will be some of our smarter people who will think this is a terrible plan. They will ask why they should be forced to pay for another firm’s mistakes. Then they will be angered when they figure out they are now going to pay interest on money forcibly taken from them and given to the vendor in the first place. But come on, can’t everyone in the room see the wisdom in the plan?

I hope anyone reading this knows that is a moronic plan, and this is essentially going on right now to all of us, just substitute Congress for SoloSEO management, Citigroup and AIG for the bandwidth suppliers, GMC, Ford and Chrysler for the server manufacturer, and all of the American tax payers as SoloSEO people. We are getting screwed.

I love this country, I just hope the guys in Washington (especially the new guys coming up) start thinking their decisions all the way through. I am terrified for small businesses in this country right now, and I hope the future proves to be brighter than it is today. I hope we all face this financial storm and pass through safely to the other side, but forgive me if I don’t give Washington any credit for any sort of turn around, they will have had nothing to do with it, it will be hard working, inspired small business owners who make it happen.

I guess that is why it doesn’t say “In Government We Trust” on our currency, because the governments create the problems, and someone else has to clean them up.

Others have discussed the time commitment required to keep a good blog going, such as adding a good post once a week, well written, and contributing something worth reading. This is definitely the case, and I personally think blogging is even more difficult for the small business owner. Owning your own business, let alone two or three, means you have a number of hats you need to wear to keep the business running. Small business owners have to be the marketing, HR, accounting, sales and maintenance departments all at once. Allocating time to manage a blog, although important, may not be the best use of your time. It really depends on the type of business being run, and just how much revenue is hope to be gained from online leads and sales. If online sales will never contribute more than 25% of total revenue, I would suggest not spending to much time on it. If more then 25% is or hopefully will be from online leads and sales, then working on content is a good strategic use of time. In this case, my suggestion would be to keep posts pretty short, a paragraph or two, and focus them on the company, products, policies, and vision of the company, etc. I good history of the company and how it came to be, can also be good reading and provide clients with a good feeling about the business. Blogging like this makes it pretty easy to write something quickly, as business owners are well versed in these areas, and are virtually assured to use keywords which relate well to what a business is and does, which in turn helps rankings for keywords potential clients are using when the search.

There are other results of blogging which I never imagined. Over the last few years I have attended PubCon and SMX. They are great shows, and I have a great time learning, but the last show kind of freaked me out. I was just moving along through the show, headed to another session, when I was stopped by a few people who kindly informed me they liked some of the stuff I had put up on our blog. I had never been stopped abruptly like that before, expect maybe a Highway Patrolman. It was very nice of these folks to stop, it was very nice of them to be nice, whether they really felt this way about our blog or not, but I was kind of mystified by it all… Everyone needs to understand before they start a blog that putting your stuff online, and attaching your name to it means your content will be there for a very long time, if not forever, and you might actually become “known” in the industry are attempting to succeed within. There are those on this earth who crave attention, and desire to be in the public eye. I am sure you know a few, there are some obvious examples in the SEO industry. However, I am not one of these people. For me personally, any notoriety at all is not a good thing, positive or negative. I would rather sneak through life leaving as little a mark as possible. Don’t get me wrong, I want to be educated, successful in business, I want to be a good dad and husband, but I would rather accomplish these things without anyone else outside of my close circle really knowing or caring.

My personal goals include contributing to the public good, help as many people as I can, through business, through sharing expertise, through any method possible, but I want to be able to do it as anonymously as possible. The thought of being recognized out on the street, by anyone, for any reason, is very, very unsettling, I want no part of it. So, if you are like me, and are attempting to go through life as quietly as possible, I would suggest not blogging, or at least not blogging with your name attached to it. Instead blog as a company staff member, or use a stage name, “SEO Stan,” “Golfing Joe,” or something like that, so you can remain nameless.

The experience at the show has really reduced my desire to blog, which is too bad… I want to share stuff I have learned, I want our site to grow and continue to rank better, and blogging is an excellent way to get that done, but I don’t want any notoriety for it. Kind of a weird place to be… When was the last time you listened to a nameless face offering advice? I am not sure how to get that done at this point, but I am working on figuring it out, when I do, I will let you know, until then I guess I blog as me.

