SoloSEO

SEO - Vital to Small Business

Posted by Aaron R Stewart on August 7th, 2007

To small business owners, SEO cannot be seen as the “end all - be all” to their potential success, but it rightfully should be considered a “must do” in order to maximize their full business potential. Based on our own situation, and finally deciding ourselves we needed to spend time on SEO, we now understand that getting started in SEO can be a bit intimidating, and very confusing without the right information. The SEO world tends to speak in their own tongue, and their language wasn’t developed, or taught in any business classes I attended. These new terms, whether it was meant to be this way or not, seem to have created a bit of a “barrier to entry,” to use a term we are more familiar with. Essentially the SEO industry created an illusion of “if we don’t know the terminology, it will be difficult to understand or perform SEO, and even tougher to do it well.” I felt the same way at first, but that perception is simply not true. SEO done the right way, without all the tricks and tinkering (which isn’t all that effective anymore anyway), is actually pretty straight forward. Just as simple as learning about credits and debits in Accounting or how supply and demand affect pricing in Economics. Not too tough to understand with a little reading and some hands-on exercises.

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.

2 comments Visited 1606 times August 7th, 2007 Aaron R Stewart

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SEO around the globe

Posted by Aaron R Stewart on March 19th, 2007

SoloSEO has been quite a surprise. When we launched last November, we had no idea the draw a stand alone SEO system would have, nor the level of interest it would generate. It has been truly a whirlwind. We did some quick figuring the other day and discovered that domains from over 40 different countries are currently using our site to SEO their sites. It is also surprising Germany and Russia are the top two, since the site is only being offered in English, and not localized for any other foreign language. There was no way to predict this amount of international interest. Of course we are thrilled to see so many from all over the globe interested in what we are doing, but we now feel pressure to address the SEO needs of site owners who can’t read English, and provide them with the SoloSEO tools in their own languages.

Personally, international business is a big passion of mine. My graduate work was done at Thunderbird, a graduate business school located in Arizona which focuses only on international business, and is ranked by U.S. News as the top school in that speciality. After graduating I was hired by a firm located in Utah, which sold a mineral in over 50 different countries. I was given the title of Global Marketing Director, and put in charge of overseeing the foreign markets, both in managing the distributors and determining our global marketing strategies. It was a wonderful time, doing what I had gone to school to do, international business. I loved the travel and the many countries I got to visit. In a typical year I would visit half of our distributors in 25 + countries, traveling about half the year. It was horrible on my social life, but I personally learned a ton about the world of international business, and how to ask where to find a bathroom in many foreign languages.

When I eventually decided to go out on my own and do the entrepreneur thing, I had hoped to continue with my international life. I started a consulting company with a partner, and we attempted to assist other companies on how they could expand their business operations into international markets, but this proved to be a tough sell. Many of the companies we met with thought we were too young, with too little international experience (5 years) to be consultants of anything, and especially in international business. Eventually, with my international dreams dashed, I had some technology built by a company I was attempting to represent in Japan, and started an online technology company that transfered digital files overseas for processing. This company became the extent of my global business aspirations and I was severely disappointed. But at least I got to be an entrepreneur, and I began to focus my attention on making a living in other ways. I decided it was time to put food on the table and take care of my families financial needs, but I hoped for an opportunity to “go global” in the future.

Michael and I originally met during the development on the first online company, and we struck a bond/partnership. 7 years later we have now launched other technology companies, all of which are focused on delivering online services to domestic clients. And this was also the original design behind SoloSEO. We just felt is was important for domestic site owners to have all the SEO tools they need, all in one place, so they could make SEO a less painful process. We knew others were probably struggling like we were, and they just wanted to optimize their site, to hopefully attract potential clients who were searching for their products. It was our hope the launch of SoloSEO would address the SEO needs of many domestic site owners, little did we know the international excitement which would grow quickly. Soon we had requests from the UK, Spain, Germany, among others for potential strategic partnerships, and international site owners, from many non-English speakers were signing up for the service. It was quite hard to believe, but here we are, and we are now trying to best capitalize on this interest.

So, as of last Friday, I have been here in Tokyo, Japan meeting with potential partners to hopefully offer our SoloSEO tool set in Japan (which is why my Japanese business card is included as the image above). I truly love Japan, I love being here. I lived here for a few years, over 20 years ago, and I studied Japanese in college, so I have grown to love the Japanese people, the culture, the language, the business methods and the food. Japan is as unique as any country on earth, but much more civilized, and perpetually polite and proper (and safe) than all others, which is also what I like about Japan. If you get a chance to visit Japan, you must take it, you will not regret it.

So in this post, I guess I wanted to say “thank you” to everyone who has made this trip to Japan possible, and I hope there will be many more international trips possible in the future. The growth and success of SoloSEO is remarkable, and we hope future international partnerships will contribute to our growth, which will continue to ensure that SoloSEO is always on the cutting edge in providing the best in SEO online tools. We assuredly continue to provide our clients with the most efficient and effective SEO tools available, no matter which country they are living in, or which language they speak.

