This is the fundamental question each business owner / marketing manager should ask themselves, and the sooner the better. Let’s start from the beginning and work our way forward.

What is SEO?
SEO is an acronym for Search Engine Optimization. It’s an online marketing approach aimed at drawing targeted visitors to your website.

What is a search engine?
You probably don’t call them search engines. Most people don’t, even though they use them every day. A search engine helps you find information. The most popular search engines are Google, Yahoo!, MSN Live, and Ask. Now it’s all beginning to make sense, I bet. Search engines are the most popular way people find information online. Without realizing it, we trust these search engines to show us the best websites and information when we type what we’re looking for into the search field and click “Search”.

What does SEO involve?
That’s a detailed question we’ll discuss in greater detail in future blog posts. The top level answer is that SEO involves professional analysis, tracking, strategy, and adjustments to help the pages of your website rank higher in search results. The higher a page ranks, the more traffic it will receive. And we know from years of experience that any time your page ranks lower than page three of search engine results, you gain virtually no qualified leads or sales. People have short attention spans and lack the patience required to read past page three (most don’t even look as far as page two). As you would with branding and product development, you should tailor your web marketing to appeal to your target audience. Part of reaching your target audience involves appearing on page one of Google, Yahoo, etc.

The Information Gathering Stage
If you’re reading this and all of this is news to you, you are likely in the information gathering stage of online marketing (i.e. not prepared to make well-informed spending decisions). If that’s the case, feel free to contact us through our website and request more information on SEO or any other service or need you may have. While gaining new business is good, we also want to educate our community. As more business owners and marketing managers are educated about the tremendous value to be had from search engine optimization, the more companies we can serve.

It’s been our experience that prospects in the information gathering stage rarely understand the value of SEO to the point of making a “purchase” decision. Other agencies make the mistake of attempting to hurry a prospective client through the information gathering and convert them into a client. Doing so usually establishes an unnecessarily tense situation. If you are not yet convinced of the value of SEO, please do more research before making a decision. Otherwise, you’ll likely end up with a sub-par SEO (i.e. someone whose bargain price point fit your understanding of the value of the service).

Once you’ve done your homework, you’ll see that SEO is crucial to the success of your online business. Let us know how we can help you learn what you need to know.

Rand Fishkin and SEOMoz started something a few years back that is now influencing the rest of the SEO world. Rand took a simple blog and turned it into a major resource of SEO/SEM information. He offered readers the incentive to comment often in order to earn authoritative status. After reaching a certain point of popularity, SEOMoz launched a paid membership side of the company. Not only can you read the daily posts on the SEOMoz blog, you gain unlimited access to SEOMoz exclusive tools and additional content for paid members only.

This is the year of following suit. Look at Jim Boykin. After years of establishing himself as a linking expert and offering a blog full of SEO tips and thoughts, Jim’s put together a paid member only resource at InternetMarketingNinjas.com.

I’m amazed that Jim of all people amassed this group of contributing experts. He doesn’t strike me as the social butterfly or mister popularity. InternetMarketingNinjas provides detailed videos of industry info and tips featuring experts like Aaron Wall, Andy Beal, Bill Slawski, Christine Churchill, Cameron Olthius, Jeremy Shoemaker, Jim Boykin, Jill Whalen, Lee Odden, Neil Patel, Todd Malicoat.

On top of the instructional videos, Boykin pulled his famous free tools off of WeBuildPages.com and they are now available only through the paid membership at InternetMarketingNinjas.com. I know some SEO companies depend heavily on those tools for their initial assessments of new clients.

For better or for worse, this is the model people seem to be following in the industry:
1) offer quality, free info and tools
2) get readers/users hooked
3) switch to a paid exclusive model.

As with every stage of web development, this model will be overused and abused by everyone looking to make a buck. In the long-term, you’ll see some people and companies switch back to a free open source model in an attempt to rebrand themselves as unselfish givers in a taker industry. You wait and watch for it. It’s going to happen.