All this being said, content really is king for sites attempting to rank well for a long period of time, and blogging is a great way to get the content up there, it just isn’t as painless as I had originally thought, or hoped it would be. To avoid the spotlight, perhaps we could just spend time on improving or expounding on the products pages and descriptions, as well as on pages about the company, product quality, guarantee policies, new products, goals for the company, etc., rather than just blogging this new content. The topics for new pages to add to a business site are endless.

Ultimately, if you want to get your name out there and be recognized as an expert in the field, then blogging is a great way to do it. If you don’t, that’s fine too, but content still needs to be created for your site, either don’t attach your name to it, or just focus on pimping out your web pages, with superior, unique content as no author’s name is required.

Oh, one last thing… If our paths happen to cross in the future at any of the upcoming shows, just ignore me completely. I would really appreciate it.

I hope everyone has a safe and happy 4th of July holiday.

“SEO is not hard, Anyone can be successful at it with the right information.”

While I agree that anyone can be successful through SEO, if they have the right information and the right tools, I don’t think SEO is “easy” for everyone, not even for most people. I personally have only met Aaron once, and have heard him present on a few occasions, and just based on those observations I can see why Aaron would see SEO as easy, I think for him SEO is easy. But for the rest of us, the average humans, SEO is tough work. It is especially difficult for those who are running more traditional/non-technical businesses. There is so much to do as a small business owner, and the entire organization relies on you and your efforts. Quite frankly you don’t have the time to sit down and work with site optimization all day, or dedicate enough time to learn how to make the required changes to web site pages in just a day or two. It is going to take more time than that. How much time really depends on not only your available time, but also on how good your information and tools are.

With accurate information, like from Aaron’s SEOBook, and excellent SEO tools, like we have developed here at SoloSEO, the SEO process can become more manageable, that much is true. But please never let anyone convince you SEO will be easy, unless you are a technological genius, and there are more than few using SEO as a profession. This hard work revelation probably isn’t what anyone with aspirations of quickly making it big online wants to hear, but I wouldn’t feel good about giving the impression SEO is some magic online wand, which when waved, instantly delivers more traffic and orders than a site can handle. It just doesn’t work that way. I am sure there are many out there who have heard and believed the claims of this “SEO ease,” then got in, got to work, and became quickly disenchanted with the SEO process, perhaps even felt frustrated at their inability to quickly grasp the “simpleness of SEO.” If you have felt this way, you are not alone, it is common, it is okay.

As perhaps some of you have done, I have spent my life as a very average person, not overly smart, not overly quick, not overly fun, not overly funny, not overly thin, just not overly impressive in almost everything. Fortunately I came to grips with my total averageness a few years ago, and I realized my only chance to get ahead in this world, was just to work harder than the naturally talented and smarter people were willing to. I can’t compete with the “blessed ones” one on one, hour to hour, but if I only sleep 4 hours, and they sleep 10, then I have picked up 6 hours a day on them, and my chances are better. I have no problem seeing myself as a tortoise, and I have always loved that story. I think most my fellow slower folks have too.

I think most entrepreneurs, who have created and succeeded in their own business, have either worked harder, or are “blessed.” For most of us it is simply a matter of out-working the competition, we may never be the biggest, or grow the fastest, but we can be successful, and live a comfortable life by out-working the others. And if we work harder, using the best tools and information, we can not only increase our chances of success, but shorten the time required. The same is true with SEO.

To me SEO is similar to the process of digging for gold. There are many technologies we can use to find gold now, and those technologies get better all the time. With today’s technology we simply don’t have to head out with a shovel and start digging hither and thither until we find something shiny, there are better ways. But even with all the modern tools and technology, when it comes right down to it, getting the gold out of the ground is going to take work. We can dig with a shovel, we can dynamite, we can use large equipment, and we can hire an army of miners, but it is all work and it is required to reap the eventual reward. No way around it.

