Right on. I am beginning to finally grasp the view from the “other side of the desk” and seeing just how myopic I have been. I really think that people understand the who “SEO thing” and they really are just nodding their heads to not appear uninformed. I really appreciate you coming by. Let me know what you think about the rest of the blog.

Frank

Frank Reeds last blog post..Commitment Defines Search Marketing Success

Totally agree with your comments on commitment. My own view is that SMBs struggle with commitment to SEO for the following reasons:

- It’s confusing and seemingly complex (it’s both an acronym and uses the word “optimization”… not a good start to easily understanding!)
- It seems technical: “meta tags”?
- It’s very time consuming (trying to get links)

And, for many/most SMBs, they don’t know how to measure results to see if all the effort/costs were worth it. So, they try out SEO and come to the conclusion that its more “art than science”, shake their head, and say let’s do more paid search!

And even though paid search also requires commitment (increasingly so!)… SMBs stick with it because they conceptually understand it and can easily measure its success (even as their cpc go up!)

Solution? How about: 1) Don’t call it SEO, explain the process as generating “free search” (you know, the opposite of “paid search”). 2) Before even beginning the process, make sure the SMB can measure the results of their SEO efforts. Since, as we all know, nothing convinces more than being able to measure the progress!