The three choices are:

• Hire professional SEO services
• Learn search engine optimizations and internet marketing yourself
• Put your head in the sand and let your business flail until it goes under

In the world on the Internet (marketing aside) – there are all sorts of things that people go to the Internet to do – shop, read the news, find jokes, do research – all the things that people do in the offline world, they now are spending a considerable amount of time doing online. So what ever community you may have in the offline world – your business, your industry, your city, your charity, your school club – you can have these same communities in the online world.

In the offline world – where you have a brick and mortar store of some sort – you either hire someone to do your marketing, you learn to do it on your own, or eventually you go out of business.

The online world is exactly the same

The rate of return is comparable too – hiring a marketing agency will produce far better results than your own marketing plans, because the have the experience, expertise, and they live and breathe marketing every single day.

So lets come back to the Internet marketing world

You can hire a professional SEO consultant to do the work for you and get exceptional results, or you can do the SEO and Internet marketing services yourself and keep afloat, or you can do nothing, and your website will sit there and do nothing too.

Likely, if you are reading this page, you already know that if you own a business, you have to market you business online. Just choose the right method for you. If you didn’t know this previously, and have done nothing to promote your site online and have read this far, congratulations. You’ve just made a huge impact on your psyche.

I would be most honored if you would leave me a comment that said “Thank You for showing me the way” – It may not pay my bills, but it makes me feel good to know that my articles and blogs about search engine marketing are helping someone grow their business.

Two of the most important questions that arise from your intended use of SEO are, “how much are you willing to spend?”, and “are you going to outsource the SEO?”. Why are these important? For starters – they force you to commit to a plan. Without a plan there can be no action, without action you can’t win.

So do you outsource? A lot of it will depend on your budget and your goals. If you have an extremely limited budget, you might be able to hire a part time traffic assistant from another country that can do some off-page link building for you – but there is risk involved with this scenario. Often times the paid traffic generation companies use automated software, or do things that Google and other search engines aren’t really fond of. This could have a negative impact on your search engine rankings. If you can’t outsource, then you might also consider doing the SEO by yourself. The downfall is that this takes away from your business that you run, and takes time to learn and implement. SEO is an ongoing effort, and not a one-time shot, so if you start it, you better be able to finish it, or the time you spent starting the SEO effort will be wasted.

If you have a larger budget, do you hire someone outright, or do you outsource to another company, or even another country? You can hire someone outright and put her on your payroll, and might even get a good rate on pay, but what about the quality of results? In this case, you are likely to get what you pay for. SEO is a very competitive market, and if someone takes a job working for someone else in this market, they may not be motivated enough to achieve the results that you are after. There is always the exception to the rule, but they are rare in this market. If you find the right person for the right price, and they are motivated enough, you can always have them trained by a consultant to do the job in house. This is often times a good idea if proprietary systems are involved.

So if you outsource, where do you turn? Foreign countries are one option, and for many, the results will be very much in line with what they are expecting, and for the price that they are willing to pay.

Another option is to hire a local SEO consultant that can be hired part/full time to work closely with your team to optimize your site to meet or exceed your online goals. The advantage of outsourcing an SEO consultant is that he is likely more entrepreneurial in spirit, and motivated to do a great job for you – especially if there is a bonus clause in your contract. Another is that you are hiring someone that focuses all his/her attention on nothing but SEO, so the quality of your results are likely to be better by outsourcing, rather than trying to train someone in-house.

I may be biased on this SEO topic – but I wholeheartedly believe that if SEO isn’t your business, that you should outsource the work, and allow yourself to focus on the business that you are in. I also recommend that you investigate any SEO proposals that you receive – and don’t let price be a factor, look at the quality. To check if the SEO proposal is a good one, go to one of the SEO forums like Warrior Forum and ask around. They are typically very friendly and can give you an honest answer.

Now I don’t want to get caught up in the semantics of what they’re talking about… that would likely lead us off topic – but ever think about what it’s really accomplishing?

Well search engine keywords aren’t too much different… think about it… “My keyword ranks number 1 on Google, and number 3 on MSN and Yahoo… Beat that!”

This is what I call a “Keyword Trophy”. Where you get some mythical prize if you rank number one for some set of keywords. But is a keyword trophy really worth anything? Sometimes, but usually not.

Let me explain. If you had no competition, then what is the real value of a keyword ranking? There isn’t one. For instance, I bet I could create a site today and rank number one on most search engines for the keyword phrase “itchy witchy seems kinda funky but might pay me more money in the long run” – some random made up phrase that I’ll now rank for, but how many people are going to be searching for it? And more importantly, what are they going to do with it?

That’s kinda my point here… the “what are they going to do with it” part – Your goal is conversions, and new customers right? So if all your keyword trophies aren’t converting, then what is there value? Do you see where I’m going with this? Conversions and customers are the real goal of Internet marketing and search engine optimizations… not top rankings. Does this mean that you should stop trying to rank high? nope. Not at all. But focus on the important keywords… the ones that convert traffic into customers. Otherwise all those SEO consultant fees aren’t paying for themselves… just your ego and the size of your… whatever it was that was being measured.