The Marketleap Report
Volume III, Issue #2, February 4, 2003

Build the Foundation
Educate Yourself about Search Engine Marketing for Long-Term Success
by Keith Boswell

Have you ever wondered where you'd be without those first years of guidance? If my mother hadn't taught me how to clean a wound and put on a band-aid, it's likely I might not have made it through some of the rough and tumble patches my adolescence dragged me through. Scraped knees and bloody messes turned from pain and tears into childhood war stories and lessons about how to take control of my own health.

In today's economy, slipping and getting a big bruise or a bloody nose isn't acceptable. Our mothers and fathers can't be there to prop us up, dust us off, give us a cookie and glass of milk in the hopes it will all just melt away.

To succeed in search engine marketing, you have to take control of the process. If you're paying a search engine marketing firm that's doing all of the optimization and content recommendations and you aren't involved, you are doing a great disservice to your online business.

Getting directly involved with your search engine marketing should be considered a foundation process for your online business. This isn't something you're just going to dabble in. As long as you have an active online business, you should be following publishing standards and properly identifying your content in a search engine friendly manner.

Success means you are learning how to use optimization techniques for all of your web pages without necessarily getting outside help. Successful relationships with search engine marketing firms should allow you to learn about the world of search engines, the optimization process, and provide beneficial knowledge that can be applied to your web publishing on an ongoing basis without needing the marketing firm to do all the work.

Are you dealing with a small budget and don't know where to start? Look for a search engine marketing company willing to share with you the techniques they employ and provide guidance and best practices for tagging online content. Companies that aren't willing to work with you on helping you allocate your resources as effectively as possible aren't worth your time.

Reputable search engine marketers know that what we do isn't rocket science. We follow sound principals based on experience with our own websites and our clients. Quality content that is properly identified and written with both search engines and visitors in mind is the ideal we are striving for.

No search engine marketing firm can jump into your business with the assumption that it completely knows your business and is therefore ready to take over sole ownership of marketing your company to the search engines. Good firms know the things you should be doing to help yourself be found. You know what your customers call you about. You know what your vendors regularly request from you.

A recent study from UCLA suggests that people now consider the Internet more important than television. It benefits you and your online business to actively learn about search engine marketing. Search engines aren't going away. There are still more than 5 million new pages published to the web everyday. Google and Inktomi are only cataloging about 25% of the total estimated Internet.

The Search Engine Strategies conferences hosted by Danny Sullivan of SearchEngineWatch.com are a great place to get started. There are upcoming conferences in Boston, Sydney, London, San Francisco, and Chicago. These conferences assemble some of the leading search engines with the leading search engine marketing professionals. The education sessions are an invaluable resource for marketers looking to get a crash course in being successful with search engine marketing.

Have you gotten burned by a search engine marketing firm who promised the moon and delivered green cheese instead? Have you had success with search engine marketing that turned your online business around? We want to know, share your thoughts with us at report@marketleap.com.