Yoroshiku Onegaishimasu.

I’ll be back home Thursday, I hope the weather will be sunny and warm. I need to golf soon.

1 comment Visited 1503 times March 19th, 2007 Aaron R Stewart

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Starting your SEO Business: 10 Ways to Make Your Small SEO Firm Look Big

Posted by Michael D Jensen on March 15th, 2007

Nowadays you don’t have to be big to get big clients. After 3 months of starting up (early 2006) our own web content firm (Applied Content), we landed a big deal with a Fortune 500 company (actually in top 30 though!). It’s not that we looked like a giant corporation, but we looked big enough to show that we cared about our business and about our image. Whether you are a business-to-business or business-to-consumer company, looking “bigger” or more professional will help you land bigger clients, and more of them.

Now for my top 10 list of ways to make your small SEO firm look big:

1) Show that you exist

You should exist more than having a website and a contact form. Preferably put up a phone number and an email address. Get a toll free number if you need to and have it forward to your cell phone. Show your office address, a physical location that someone could look up on a map and find. If you work from home, consider getting a PO Box, but get one that has an address instead of a box number (I think UPS is starting to do this).

2) Show that you actually work with clients

In the field of web content our clients don’t want us to tell the world we write their content, so we actually just “hint” at who our clients are (Fortune 500 company, a site listed in Time magazine’s 50 Coolest sites, other SEO firms, local companies, etc). If your clients don’t mind, I’d like to see the list, even a short (best of) list. If you’re doing SEO, what keywords is the client ranking for?

3) Clean Website

I can’t even count how many interested clients for our web content firm have called and said “I like how clean your website is”. It’s not perfect by any means, but yes it is clean and simple. Don’t have your 14-year old nephew design your site and don’t use clipart. You can find all sorts of free web templates, just make sure you customize them a bit so they don’t look “templatey”.

4) Nice Logo

You should have a logo if you don’t already, even if it’s just the name of your site in a nice typeset. We’ve used LogoWorks before, but I’d try a local design shop first if you can.

5) Link out

There’s a reason that Google et al. like it when you link out to authoritative sites, and for me that reason is because I want to know that you know your industry and resources.

6) Multiple author blog

Now not everyone can do this, but if you have someone else on your staff or even someone that remotely helps you out, even if its a Link Ninja, have them blog too. They don’t have to blog all the time (you should, at least once a week) but enough so we know you actually talk with other people.

7) Rank for your Business Name

If I am going to use you for SEO you’d better be ranked #1 when I search for your company name. Remember that Google et al. is not just a search engine, it is also a dictionary, phone book, map, and calculator.

Run a PPC ad for your Business Name

It won’t cost you hardly anything, especially if they use your organic listing (see #7). It tells me you are using pay-per-click like a smart business does, even if I don’t know what other terms you are advertising with.

9) About Us Page

Be personal about your company or yourself. How did you start, what makes your business strong, what are your strongest points, what makes you you? You can do this on a Contact Us page if you want. You don’t need to tell me about your family and your dog, but I do need to know you are real. I need to trust you.

10) Call me on the phone

Don’t email me, call me. When some contacts you, call them back before you try to send an email. Then send a follow-up email and do all your contact through email if you want. A phone call makes you real, that you are interested in providing your services to me, and you care about my needs. I think human nature now is email because it is easy, convenient, and you can actually think and re-think before the message is delivered. This also means, if you’re having potential customers fill out a form you want to ask for their phone number (maybe even require it).

I hope these tips will help you to be better, look more professional, and land more clients. Your potential clients do care what you look and act like, so you had better give it to them.

This is part 3 in our series about “Starting your SEO Business”. In case you missed them, here are the others:

Starting your SEO business: 5 Steps to Getting New SEO Clients
Starting Your SEO business: Tapping into Local Business with Local Search Tools

5 comments Visited 3778 times March 15th, 2007 Michael D Jensen

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Bloggers Lack Respect

Posted by Aaron R Stewart on March 9th, 2007

Due to our launch of SoloSEO and our foray into blogging, I have been more sensitive to the plight of all bloggers, and to the generally less than optimum reputation of bloggers. I knew about blogging before our launch, and I got a sense from the talking heads of TV land, and the faceless voices of radio land, that bloggers weren’t held in high regard in the media world, but who is? Personally I have never understood why a degree in Journalism gives a reporter more of a “right” to report about SEO, medicine, politics, marketing or anything, over someone who blogs and actually works or has earned degrees related to those industries, but this seems to be their indefensible attitude. For my view, reporters without “real-life” experience in the industries they are reporting about, aren’t worth the time it takes to drop off that printed media in the round file, or the effort one must expend to turn off the offending electronic device, but I digress.

