Last week I wrote about how one of our sites had been bumped out of the number 3 slot by a competitor using unscrupulous SEO tactics. I’m happy to report that we are back in the number 3 position!

This competitor remains in #4, but I have a feeling they won’t be there for long. They have poor backlinks and loads of junky keyword text at the bottom of the page of interest only to search engines.

It still bugs me though when I see a site that clearly does not have as much to offer as our client and with less quality backlinks take such a high position. Google was acting a little strange last week. I thought it was odd that overnight our site went from #3 to #13 and then was back up to #3 within a week.

Change is the nature of search though. As search engines evolve, they will only evolve in a way that promotes high interest sites. Our theory is that by building high quality, optimized content that is of interest to humans, and solid link relationships that our strategy for achieving organic results is a long lasting one, regardless of how search engine algorithms may change.

Doing business on the Internet is becoming one of the most common ways for owners of brick and mortar companies to extend their customer base. If you’ve been considering taking your business online, there are at least two important things you should consider first.

Does the customer base for your products generally shop online or use computers? If you cater to a young customer base, or sell any technological product, you should certainly take your business online. There are some niche products, however, that don’t have a very technologically savvy group of customers, and might not want to take this step. Even these businesses can sell their products on the Internet with the right marketing, however.

Also consider your own comfort with technology and whether you will be interested in filling orders, providing service online, and routinely mailing out orders. If you don’t feel that you would want to do these things, an online extension of your brick and mortar business might not be right for you.

However, marketing your business online is the easiest and least expensive way to expand your business to new customers. You can take on new accounts across the country, merely by setting up a web page and taking orders through it.

David and I were recently kicking around some numbers about what it would cost for a company to hire all of the people needed to bring an SEO team in house. Wow. Even we were a bit surprised at what we found. Because SEO is comprised of so many different moving parts that must each be powered by a different type of professional, it’s no wonder that the majority of SEO is outsouced!

To bring SEO in-house and accomplish the job successfully, a company would need at the minimum a team that includes:

• Project manager
• Web programmer
• Copywriter
• Link building specialist
• Graphic designer
• AdWords/PPC Specialist

Add to the cost of all of these people’s salaries and benefits the fact that you’ve got to keep the team educated; SEO is a constantly changing business. For us in the industry, education means thousands of dollars worth of conferences each year, (an average SEO conference costs about $2,000- and that’s just the attendance fee), meeting with other SEO consultants, and a great deal of time spent on research.

Outsourcing means that companies have access to a whole group of expert professionals at a slice of the cost. Our team alone consists of

• 3 SEO Industry Expert Trainers & Consultants
• 3 Degreed Copywriters and/or Ad Agency Executives
• 1 Web Developer
• 1 Web Designer
• 1 Link Building Expert
• 1 Pay Per Click Expert
• And a handful of other professionals that we routinely count on

That’s a lot of knowledge! I know David has worked for year to build his team up to where it is now and it took a lot of trial and error along the way. With the exception of perhaps small companies with very limited budgets and very large companies with a heavy full-time workload, SEO is one of those things that just makes more sense to outsource than it does to try and build in-house.