The Importance of SEO
By admin • Jun 9th, 2008 • Category: Mark's BlogI was asked today about why ‘just having a website’ is not enough to be successful online. The question came up after I was talking about a seminar I attended last year with my father. The seminar was an American based company successfully selling website services (of course they didn’t market it like this, but that’s all they were essentially doing) selling a website that they’d create for you, providing you with a specific product driven website that would ‘definitely make you wealthy beyond your wildest dreams’.
Now I say ’successfully’ because more than half the audience was sold on their little scam. And for big money too. We’re talking upwards of $12,000 for each sale. You might think crazy price, but for a fully product driven website, with the company holding your hand the whole way, that’s probably about the right price. The only problem is they were hinting at guaranteed success, and failed to mention how competitive the search industry is for any common product driven website. Sure, hand over your hard earned cash, get a website developed, but then what? How is anyone going to find your site over the thousands of other sites all similarly produced?
The truth is search engine marketing is a massively important part of the equation, and I’d say you need to allow more than half of your initial project budget and time to search engine activities for the first year, otherwise you can expect to be getting minimal, if any, traffic to your fancy site. I won’t go into specifics about search engine techniques, because honestly I’m still learning myself (and it is a continuous learning curve), but I will be documenting my progress as I learn and succeed, so keep tuned. My point is simply to make you aware of scams like this one I witnessed, and to be very wary of anyone selling you a website that fails to mention the importance of ‘being found online’. If they don’t mention it, YOU bring it up. It’s your money and your future success. Be smart, ask the questions, analyse the answers. If you’re unsure about the answers you get, take your question and the answers you’ve got to the top search forums (type ’seo forum’ in google) and see what the experts have to say about your situation. You’ll find the nice guys more than happy to comment honestly and openly. Don’t ever be taken for a ride …and always remember that the people you deal with are often professional salesmen 
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Good point. Of course there are also a tonne of people out there who are professional SEO / SEM advisers who understand most of it and have proven skills in how to optimise sites and make they work for you. Unless you have so much spare time on your hands you can learn it all!!
Like all skills SEO can be learned and if you have the time and ability to work through everything required you can make your site show up well in search engines, or alternatively if you want to specialise on what you know best you engage the professionals, not the slick marketeers.