During my non-blogging years, I didn’t read many blogs, and the ones I did read where scrutinized before I would buy in. I personally felt each author needed to be: 1. Formally Educated, 2. Obviously Knowledgeable (in the blogging topic), and 3. Successful (in the industry they were blogging about). If the blogger didn’t meet muster, I didn’t view them as a viable blogger or worth my reading time. My views on this have obviously changed slightly over time.

As I now I sit here… a blogger, somewhat educated (with a Bachelor in Economics, a MBA, and working on my dissertation for a Ph.D. in OM), but with no formal education in SEO. I don’t remember that class being offered at the university. So my formal knowledge on SEO is suspect I guess. It has come from a few popular SEO books, personal experience, attendance at PubCon, and blogs. Our success with SoloSEO, although steady, isn’t as earth shattering as I would liked it to be after only 3 “official” months, and yet here I am still blogging, pretty hypocritical huh? I can now see Blog mountain from this side and my perspective is different. Before getting our first businesses online, I had no extensive knowledge into Internet Marketing or Do-It-Yourself SEO, as Internet Marketing wasn’t a course offered way back then. Nor did I have any idea there was such a wellspring of information on the SEO topic online. This abundance of info comes from some very intelligent, and trustworthy individuals. However, because of the three strict credentials listed above, I truly had a difficult time giving many “SEO blogging experts” much respect right out of the gate. While I have made my peace with many SEO blogs and are comfortable with their interpretation of SEO principles, others have fallen out of favor. I am still often dumbfounded by some of the speculation, and mind-numbingly simple deductions made by some considered most knowledgeable among us. Comments I read in blogs like “I think,” “my Spidey sense tells me,” or “based on my gut” followed by a claim concerning how search engine algorithms MAY work, cause me to gulp the Pepto. In the world of academic writing, any claim made by an author needs to be defended by statistically reliable results, or at least based on some long term research which indicates, within a statistically acceptable level, a strong possibility of fact. But in the world of blogging, anyone can claim to be an expert, run some unscientific, and even questionable tests (or not do anything at all), and then throw the results out there as probable truths. I believe it is this free wielding of ideas which causes many “offline” reporters/media sorts to question the credibility of bloggers. I’m not saying it’s right, and it is obviously stereotypical. Plus I don’t think many reporters have a sound footing from which to throw stones anyway, but with major market changes comes detractors, and due partly to woeful failings of mainstream media, bloggers have continually gained notoriety, and have found an increasingly important voice.

So, do we at SoloSEO consider ourselves to be SEO experts and qualified to blog. According to my narrow, academically weighted criteria, probably not. However, according to the general blogosphere criteria, yeah baby!! We are as qualified as anyone. It is not a position I am completely comfortable with, but we have learned a bunch over the years SEOing our own sites, using lots of other’s tools, and we have enjoyed good online success in the process. We learned more about SEO when creating Solo, and we will share what we think is important to those who care to read. I will say through our own research, and through discussions with leaders in the SEO field, we have been able to create and consolidate the most comprehensive set of SEO tools, all in an online environment, all in one place. That is something to which we are very proud. We feel we have contributed to make SEO more accessible to more folks trying to be more successful for themselves online, and that feels pretty great. These tools are as simple to use as any SEO tool out there, and they work one with another, and build upon each other, making SEO a smooth flowing process, much different from the segmented SEO tool parade that previously caused us much suffering.

Rest assured, we will continue to blog on topics we feel are important to our fellow Do-It-Youself army of SEOers. Our perspective is quite different as we are first small business owners, with our own business sites. And we too have struggled to learn SEO to better our business’ position online, as opposed to SEO professionals who earn their living assisting others SEO their sites. We see good SEO as a competitive advantage, and we focus on doing SEO better than our competitors, which increases our access to potential clients. We do appreciate the votes of confidence and support from you in the infancy of Solo, and we will not take this loyalty for granted. SoloSEO tools will continue to evolve and adjust to best provide you all with a powerful, yet simple solution for your SEO campaigns, and we will continue to use these tools for our own sites and blog when we learn something cool.

So, will the mainstream media ever give bloggers credit for the important work they attempt to do? Probably not. Do we care? Absolutely not.

2 comments Visited 1519 times March 9th, 2007 Aaron R Stewart

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Know your competitors, before they know you.

Posted by Aaron R Stewart on February 28th, 2007

Many see SEO strategies as a process which is only used when you are constructing your web site, or after launch to improve the site performance in SERPs, but SEO tools can also be used effectively to analyze prospective markets, even before a decision is made to start competing in a particular market.

