Search Engine Optimization - What’s all the fuss?

In the last 6 months, I’ve spent an inordinate and possibly unhealthy amount of time learning about “search engine optimization” or SEO as the acronym geeks call it, and I’ve become relatively good at the techniques (don’t go testing this site for SEO - I haven’t put my efforts here.)

In any case, I’ve listened to hours of SEO podcasts, done my own internet research, paid “lawyer money” to talk to SEO consultants and implemented techniques I picked up along the way.

My friends who don’t care to or need to understand my new found obsession still don’t care. Though they do wonder why I would spend so much time on SEO when I could just continue to pay for Google Adwords (which has yielded phenomenal ROI).

So . . . what’s all the fuss?

Great question. Here’s my “answer.”

Paying for any kind of advertisement is all about speculative ROI (return on investment.) Phone book ads or any kind of print ad in general is archaic and doomed for extinction. The ad salespeople are VERY persuasive and optimistic with their statistics and fancy adcopy. They have all learned the phrase “the ads pay for themselves.” But if they don’t, you ain’t getting no refund!

Google Adwords (pay per click) is a great but appears to be getting more expensive every month. New competition raises the cost per click. Google supposedly makes an effort to rank your adwords with their quality match feature (I think it’s called quality match) which essentially keeps you honest by charging you more for keywords that aren’t relevant to your site. (Lawyers don’t sell ringtones, so they’ll pay more for clicks if they try to “game” the system)

So the “fuss” over SEO is about longevity. If I work on SEO techniques so that my websites rank better in the natural or “organic” results (the results that show up on the left side of the Google search), I’m building a foundation for FREE traffic to my site. So when Google Adwords starts charging $10.00 per click, I’ll hopefully be able to walk away from that insanity and just rely on my high position in Google’s natural/organic results.

Planting the seed and nurturing it now is going to be much more fruitful in the long run than dropping more and more money on Google Adwords for immediate traffic.

I’m not stopping my adwords campaign yet . . . but hopefully soon!

So invest your money wisely. Winning the internet marketing game requires strong fundamentals, not band aid fixes.

I’ll blog about my SEO strategies in the near future, but here are some SEO resources that caught my interest:

- Ebook - SEO Elite (I haven’t tried it yet, but plan to!)

-  Sean Mitchell - SEO Consultant

- My Favorite SEO Podcast