There is no doubt SEO can be worth much to a company looking to increase sales, it can take a struggling company trying to make any sale at all, and turn that company into an online success story. Where they once wondered if they would convince anyone to buy at all, they now they struggle with cash flow, barely having enough cash on hand to pay vendors, so they can barely stay ahead of the orders onslaught. But to experience this kind of transformation in online sales, the SEO work must happen. We are going to need to focus on our site’s Keywords, Content, Links and effort must be spent to put it all in place. No way around it. We can use all kinds of great tools, and have the latest information to make our efforts as efficient and effective as possible. We can even hire others to do our SEO for us, but SEO is the price for long-term online rewards. SEO isn’t easy for most people, it isn’t a get rich quick scheme, there is nothing magic or extraordinary about it, but if the SEO work is done well, then success is more than likely, if not virtually assured. I like that about SEO, we can work harder at it than others do, and see success for our efforts. And as for all the other tortoises out there, I know you will like that about SEO too.

In our conversation he mentioned he was considering signing up for a local online business directory, and perhaps purchasing some advertising on their site. He wondered if I thought it was a good idea, so I took a look. After some initial poking around, it was soon obvious that signing up was free, and the site existed solely on ad space it sold on the site. So I had no problem with him signing up, at least it is a new link to him, and this directory is well put together and has quite a comprehensive overview of local business, organized by category. I didn’t tell him if I thought purchasing an ad on this site was a good move or not, I don’t know enough about this directory’s traffic mix, or his business to understand if online advertising will provide a high enough ROI to make the ad price worth the investment. I will leave that decision to him.

But after a quick review of his site, I just gave him a few ideas that I think will help its performance in the search engines. First off, he does an excellent job of keeping the inventory of current cars up to date. As soon as they receive a new car, they clean it up and takes some nice pictures of the car, and then put those up with a simple description of each car on the site. I suggested that they should spend a bit more time on creating content for each car, focusing more on some keywords they are targeting, as well as the specifics of each car. These keywords should come from what they feel their strengths are, with local references included, like Provo, UT, Northern Utah, 40 South of Salt Lake City, UT, as examples. Additionally, I would have them use SoloSEO tools to analyze other local automotive sites doing well in the search engines, and then start targeting those keywords as well. Finally, they should also make sure the photos for each car are labeled clearly, and using an occasional keyword here and there, in a picture description, isn’t going to hurt rankings either.

Once a car is sold, they currently take the content and the pictures of that car off the site. I think this is a mistake many of us make. Rather, I would suggest they create a sold page, or past inventory page, then organize all the cars by model and year on this sold/directory page. Keep all that content written about each car, and the descriptive photos for each in play for the search engines. If they spend time creating the content, then they should continue benefitting from it. Plus, it might help potential clients find a model of car they are looking for. Thayne does a great job finding cars according to a potential buyer’s specifications. He did this for me, and it worked out great. So, if a potential buyer found a car on Thayne’s site by browsing the past inventory, which takes no time from Thayne’s sales people (truly a major benefit of any well conceived site), and Thayne gets a new client to work with, along with all the specs he needs to find a similar car, it is a win/win for everyone.

Next, I would suggest they start a company blog, it is another easy way to add content. We of course love WordPress Blogging system, we use it ourselves, and highly recommend it to everyone. On the Independent Import’s blog I would have them blog about sales they are having on certain cars, about automotive tips, about information on recalls, about new performance parts or options to “pimp our rides,” and even about the new innovations BMW is coming out with all the time. The automotive industry is one of constant innovation and change, and this provides excellent and frequent topics for a blog. Keep the blog fresh, with one or two posts a week at least, and also let his current and new clients know about the blog. Many new car owners are passionate about their cars (especially BMW owners), and reading new info about their brand of car and possible improvements/options, is very interesting and will increase business. I’ll bet Thayne could get quite a good subscription base fairly quickly, I know I would sign up.

I would guess there are many of us who feel like we need to do better online. Our site is there, but we need it to perform better, if at all and bring us some new clients. This is most easily done through search. Look for ways to increase your content, adding new pages, and a blog. Then write about products, changes in the industry, and keep your content, don’t ever throw it away. It may need to be tweaked or placed on an archives page of some sort, but you worked hard to create it, let it continue to work for you, it will make a difference in search engine rankings. As far as all the free advice to Thayne, I will take it on trade for a M3 convertible, black… of course.