By using some of the SEO tools, one can quickly identify the leading competitors in just about any market, and analyze their online presence, the quality and mass of their content, effective keywords, traffic, among other indicators. So why not use these tools before launching a business? I know of many entrepreneurs, including myself, that have come up with an idea, then just jumped in with both feet, without taking time to really look at the competitors online, but just generally in the marketplace. And if you feel you can out-compete the existing competitors, then you just go for it. That was pretty much the way we have done things around here for years. However, through the creation of SoloSEO, and the process we went through to learn the market, analyze what was presently out there, and fill the void we felt existed, we learned a bunch about online competitive analysis. Now that we have built the tools, and can perform online competitive analysis easily, it has changed they way we analyze opportunities and it affects our priorities on which markets we now enter and the timing of the entrance.

In one of our other businesses we bring in products from other countries and set up online stores to sell those products online. We have access to a wide variety of products from international manufacturers, so making a decision on which product to launch next has always been open for debate, and eventually decided by “gut-feel.” But those days are past. With the launch of the new SoloSEO competitive reports system earlier this month, we now can actually enter in the domains of the competitors from various industries we feel are most worthy of review, and then we watch how they perform. Based on what we see, we can then decide which industries to enter, and also prepare our new site to better compete head to head with our competitors right out of the gate. We have time to create content, watch pricing trends, see what is bringing in the most traffic, analyze the popular keywords, and make the appropriate changes to the site before launch; it is obviously a huge competitive advantage.

Anyone in business should understand the importance of watching their competitors, it can essentially be the difference between market success and failing miserably, and now that there are tools which make this once daunting, time consuming, and frustrating task very simple, not participating in competitive analysis isn’t an option. If you are not presently analyzing your competitors, I suggest you make it a point to start. In a book called Made in America about Sam Walton’s life and the success of Walmart (a must read for all aspiring entrepreneurs), Mr. Walton speaks freely about walking into his competitor’s stores and taking notes, then going back to his store and implementing the good ideas, and improving on them. The success of Sam Walton is legendary, and much of it is based on his keen understanding of not only his target market, but also the knowledge he gained from his competitors. Knowing your competitors, duplicating what they do well, and then improving on your own product/service is what free market competition is all about. Simply building a better mouse trap.

If you haven’t done so, please review Michael’s blog post on the competitive report system, and begin keeping an eye on your online competitors ASAP. If you are already a SoloSEO subscriber, then these competitive reports are now included in the current service, and have been added at no additional cost. If you are considering starting your own business, the competitive report system can provide you with information on your potential competitors, which will give you an excellent understanding of how you are going to need to position your firm to out-compete the online leaders. Finally, even if you are just extremely curious about online business and want to learn more about trends, traffic and popular keywords, the competitive reports can be wonderfully addictive and couldn’t be simpler to use. Just pick the site(s) you want to watch, and the completed reports magically appear in your email box for review at your convenience. Competitive analysis is now as easy as opening an email. What an improvement!

Add comment Visited 1543 times February 28th, 2007 Aaron R Stewart

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SEO vs. Paid Search Marketing Clash

Posted by Aaron R Stewart on February 13th, 2007

If you have not gone over and read about the tussle between Dave Pasternack and SEO pros, you must take a minute to review it, it has been quite entertaining. Our friend Michael Gray has jumped in with both feet, and his post called Dave Pasternack of Did-it.com - How to Fix Your Problem is an excellent place to get a good overview of the feud. Essentially Dave Pasternack has come out saying SEO isn’t “rocket science,” and it has caused a bit of a stir among the SEO ranks. Pasternack claims he gave up SEO years ago, and now considers himself a PPC expert, and co-founded a company that consults and assists firms with their paid search campaigns. It is his opinion that SEO is a “Fix-it-Once” Task, not an Ongoing Service. It is this statement where Mr. Pasternack loses credibility. It would be nice for all of us small business owners if SEO really was a quick, one-time fix, but instead it is an ongoing and unrelenting pursuit. Not only to keep our sites optimized to do well in SERPs, but also to stay ahead of our competitors, competing for the same keywords in the same marketplace. I think this point gets glossed over by many discussing SEO. As a business person first, I personally don’t care if I show up as #1 on a SERP, I just want to show up above my nearest competitor for the same or similar products and services. Some markets will be more volatile than others, but keeping an eye on competitors, and their movements in the SERPs will always be important, and most likely a moving target. The importance of competitor watchdogging will continue to increase as more firms figure out the benefits of online marketing, and begin to implement SEO and Paid Search techniques.

So personally, I have no problem with the use of well researched, and wisely created PPC campaigns, and well managed SEO techniques; there is a place for both practices, and using one without the other doesn’t make much sense. The first step however is to SEO your site and get it optimized for the traffic which the PPC ads will hopefully drive to it. I have noticed Paid Search only gurus occasionally suggest SEO pros use “scare tactics” to encourage long-term service contracts, but unfortunately the Paid Search guys do the same thing, making site owners nervous about doing PPC campaigns themselves, and perhaps blowing their opportunity to do well. PPC isn’t too tough either, don’t let either of the two groups scare you, just realize both take some expertise, and some patience to LEARN. The main reason there is demand for these two services is they both can be overwhelming if you don’t understand them, and they are both work.

