My favorite title so far this year!! It’s a blatantly obvious term and title, but one I think many overlook when creating their web presence for their profile or their business. The point of “Search Engine Optimization” is to be found via the results from someone else’s search terms, words, or phrases in the search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN, AOL, Bing etc.
It takes 3 Licks to get to the center of a Google Roll Googly Pop – or the world may never know…
The first lick: is to show up on page one of the paid or organic search results. The upper portion of the page is always preferred because the likely-hood of searchers scrolling down becomes less of a reality based on today’s value of time. If they do scroll down to find you, being on page one is crucial to your discovery because NOBODY CLICKS ON PAGE 2 of the SEARCH RESULTS! Period.
The second lick: is having the right sentence and content show up under that title link so searchers are encouraged, fascinated, or extremely motivated to click on the link since it’s dead on exactly what they’re looking for. What are the chances of that?
The third lick: is to have the ability with your content and your site (once they’re there) to build trust, establish a rapport, create a relationship, capture them, convert them, and make them a client for life. Turning them into a viral walking billboard to send you referral business for the rest of their days is another post and story all together.
SEO… how are you planning on doing these three things with your site, your blogs, your splash pages and internet presence?
Trust me when I tell you that this is not an easy task to accomplish. All three steps take time, hard work, months of study, research and education, and most of all, the technical and people skills to pull it all off. I’m not trying to discourage you from attempting this feat, I’m just being real and transparent with you about the journey I’ve been on, and that I’ve also seen others take.
SEO… what’s my advice? I just gave it to you. 
The internet, blogging, and social media etc. is NOT a sprint to the win, it IS a marathon to the victory! Connecting with people using the available online tools is a fantastic idea and can certainly produce results, but the key to having folks find you and then be able to connect with you is to be on PAGE ONE of those search engine results, not page two.
Whaaaa! I was so excited just to get to page 2 after 6 months of blogging my brains out.
Mark – you and I click on page 2 but that doesn’t count! lol~