Catch 22

Well, I'm frustrated about something again, so I guess I will blog about it.

It's the organic SEO catch-22. What is the SEO catch-22? It's simple-the people who need SEO skills (and recognize that need) are happy to pay for them but don't have the money to do so.

Likewise, those who have the money to pay for them rarely understand their true SEO need. Therefore, they do one of two things:

1. Throw some money at a big agency and get very little value for their money.

2. Do SEO in-house but don't really put much in it-much being resources, credibility, etc. etc.

Sometimes the actions of the competition will spur a company onward to better efforts, but that's kind of rare.

That said, the only real option for a competent organic SEO is to build his/her own online company (not an SEO consultancy), but that of course brings about its own challenges as you are competing against large companies with well established Internet brands. Even though they may choose to do very little with SEO, they will rank well because of the age and size of their domain, etc...

So what's a competent SEO to do? I'm wondering that myself.

OK, I'm ticked enough to blog again

I don't do the greatest job of keeping up with this blog-I apologize, but generally if I find something that ticks me off enough, I will rant out it here. A blog worthy event has happened.

As I've told you, I am working with a Fortune 500 company as an in house SEO. I'm finding all the more that this arrangement brings with it it's own set of frustrations.

Fortune 500 companies are good at making money. Unfortunately, they are very bad at making money on the Internet I am finding. Why you ask-simple-because PEOPLE COME TO THE WEB FOR FREE STUFF! The quicker a company can discover this truth, the quicker they can make money on the web.

People come to the internet for convenience. If you have a question-bam-there's the answer on a friendly little Google search. If you need a new car-bam-there's free information on how to negotiate with your dealer. If you need a pizza delivered - bam - there's your friendly neighborhood pizza peddler with online ordering. It's quick, it's cheap, and in most cases it's FREE (at least the information and the convenience is).

A Fortune 500 company is often thinking in terms of how it can turn a profit off of a customer action. To that end, it will choose to design it's customer facing web properties around this goal-how to profit from a customer. Instead of looking at the REAL need of 95% of the people who come to the internet - CONVENIENCE and FREE they look at the objectives of the corporation and try to cram them down the customer's throat with their designs.

A SIMPLE design is convenient. A COMPLEX design is not. Customers rarely care how many flying dohickeys you have on your site as much as they care how your site meets their current needs for CONVENIENCE and FREE.

ONLY AFTER you have met these needs are you able to ask for money-and it be freely given! ONCE you have met the needs for convenience, in many cases the needs for free diminish and/or go away completely. How many times have you as a web surfer willingly paid for a service because of it's convenience to you? By engaging a customer on their primary needs, you earn the right to request that they engage based upon your needs. Why is this a difficult concept?

Worse yet is when a company feels that they have engaged based upon the customer's need but they miss the boat entirely. THAT is the most tragic yet. Well, I'm done with my rant for the moment, more to come in the future.