The online world is a bit of a different marketing animal. Some of the 4 Ps haven’t changed much, and others have. Our Product essentially remains the same. The Price is also not changed too much, although with increase access to information, and more access to online resellers, economists would expect at least a downward pressure on price, if not overall lower prices altogether. Place can also can be a bit different, while many of us may still have a store front, there are some small business owners who only sell their products online. So presently, we either sell both online, and through a brick and mortar store front, or we just sell online which is a new spin on “Place.” Finally we have Promotion, which in some cases is very similar to how we promote offline. Using banners and Ads on webpages. As an example, at the top right of Andy’s Marketing Pilgrim home page, we see ads prominently displayed to Andy’s thousands of visitors. This can be a very good online advertising option, as we are able to target clients who we can predict visit sites with a certain theme, and we have a degree of control on the content, color and message of our ad. Advertising our revolutionary new socks for example, on a site developed to provide marathon running tips to novice runners would predictably be a good advertising opportunity/match.

In online promotion we also have the opportunity to start an ad campaign and purchase ad space on search engine results pages. Both Yahoo and Google have programs for doing this. So if we search for “marathon running” in about any search engine, we will not only have organic or unpaid results, typically found in the center of the page, but we will also see a column of paid ads down the right hand, and sometimes even across the top of our results page. Again this type of advertising allows marketers to target potential clients they believe would be most interested in their product. However, these results page ads are frightfully limiting compared to other forms of both online and offline marketing. The ads all look the same in color and size, there are limitations on what can be stated, and on how many words can be used to get the message across. So it is much more difficult to really stand out through ads on a results page, I personally rarely look at these ads. Imagine driving down a Freeway with all the billboards having a white background, with an underlined blue heading (sometimes it may be bolded, wow!), black text of approximately 10 words, and a green URL link at the bottom, that’s it. Not many keen marketers would pay the billboard owners for such a poor advertising opportunity, but it may be a good way to get rid of all the billboards. Now, I am not a big supporter of billboards in the first place, in fact, they don’t make much sense to me at all. It has nothing to do with whether they work or not from a marketing perspective, I just don’t understand why we want these colorful distractions taking the attention of drivers moving along at 70 mph, with other distracted drivers all around them. It seems smarter to keep all the attention focused on the road, hey, maybe billboards painted right on the road? And don’t tell me these billboards are mainly for the car passengers, the HOV lanes around the country prove there aren’t many passengers in all those cars.

Anyway, to make standing out or ranking well on search engines results page even seems more difficult, when we learned earlier this summer from Google’s Udi Manber, that 25% of all search queries are brand new, and never have been used previously. So how to do we target those evolving clients?

In this apparent increasing difficulty in search engine marketing, we should really be seeing an opportunity to become specialists at anticipating the keywords our clients will use to find what they need. I see a very interesting research project here. It would be cool to analyze the behavior of a test group when they are all given the same, random items to search for online. It would be amazing to see how each would construct their query to best find what were looking for. It is this intellectual process we need to focus upon as online marketers and small business owners, how potential clients are conjuring up their searchers, what is the basis of their search, how do current events and trends influence their queries? With these questions in mind, creation of new keyword phrases will keep things fresh and relevant. We need to remember that due to the thousands of pages thrown on the Internet each day, the process of search has become quite different and more complex. Many of us understand that our searches need to be more detailed in order for us to truly find what we want, quickly. Searchers actually use long-tailed, localized keyword searches to get around the garbage Wikipedia like pages, and the miserable “informational” websites only created to rake in Adsense revenue. My average search queries are now at least 5 words, and usually contain a localization aspect to them.

So if we are mindful that 25% of search queries are new, and potential clients are using longer and longer tailed searches to find what they need, then we understand our creative juices really need to get flowing to benefit from the new long-tailed keywords trend. And we need to be addressing these long tail keywords possibilities for all our sites on a regular basis. Whether we create a new web page, change some product descriptions, or add a blog post using our new keyword phrases, it needs to be done. It is actually quite amazing how quickly one can rank number 1 when the keyword phrases used are unique and well placed. And many will be surprised when some of these phrases not only start bringing in new clients for the specific phrase, but also start ranking well for just portions of the original long-tail phrase originally created.

