First, I’m certainly not an SEO expert by any means - I’m simply a man trying to make an honest living in Cyberspace. Recently, while tweaking my mother-in-law’s business website (in a less competitive market) – I landed her on the first page of Google and Yahoo! in less than a week and a couple of hours work. Certainly not mentioning this to brag about myself – I reference it because of the ease at which it was accomplished. Quite astonished by this fast success, I realized that her competitors had obviously not placed much value on SEO – otherwise they would not have been so easily outranked.
Being such an analytical thinker – this led me to another important question. How long would SEO continue to be undervalued in less competitive markets? How soon will all online businesses need full time SEO to promote their websites in order to be successful? Any even scarier thought - how long until only the largest corporations with the deepest of pockets rule the web? After all, almost everything comes back down to money sooner or later.
My second experience comes from the SEO I’ve been pursuing with my personal online retail business. Using SEO techniques learned from various sources, I’ve been able to achieve first page SERPs on Google and Yahoo! for many of my most profitable keywords. Again, I mention this not to brag – but to show the relative ease at which they were accomplished. Although my online retail store is in a “somewhat competitive” market – I’ve been able to achieve these SEO rankings within six months working only a few hours a week.
Although Seth Godin would probably laugh at this article – it offers legitimate thoughts to consider. With fantastic SEO books and other resources readily available at a low cost for anyone seeking to learn SEO fundamentals – how long until all successful internet businesses will need to be highly optimized by SEO teams in order to be successful?