As an example, 5 years ago I use to sit down and do my business and personal taxes myself, I even used TurboTax a few times. Even with all the Turbo Tax tools it took quite a bit of time, it wasn’t rocket science, and I got the job done, but frankly I did not enjoy it, even though a sizable refund was my eventual reward. Now with a dozen different business running, and less time, and no patience for our screwed-up tax system, I love the fact I can pay someone, an expert, to do all that work for me. I could do it, but I don’t want to, I have other pressing matters more important to me. There is the SEO and Paid Search services in a nutshell. The tools, advice to do both are out there to learn, but whether someone has the time or desire to learn and do them on their own, is completely another issue. I will also admit there is some increasing art to the SEO process when we consider link baiting, creating a buzz and social marketing aspects into the online equation.

Finally, there will be times when all the SEO and Paid Search in the world isn’t going to get you anywhere, as marketing results will depend on the industry you are marketing within. One of our companies has a very nice site, it is SEOed well, and we have been running solid PPC campaigns for the most appropriate keywords in the industry, but we have gained little traffic and only a few leads a month. We know the industry well, we know our service is widely sought after, we know we are priced nicely, but we still don’t have the business we know we could have. So last week we headed Orlando to exhibit at a large trade show in this industry. The results were amazing, our service was highly sought after and well received. We heard comments like “where have you guys been?” or “we have been looking for something like this for years,” from booth visitors. So the golden question… where were our potential clients looking when they couldn’t find us? The answer… obviously not online. Make sure you know your potential clients, and where they are most likely to be searching to find you, if it isn’t online, then adjust to help them find you some other way.

The world continues to move online, and will continue to do so in an ever increasing pace, but not everyone is there yet. Marketing is the art of getting the firm’s message to potential clients, wherever they may be, even if it is offline. So getting your site’s SEO in line now will pay dividends in the future, but it may not be the end-all, be-all marketing home run you want it to be right now, especially if your future clients just aren’t online yet.

Add comment Visited 1942 times February 13th, 2007 Aaron R Stewart

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Misinformation in Entrepreneurship

Posted by Aaron R Stewart on February 7th, 2007

On January 25, 2007 Guy Kawasaki posted a blog called “Ten Questions With Donald Trump” at the very end of the article Mr. Trump is asked to give advice to entrepreneurs, and he recommends entrepreneurs should be passionate about what they do, so they won’t give up when times get tough. I was kind of surprised and disappointed at his reply, and frankly I am tired of hearing “passion” and “entrepreneurship” mentioned in the same sentence. These two words together have become a worn out cliche, and not an accurate assessment of what small business people really need to get started.

Many I speak with now know I am an entrepreneur, and they will talk about their passion, what excites them, and how they want to do something related to this passion to make a living, and then build a company around it. It is a fairy tale concept, fun to dream about, but in practice it isn’t very realistic. What happens if no one cares about what you are passionate about? Or worse, what if you aren’t that great at what you are passionate about, excelling at it might be impossible, or take more time than one has to become good at it. The goal is to put food on the table and get in the black as fast as possible, work for yourself, and the time is ticking as soon as you get started. It is a race against time based on how much money have to live on, and how much you are going to need to live on when the initial funds run out. There is a word for doing something you love, but doesn’t make you any money… that word is “hobby.” You may love to knit pot holders, code cool online widgets, or build custom golf clubs, but if no one buys these creations, then you have a hobby you love, but not a business. That being said, if the products or services you have passion in are not needed or wanted by the public, it doesn’t mean you can’t be a very successful entrepreneur doing something else.

In my case, I have very few things in my life I am passionate about, there is my wife, kids, family, friends, my religion, maybe golf, and that is about it. So what should I do to start a company working with stuff I am passionate about? Golf? Maybe an online golf store would be the way to go, then I would compete with the 140,000 other online golf shops already out there. Or maybe I could come up with a crazy golf practice gizmo, or create a new, can’t hit a poor shot, club? Although I have no engineering background, and frankly, while I am passionate about playing golf, getting into golf retail seems like a drag. I tried to work at a golf shop once, I didn’t like it. So playing golf, there is where my passion is, but because I am not good enough to ever consider pulling on the Green Jacket at the Masters, earning money playing golf isn’t a real option for me. So what next, can I turn my other passions into a business? Renting out my family doesn’t seem socially acceptable, and my friends are all too busy doing their own thing, my religion isn’t for sale, so I essentially have nothing I am passionate about that I can turn into a business. Then according to the passion preachers, entrepreneurship should be especially difficult (if not impossible) for me.