So if SEO is important, and we can learn it, how much time should we spend on SEO as a small business owner? It is an excellent question, and ultimately depends on how much business a firm hopes to bring in through their online efforts. For example, if a firm has in mind that in 12 months they would like to have 50% of their sales coming from online sources, and they currently only enjoy 5% of total sales from the site, then they should probably spend a considerable amount of time working on the site, making sure all the pieces are in place, so not only will the site’s visibility improve, but potential clients will be happy with what they find. Conversely, if this firm wants only 50% of their sales from online sources, but they now enjoy 60% of total being online generated, then they should focus more attention on more traditional forms of marketing and advertising until this ratio changes.

To get started in SEO, I would recommend just setting aside an hour a day to dive in. At first start just by learning about SEO, either from some pretty good books on the topic here and here, or through a number of blogs we recommend to our readership, namely: Michael Gray (GrayWolf), Todd Malicoat (StuntDubl), Lee Odden (Online Marketing Blog), Rand Fishkin (SEOmoz), and Brian Clark (CopyBlogger). These books and blogs will provide good insight and instruction on the ins and outs of all aspects of SEO.

Once one has a basic grasp of SEO, they really should get themselves an account with SoloSEO, in order to put this knowledge to use, using the most comprehensive set of SEO tool on the web. Much like exercises in Accounting and Economics, actually using the tools, and seeing the results of your work, drives home the SEO concepts, and puts the finishing touches on the learning process. Through working with SoloSEO’s tools, a solid understanding of the pillars of SEO, namely keywords, links and content will form, and SEO will then seem not only doable, but pretty simple.

So once we understand what SEO “is,” then it is time to really understand our industry online, and review what our competitor’s are up to. This online Competitive Analysis can also be done using some of SoloSEO’s tools and reports. We must remember we are competing within a different marketplace, with new competitors, and how they have positioned their sites online, could and should influence how we position and optimize our sites today and in the future. There is not a pre-determined set of guidelines at this point for SEO, no matter what some might say, much of what we need to do to compete most effectively online will be determined by what our competitors have done and will do in the future. While the process of SEO is standardized, the focus of our specific SEO strategy will need to be flexible to face the challenges put forth by our online competitors. If we watch what they do, and manage our online SEO accordingly, then we can keep pace or outpace what they are attempting to do, and better our online exposure.

In my mind there isn’t a business out there today which cannot benefit from an online presence, especially a site that is well prepared, and skillfully promoted. Small business owners need to take every advantage, use every possible tool and strategy available, to insure their eventual, or continued success. I can think of nothing more vital, more accessible and more easily implemented (not to mention more affordable) than SEO. A site which runs well, and effectively targets the right potential clients, promotes a firm’s image in a positive way, while making sales, even while we sleep, or while we play golf (not that anyone would do this during business hours). Take the time to get to know SEO and you will quickly understand just how big your little company can become, and that realization can be quite jolt.

AAAAAAAANNNNKKK! Wrong answer, terrible advice, and even sillier logic. Mr. Moran aptly points out that offline forms of advertising are much more expensive, which is true, and depending on the product, I would add they may not be as effective, or as beneficial to a small business in the long-term. I unfortunately took (wasted) the time to go and visit this Ikey’s site, and frankly it was, well… icky. It is my opinion Ikey isn’t going to sell anything from the site as now constituted, no matter how many folks happen to find him online. And this is probably where our online business discussion needs to go. Ikey’s site looks like many other cheap ebook, promise the world, deliver very little, type sites, and it is delivered in the almost cliche, early 90s look and feel, animating GIFs, etc. Now I realize that “retro” is cool with clothing and perhaps some models of cars right now, but retro isn’t cool with web site design. To really be successful online, I believe you must start with your site and company image. Online, the site essentially becomes the salesperson, and if the site looks cheap and sleezy, it reflects badly on the company, no matter the quality of the content. It is perhaps sad to admit the online world is as superficial as the offline world, but that has been our experience.

Being online is also important for small businesses because we never know who is going to find us. Michael and I have been surprised, no frankly shocked, at the number of clients that have found our companies, even some Fortune 500 clients, despite our poor performance in some search engine rankings. And we have been even more amazed at the keywords these clients used to find us.

