What Role Should SEO Play in Your Business? (and hot to figure it out) - with Eric Enge

In this video interview, SEO expert Eric Enge examines for the novice what Search Engine Optmization is, and what it can do for your business.

To discuss the role of SEO, says Enge, is really answering the question of "Where do new customers come from?" Because of the nature of a search for "Canon SLX camera," you can tell that the person probably was not aware of you before -- or they would have searched for you by brand or your company name.

The purpose of the practice of SEO is to rank you high enough to start getting traffic on "generic" search queries -- and thus get some new customers.

You'll need to decide what percentage of your marketing budget you should spend on SEO. And to do that, you'll also need to assess the effectiveness of your current marketing strategies for getting you new customers.

But SEO is not easy. Search engines use hundreds of different ranking factors -- but don't make them public to discourage spammers for getting rankings they don't deserve.

You need to find someone you can trust to do SEO who won't get you into trouble. Unfortunately, there are SEO scams out there that use fancy terminology (which you may not understand), but just don't work! Other SEO vendors offer tactics that may work, but be against search engine guidelines -- and eventually will result in getting you punished in the rankings.

The best way to find a reputable SEO vendor is to go to trusted SEO sites to see who is respected and interacting heavily there. Look for published authors, speakers at SES Conferences, and writers at SearchEngineWatch.com and SearchEngineLand.com. They'll cost more than the scams that you see -- but they'll actually help you get the rankings and traffic that you need.

For a great majority of businesses, SEO is a critical step in your marketing plan. PPC can get you immediate traffic where SEO can't, but PPC requires a marketing cost for every click and sale -- and a learning cost.

Eric Enge is the CEO of Stone Temple Consulting, a holistic search engine optimization firm offering expertise in SEO, PPC, and social media optimization. This interview was recorded on August 17, 2011 at the SES Conference in San Francisco.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• Eric Enge
• Stone Temple
• SEO
• basics
• novices
• small business
• new customers
• marketing
• budget
• PPC
• scams
• reputable
• vendors
• Ralph Wilson
• Web Marketing
• Internet marketing