Yet here I am. I see entrepreneurship as a process, it is a verb, and having passion about the product or service you provide isn’t as important as some make it out to be. Instead, you just keep your eyes open, you look for opportunities, you try to figure out an area of need, in which you can either provide a better service than everyone else, or come up with a new product that addresses a need not yet addressed, or a product that addresses these needs better than anything else. The required drive or “passion” then needs to come from a desire to excel at this opportunity, and not necessarily be based on the product or service. You then decide to work harder than everyone else and you stubbornly refuse to quit. You may not be successful in your first opportunity, I wasn’t, it may not be your 5th, but you choose to not quit until you find something in which you can be successful. In my mind there are two types of entrepreneurs, those that had a great product or service, and worked it to success, sometimes quickly, and then there are those that were too stubborn to quit, and eventually learned to make some opportunity work, it make have taken some time, and wasn’t instant, but in either case success as an entrepreneur was achieved.

Flexibility is hugely important as an entrepreneur, you may get going and figure out there isn’t much money in your original idea, but you notice another opportunity which might be better, flexibility allows a quick refocusing of efforts to work a new opportunity. There is a difference in stubbornly being an entrepreneur, and stubbornly focusing on a product or service that won’t ever sell, no matter the effort. I think in these situations, passion in a product can actually get in the way of eventual success. If someone is truly passionate about their product, and wants the public to love it as much as they do, they could hold on to the dream of that opportunity being successful longer than an entrepreneur that just sees it as another product. Passionate product entrepreneurs would be wise to put limits on their dream, based on real life limitations, including family, money available, and other opportunities. Flexibility is also becomes important as often adjustments with your company are required to stay competitive in an ever changing marketplace.

Interestingly enough, we have some companies with products/services I am simply was not passionate about, in fact I didn’t like the product much at all, but others did, and I developed a passion in being the best at providing them this product/service the demanded. So passion in your business can be developed after the business gets up and going. We had a very cool thing happen in one of our “passionless” businesses. We started sourcing some of our service work to domestic, stay-at-home contractors, instead of sending it to offshore providers, and the results were unpredictably amazing. Quality and turnaround time improved considerably, and we actually started to get “thank-yous” notes from the domestic individuals doing the work, instead of the complaints, excuses and demands for more money from our offshore providers. This drastic change caused a paradigm shift in my attitude toward the company, and I became very passionate about finding more work, so we could provide more opportunities to our domestic, stay-at-home contractors. It has become one of those win/win situation, our clients receive better work, contractors get to stay home with their kids, and the company deals with far less headaches from off-shore vendors, and unsatisfied clients. So we started our company to fill a niche, provide an efficient, reliable service, but without the passion some say we needed, but now the company has morphed into one we are very passionate about due to changes within the organization. Pretty cool and wonderfully satisfying.

So, the importance of passion in a product or service by the entrepreneur is overstated in my opinion. It would probably be nice if one could find an opportunity like that, but it is not required. Entrepreneurship is more about dedication, ingenuity and flexibility. As long as one is dedicated to provide potential clients with what they need, better than anyone else can, then success as is possible, with our without “passion,” which may or may not materialize over time.

2 comments Visited 1514 times February 7th, 2007 Aaron R Stewart

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Entrepreneurship… What was I thinking?

Posted by Aaron R Stewart on January 31st, 2007

I know this is a little off topic, but since Michael has been discussing how to get your own SEO company off the ground and growing, and due to the week Michael and I just suffered through, I had to remind myself frequently on why I traded in my previous “easy” life as a corporate suit, with a cushy job, limited responsibilities, manageable workload, consistent salary and paid health care for this life of entrepreneurship. And so I now share my thoughts…

Here is what I love about entrepreneurship:

1. The Risk. I like the fact that at any given moment (especially at the beginning) one bad day, one downed server, one mistake and the whole dream can come to an abrupt end. I personally have not settled on a word which aptly describes this phenomenon, but I know many who term this behavior as “just plain stupid.”

2. The Flexibility. I like to have some flexibility with when I work. I now need to work longer and harder than I did in the 9 to 5 world, but it is nice to be able to get away and see my kid’s school program, take a long lunch, hit some range balls or just take a break for an hour, without “asking” for permission. If I do take some time off during the day, it just means I will be staying up later to finish all that needs to be done, but at least it is my choice.

3. The Ambiguity. Kind of a funny one here… I love the fact no one has any idea what I do for a living. My neighbors ask my wife, and she can’t explain it. I am pretty sure the neighborhood just think we are in some kind of witness protection program and leave it at that. When someone pins me down personally and asks me what I do, I really don’t have a good knee-jerk answer. I usually just say, “I work for myself” or explain what one of our companies does, usually the one I have worked with most recently. I do know that answering “I would tell you if I thought you were really interested” does not go over very well, so avoid this reply.