Which kinds of leads us to another interesting post. Marketing Pilgrim posted an article entitled Business Doesn’t Need SEO by Jeremy Luebke last Thursday. Now it was quite an eye catching title, and thankfully the message was very appropriate. Do we as business owners need SEO to be a successful business? The answer is simply no, I know a number of business that have done very well without much help from an online presence, and they have done very little, if anything, in the form of SEO strategy implementation. I am sure you know companies like this as well. But is that the question we should be asking ourselves? Do we need SEO as small business owners? From my standpoint, no we don’t need it, but I believe we should all be doing it, at least a little bit. SEO is the difference between doing well, and doing extremely well for a long period of time. SEO strategies position a site to do well not only now, but even more so in the future. As a site improves in the rankings through implementing focused SEO strategies, and is indexed for a longer period of time, the search engine cred of the site will increase. As content is added, and links increase with time, the better the site’s ranking will become, and the better the chance potential clients will be able to find the site, even if it isn’t on the first SERP page. SEO efforts build on themselves, and where that takes a business in the future is anyone’s guess, but without a doubt it will drastically increase the potential that new clients will find us.

And what about these potential searchers/clients, who are they, and how do they eventually find us. This is an interesting phenomena as well. We are seeing the way people use search change, they are getting better at search, as they have learned how to better use long-tail search queries to more quickly and precisely find what they are looking for. Additionally, potential clients, both old and young are now not afraid to look online until they find a company that fits what they perceive they are looking for. Even my mother and father have become Googleites, and can find what they need very well. We have heard from some clients that they were just “searching” around and essentially stumbled on to us, if we had not been online, or at least trying to be visible online, this would not have happened. People are willing to look for what they want, and spend time doing it, because they have learned it does make a difference in their experience. I would also suggest that many searchers understand that the best company for their needs might not be on the first page of the search engine results page. Experience with the search engines results has taught us all this reality.

So if we add it all up, an online presence, meaning a welcoming site, with a good product/service, and good customer service equals a good chance for a successful small business. However, if we then throw in a good dose of SEO strategies, coupled with an ever-improving and discerning search population, and you have the recipe for steady to exceptional growth over time. So just stay online, going offline is just, you know…

Stuffed animals have been around as far back as Ancient Egypt. Undoubtedly if you have kids you have a collection of them. Although stuffed animals are no longer stuffed with straw or beans, they haven’t really changed much at all over the years, until now. A new company has created the transformer of stuffed animals, Zoobie Pets. Not only is it a cute, cuddly, soft stuffed animal, but it can also become a pillow or a blanket. So simple, but so neat!

Transform your SEO Business

This got me thinking, what other things around us, as ordinary as stuffed animals, could be “transformed” into an even better product and compete with the original? Can we do that with an “ordinary blog” or “ordinary service” like SEO? Yes!

Do you just do run of the mill SEO? Or do you go beyond the ordinary into the extraordinary? Do you offer specialization in services such as local search, link building, ecommerce sites, jewelry retailers, link bait, etc.? Do you have certain skills that set you apart from the rest, like programming, design, PR, etc.? Do you offer services that not not only include SEO but also web hosting, programming, site design, logo design, radio ads, print ads, etc.? Even if you don’t do it all yourself, if you surround yourself with a team that works together, even across business lines, you can offer your customers a product that is extraordinary and brings them the results that WILL make them talk about it at other conferences and business meetings.

The Zoobie Pets are so adorable, that I want to tell other people about them. My kids like them so much, they have been telling everyone they meet about their new Zoobie Pet. Having a product that is extraordinary, that can make a passionate user (think Apple, Google) gives you a huge advantage in word-of-mouth marketing.

A few good links about being “passionate”:

Creating Passionate Users blog is an excellent one I subscribe to

A post by Aaron Wall (SEObook) about being passionate in what you do

Disclaimer: My little sister runs LittleAngelBaby.com that sells the Zoobie Pets, and I don’t get any compensation for the referral. If you have a kid in your life, I think they’ll like this, mine sure have!

