This is the first of a series of SEO/SEM life profiles that will I be posting.

Since I arrived at the name for this blog, “Search Marketing Life”, the essence of what I wanted to achieve was to help small business owners better understand the rapidly developing field of search engine marketing. Since I was spending more time training, consulting and advising new practices of marketing it seemed appropriate to add this information as a resource online. After all it is hard to bring a business owner up to speed to make an informed decision on internet marketing with just a couple of meetings.

Small business owners have to have enough of a working knowledge of most endeavors in their business in order to make an intelligent decision, especially when calculating risk. Most decisions carry risk, some greater some lesser. So when it comes to hiring a consultant, agency or In House Search Marketer, the business owner has to have an understand of several things in order to build his Search Marketing program, and a program it is.

A great way to do this is to have a look at the profiles of some online marketers, their education, business experience and their evolution in search marketing.

The people in my industry, I have discovered, seem to come from a wide range of backgrounds.I have noticed that they seem to have several things in common…so far; a passion for this new art/science, a conceptual and analytical ability and finally a creative bent.

So in an effort to make sense to you small and large businesses navigating the field of search marketing, I have done some exploring online and found several interviews and personality profiles.

During the next year I will be adding more of this research to SML to provide background as to how to hire a search marketing adviser, marketing agency or In House SEM.

The first SEO interview I liked was with Baron Ginnetti, Director of SEO & Content Distribution for Pronto.com. This interview by Jessica Bowman shines some light on what to consider when choosing a person to be your In House SEO Strategist, Team Director or Link builder.

Please let me know your comments and questions on whether you found this resource helpful. Cheers. C

I just got back from the SMX Conference – put on by Third Door Media and Search Engine Land. This conference provided a lot of updates to the Google, Yahoo, Bing scenario and brought all of us search marketers up to date regarding Google’s expectation of quality SEO and website development. After all they do own search; about 70% of the market.

Among the speakers was Vanessa Fox, (former Google master who built Webmaster Central), Rand Fishkin of SEOMoz and Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land. These SEO/SEM Pro’s along with many others brought all attendee’s a source of rich knowledge  of what is currently happening in the search marketing world as well as what we may expect to come!

Topics included SEO, Local Search, Web Analytics, Social Media, In House SEM  and much more. The neat thing about the search industry is that it spans the range of talent from In House Departments and Agencies to small business and large multi nationals. One thing that was evident, though, was that if you are in business today you will have to start embracing the search marketing industry.

The great news is that the level of metrics available now and developing is so much more superior to the old school tracking given by the direct mail, radio and T.V business. A small business owner can now really start to qualify and quantify his marketing efforts regarding return on investment (ROI).

There is clearly much to be gained by search marketing whether you are a small business or a large corporation. I am not prone to creating controversies just for the “media buzz” and back links however I will say, I think small business today is finally gaining a strong competitive advantage to those large branders who hold chunks of market share.

So my message to independent contractors and small business owners is dig in and put together a professional CMS website with SEO. Combine this with a basic Internet Marketing Plan and you will start seeing significant results in your internet marketing efforts.

If you have any questions on SEO (search engine optimization), search marketing or In House Web Development contact me or leave your comments below. I am always looking for feedback on how I can assist small business In House marketing efforts.

I quite often hear from people, that infamous saying,“my website does nothing for me.” My answer in much nicer terms usually is… did you expect that your website was going to be an automated business development machine that you just put into place and WOW like Vince from “SHAM WOW infomercial” https://www.shamwow.com , you just started getting more business. Or my favorite the SLAP CHOP! https://www.slapchop.com This guy is a Gremlin! He is everywhere! TV, Tradeshows, Stores and more I suspect. His site is not even well optimized because it is loaded with pictures.

My point; with all the site competition going online daily by the thousands from Orlando to Beijing, you need to do regular sales and marketing activities to drive traffic back to your website where of course you have a call to action landing page to enable people to take action and buy your product or service or simply sign up for more information and build your prospect database. You are in the driver’s seat with all sorts of possibilities to steer people back to your website where they can purchase at 12 midnight if they want.

So not to make this too long….Guess what the internet marketing benefit, at this moment and ongoing is to VINCE and SHAM WOW? I just gave him 2 back links which is one of the top ways Google evaluates site quality and worth for placement in their search engines. And why; because the guy made a connection off line (in other words we laughed our asses off) which caused me to check out his site. You’re asking: Did I buy a Slap Chop? No, not yet! But I did notice one on my Mom’s counter the other day.

Finally, this guy not only got back links but positive mention in the QuestSocial Blog which will be seen, eventually, by thousands of QuestSocial members who search the site for Marketing information. Take a tip from Vince; doing your work offline building your name or brand can have a multiplying impact online for your business!