4. The Learning. I love to learn, and running a small business is all about learning, and the faster you learn the better. You have to learn to assimilate info quickly, make a decision, and be flexible in your response. Even through a myriad of poor choices, and even poorer implementation, you can learn much. I have been forced to better understand or be hands on with our cash flow, advertising, sales, marketing, financing, HR (not fun), customer service, technical support, training (both internal and external), shipping, purchasing and charitable funding. It is quite a bit to do, but it sure makes the business world around you less complex, and all that stuff they teach in MBA school finally starts to make sense.

5. The Opportunities. I love helping people help themselves. Some of our companies provide work for hundreds of stay at home parents. They do a wonderful job, they enjoy it, they thank us for the opportunity, and they are helping their families economically, while being home for the little ones. That is a fantastic feeling. We look forward to providing more opportunities for more people in the future, hopefully contributing to their success, and making what we do very fulfilling.

6. The Dream. I love the dream, just the thought that something we do might really be helpful, might really change the world for good, is revitalizing. The dream is what gets you through the tough times, and through the items on the next list, which are the things I dislike about entrepreneurship.

Here is what really hurts:

1. Family Hardship. The hardship on your family is real. I have put my wife through more disappointment and difficult circumstance than most women would allow. She has had to do so much more because I am not home as much as I used to be. She is quite amazing and incredibly supportive, she sees the dream, and it keeps her on board. Without support from home, the dream of entrepreneurship is near impossible. It is also hard in other ways. When we started this journey our oldest was only about 6 months old, and I worked from home, so I got to see much of his early life (he is almost 8 now). But as the businesses grew, I needed to move into an office to be more “professional,” and by so doing I missed much of our second son’s early years (he is now almost 6). He was asleep when I left, and usually asleep when I finally got home. I can’t remember his first steps, his first words, and that is brutal to me. It is one of the most difficult things and it still makes me hurt, and I don’t think I will ever fully get over it. No amount of money, cool vacations, or times together now will get me back those experiences, I simply blew it. I hope no one makes this same mistake. Fortunately the businesses have grown, and I have been able to be at home on a more regular schedule and have not missed much of my youngest’s life, she is now 2. I just go into the office earlier, or work late at home after they have gone to bed. It is much, much better.

2. No Time Off. There is only one day a year I don’t work, and that is Christmas, every other day something has to be done. That does wear on you, but the buck stops with the business owner, and if they don’t do it, no one else will. I am fortunate in that most of what I do, can be done remotely. As long as I have my MacBook Pro, and my Sprint PCS Connection Card, I am in good shape. So we do vacation as a family, which is great, but I work every day, which isn’t so great.

3. The Risk. I know I have risk up in the things I love about entrepreneurship too, but when you have a family to support, a mortgage to pay, college funds to save, etc., the risk kind of loses its luster. So in my dreaming phase, risk is great; in my realistic/provider role, risk is terrifying.

4. No Rest. I don’t sleep well, and I used to sleep like a log. The slightest noise wakes me up, I am always worried my cell phone is going to vibrate and there will be a problem, and we will need to deal with it ASAP. Our clients use our services 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, including holidays, as many are located in other countries. So we are always on call, and always ready to address a problem. That not only affects your sleep, but going to movies, out on date night, during birthday parties, I never know when that call might come, and you can not totally relax with these contingencies hanging over your head.

5. The Money. When you don’t have much or any coming in, it is hard to get everything paid, take some home for yourself, and then hopefully gather enough into the coffers so you can pay the bills again next month. However, when you do have money coming in, a whole new set of problems pop up. Should you hire someone, how much to invest in infrastructure, how much to set aside for taxes, should you advertise, how? The problems seem to grow proportionate to how much money you have in the bank account. All that being said, it is much easier to deal with these problems when your personal finances are no longer an issue. So while there are more problems, there is less stress in dealing with those problems, because the bankers aren’t coming to take your home away, and you aren’t eating Ramen every meal.

6. Those Clients. For the most part I love dealing with clients, and solving problems. However, as with every business, there is always those individuals that will take 90% of your time complaining about every little thing, although they only account for a relatively small portion of your gross income. And they never know who they are, because they are confident they are like everyone else. Be wary of these folks. It has taken me a while, but I now can part ways with client much more easily when I determine they are a “90 Percenter.” Whether to part or not to part can also be influenced by how much money is coming in at the time, I had a lot more patience when we were desperate for any cash.

7. No Benefits. It is pretty tough to provide the 401K plans, good health insurance, and the other benefits the big guys can provide. That is tough both personally and professionally as you want to do what is best for everyone, but the cost of benefits is outlandish, you really have to be flush to afford them for everyone.

8. Taxes. Seriously folks, can’t anyone in the government come up with a better plan than this? We now spend thousands of dollars every year for accountants to figure out how much we need to pay in taxes. In the early days I would trade an accountant friend of mine my dad’s basketball tickets for his tax expertise, because it was so complicated. And this was when we just lost money every year. Now the whole situation is beyond ridiculous. I have little to no patience for inefficient organizations of any kind, and politicians don’t seem to care about being efficient, or taking care of their constituents. They only care about gaining power and hoarding it. I don’t care if you are a Democrat, Republican or Independent, if you are a politician on the local, state or national level, I’m not impressed.