Rand states there is some unspoken, yet understood code of conduct amongst SEOs, that they simply do not report one another for spamming techniques used by some to improve site rankings. Silly. Rand doesn’t proclaim to be educated in the art of competition or business, but in SEO, so he gets a free pass on this affront to the very basics of competitive theory. To those of us who are running our own non-SEO business, if we find our competitors are benefiting in the rankings by utilizing spamming techniques, then we owe it to ourselves and firms to report them. I do not consider myself to be a SEO, just a business person who uses SEO techniques to help our businesses do better online. And I believe most of our readers are in the same boat, just business people trying to make a living. Unfair competition is never allowable, and the “aw shucks” response is rarely successful. Every one of us needs to join the fight to level the search playing field, making it as fair as possible for everyone to be successful if they compete respectfully online. If your competitors are up to no good, and gaming the SERPs, report them, and continue to report them until the problem is addressed. The unwritten SEO code of conduct can be adhered to by that little group, but it makes no sense in business, it is bad policy. Spamming is bad for the net, bad for the economy and flat out cheating in every sense. I am looking forward to the day when spammers are picked up and prosecuted in a court of law, just as is done daily to other lying, cheating, greedy people in the offline business world.

I would go so far to say, if you know your competitor well enough, and are friendly with them, it might be worth a phone call or email just to let them know what is going on with their site. If the competitor has an SEO working for them, they may not be aware the SEO is using spamming techniques to improve the company’s search rankings. This heads-up might solve the problem right there, and it will keep things friendly. If you aren’t friends, or don’t feel comfortable communicating directly, then report the offenses. When your competitor’s pages disappear into supplemental purgatory, and their rankings fall, I am sure your competitor will have a nice talk with their SEO guy to figure out why. Which will be where the SEO blames the SE algo, the tides, and global warming for the instant drop in the SERP results.

On a more positive note.

Rand claims his firm only reports on spam inadvertently in their blog posts, and gives four reasons. The 4 points really don’t matter to most of us, so its not big news. But point #2, taken as general advice, is an excellent reminder as to where we need to focus our online marketing efforts. He states:

You’ll have a far greater return on your productivity time optimizing your site, building content, getting links and conducting press & marketing than you will reporting your competitors for what looks like a paid link.

Okay, as mentioned above, forget the garbage about not reporting on your competitors concerning spam, it doesn’t take much time, so just do it for Google here and Yahoo! here, and protect yourself and your business. But when the majority of our online marketing efforts is spent working and implementing good solid SEO techniques, then we are going to see results and better our ranking over time, and these benefits become long term. That much is very true and it is very sound advice, it is nice to see some established SEOs suggest we focus on the basics.

Build your online business, as you have built your off-line business. Focus on quality, service, branding, and SEO the site the right way, and a sustainable, solid ranking is very probable. But make sure to protect yourself if competitors attempt to slime their way in above you in the SERPs, report them, and continue to report on them until they are buried in supplemental oblivion, where they belong until they get their act together.

Obviously I was frustrated by this guy’s admission of absolute inefficiency, I mean what a waste of a perfectly good piece of equipment. All the potential to do great things on the go, and it just exists as a lowly phone, not much better than those massive Motorola brick phone of the 80s. It still freaks me out to think about it.

However, the whole experience got me thinking about the similar situation with websites. There are many business people out there who don’t have websites yet, which is just a real shame, they are missing out on ever-increasing online opportunities. Then there are others who have websites, but are only using the site as essentially an online brochure. They are not taking advantage of all the options open to them, or attempting to propel the site and firm’s message up the SERPs, and ultimately in front of potential clients. That too is a waste, a major waste. If you have a website, then you have taken an important step, at least you have something to work with, but just as the Blackberry 8800 was just this guy’s phone, there is much more to a site than just being a brochure. By using SEO tools the power of a site can be released, either by site owners, or through SEO professionals. A site, which is optimized, can take advantage of all the online opportunities available, and becomes an efficient business tool. As a business owner, not having a site is a poor business decision, however, not optimizing a site makes the decision to create the site in the first place questionable. A site not properly optimized is nothing more than a dream not pursued, and opportunity lost.

As for the Blackberry 8800, I was very tempted. But I have decided to hold out. I will go with what I have (miserable Treo700p anyway) until the glorious month of June, where I shall be thereby christened “iPhone Aaron, Mobile Boy.”