About our SEO - Optimize 4 Engines

In the vast world of SEO, there is no shortage of opinions on how, why, and when to do what to your site to make it rank better on the search engines. I have been performing SEO for some time now, but in part it's been on my own website and for my own small business. Now that I've started my own SEO company it gives me far more time to research new techniques, try out the latest fads, and above all else discover what the truth is behind this relatively new form of marketing. Yet, there is something to be said for grabbing the bull by the horns and trying the do-it-yourself method for your small business. SEO is not particularly complicated. All you really need is some basic html knowledge, a few commonly used free online SEO tools for keyword research, and most importantly time. This is where I fell short in my do-it-yourself SEO attempts.

In the business world there is one major factor that contributes largely to all others. Sales. Without sales you have little if any operating budget for marketing, but without marketing where are your sales coming from? From my own experience running a small business, I found that my number one problem was having the time to do enough marketing to generate the sales I needed to run my business profitably. If you're a large company with investors, or at least have a large staff and/or marketing department, perhaps the issues of time aren't as dire. However for the small business owner with just a few employee's, or as it was in my case just myself and the volunteer help of a few friends, I found myself wearing lots of different hats. On the one hand I had to run and maintain my business and develop the products I was trying to sell in a very competitive market. This in itself was a full time job and left little time for much else. And yet on the other hand I had to find a way to market my products so potential customers would know about them and know how to buy them.

I began learning about SEO and how it could benefit my bottom line. I talked to people in the industry and discovered that if I had the time I could in fact do it myself. This of course was extremely appealing because I would be saving money on not having to hire a company or staff to do it for me. Pretty simple. The more I learned, the more work piled up and my product development suffered. I wasn't getting the results on the search engines I had hoped for quick enough, and in turn, I wasn't spending enough time working on my product development either. It became a true catch 22 situation. I didn't have the time I needed to spend on product development and marketing at the same time.

My business was in a state of disarray, so I put it on hold and decided to use what I had learned about SEO and offer my marketing services to other small businesses at an affordable rate in an effort to make enough money to save my company. The venture allowed me to spend all of my time learning about SEO and the ins and outs of the Search Engines. I never did go back to my other business. I found that Search Engine Optimization was a better market for me, and I like helping the small businesses compete against the giant corporations. I continue to provide affordable SEO services to small businesses and take a personal approach to each client simply because I know what it's like on that side of the fence too. Business is about one thing. Sales. A slick SEO campaign will generate nothing but sales. The return on investment is exponential and any small business is a big step ahead of the rest with the right Search Engine Optimization company behind them.

John Simmonds
Co-Founder of Optimize4Engines