While there are fewer points on the why I love entrepreneurship versus what I don’t like, there is no comparison in my mind. I love what I do, and the challenges faced just make the accomplishments more enjoyable. Any entrepreneurial likes or dislikes I missed? Please do share…

5 comments Visited 1734 times January 31st, 2007 Aaron R Stewart

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Starting your SEO business: 5 Steps to Getting New SEO Clients

Posted by Michael D Jensen on January 18th, 2007

Starting your own SEO business is an exciting new adventure. This is the first of a series of tips, steps, lessons, and tutorials on how to start your own SEO business. One of the many aspects of starting out as an SEO is finding clients. We’ve put together a list of five steps to start getting new clients, both for the near-term and long-term.

1) Get a website or a blog - If you don’t have one already, the fastest and easiest way to start is with a blog. With a blog, not only can you blog, but you can also add pages, such as a “services” page, “contact” page, etc. Buy a domain and get a web host, and host your own WordPress blog. This way all of your blog posts contribute to the content and indexing of your own domain that you can take with you even if you change web hosts. Make sure clients can easily email and call you, show that you are a real person. Don’t plaster your picture all over your site, because it’s not about you. Don’t forget to blog on your new blog. Blogging helps you learn as you think of what to blog about. Sometimes you can just start with an idea you might have from reading another blog post and continue the discussion. Lee Odden suggests starting by blogging about your niche specialty and even submitting to some of the SEO news sites.

2) Keyword List and Content - Create a keyword list (AKA keyword glossary) for reference when you blog, but also build content based on your keyword list. Write an article or web page for each keyword to start. Each of these should be useful, helpful, and interesting, and each creates an entrance page for potential customers to find you through the search engines and through pay per click advertising (use these as landing pages for specific terms). Add an image to your blog posts and pages to make it visually appealing. The more content you have, the more “doors” you have to your website based on different keywords and phrases. You’d be surprised at what terms people use and end up at your site. For example, we now rank in the top 10 of Google for “santa’s favorite cookie” because of a post about using Google to find Santa’s favorite cookie.

3) Local businesses - One of your best bets is going to be local businesses. If you need to get some quick clients you are going to need to find them yourself. Some will have a website, others will not at all. There are lots of approaches to contacting these businesses. I suggest you find a dozen or so businesses that you would like to approach. Set aside an entire day, about 30-45 minutes for each business. Look for their website, and check for a few simple SEO things, such as optimized title and header tags, content needs, backlinks, etc. and write up a few points for each business. Then start a keyword list for each business (SoloSEO has an easy keyword site scan feature) of keywords 2-4 words in length that you would think that most people would use if they were looking for their service. Be sure to include the name of their business and their domain name. Run a keyword ranking report and see how they fare in the rankings, and print out this report. Spend the next day visiting these businesses (dress nice, professional) and talking to owners and managers (be sure to bring business cards). Tell them you specialize in search marketing and whatever your niche is, and have a few tips to help their business. Listen first and see what their needs are and what they are doing about them, if anything. Give them your SEO suggestions for their site and the ranking report, and do it in a no obligation way. Briefly tell them what your services could do to help them out, and ask if they are interested in discussing it further. Be sure to do your homework on local search, and know what things they could do to jump into local search.

If the business does not have a website, suggest how a website could help them. Even if you don’t design websites, you can work with a business or individual that does and offer it as a service along with your SEO services.

4) Pro bono work - Find business associations or charities that wouldn’t ever really consider hiring an SEO, and do pro bono work for them. This gives you an opportunity to explain search marketing and optimization to them, then they in turn are in a position where they would recommend you to others. This also helps create a track record, so after you’ve done some work and helped increase rankings, traffic, and conversions, you can tell others what you did for them and use them as a reference. SoloSEO has a feature that will track site statistics over time (backlinks, pagerank, Alexa Rank) and you can save keyword ranking reports for comparing them over time.

5) Start networking - Plan now on attending SES New York and PubCon. These conferences are well attended by people just like you, some who have been doing it for years, some just as long as you, and others who are gearing up to start. Some SEOs will have so many clients they will be looking for someone reliable to pass on the overflow to. Go to as many sessions as you can and talk to speakers afterwards with real questions (not just hey, just wanted to meet you).

These steps you can start on today to get yourself ahead in the growing field of SEO. Of course there is much more work involved than this, but these steps are certain to get you to the next level in getting new SEO clients.

Subscribe to our blog today and look for upcoming posts on starting your SEO business.

9 comments Visited 4066 times January 18th, 2007 Michael D Jensen

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