Don’t get me wrong, SEO is a real subject with real value. But in reading proposals from company after company with phrases stating that they will “navigate the complexities and challenges of building a strong online presence” or that they can “build-­‐out your brand and website, leverage real analytics, and create more profitable customer experiences.”

These phrases are followed by highly technical descriptions of what they are going to do for you. All of it boils down to this,

0. You need to have an overall marketing plan, including who you are trying to reach and where they normally visit online and offline, what they consider good and bad, valuable, not valuable, etc.

1. You need a well designed website with relevant content for the visitors you are trying to attract.

2. It needs to be built properly and the behind the scenes data needs to reflect the truth of what the site is so Google knows how to display it in search results. This is standard practice for any professional website company.

3. You need to get your content out to people that you want to reach and provide them with valuable data that will prompt them to visit your site and refer friends to it. This includes both offline and online efforts.

4. Track the results so you can keep improving your efforts

You can find companies that excel in reaching out to certain people and getting your content seen on different sites and publications, you can find companies that design great websites and some that build great sites with the behind the scenes data fully set up. You can either do a marketing plan or get a company to help you do it.

How simple is that? Get your overall marketing plan done by a marketing company or get it done by your own staff. Who knows your goals and target audience better than you?

Take that data to an expert website design and development company and get them to build a site in alignment with it.

Then find a company that specializes in content and getting it published regularly and broadly, give them your target audience and get them to help you get your message out to these people. Again this is supposing you do not have any staff on board that can do this for you.

Then track and modify your efforts based on the results.

That is the simplicity of SEO. As you build up a reputation for having relevant content that people actually want to see, or products that are actually popular, more people will link to your work or quote your articles and you will improve in the search rankings. Any other “techno-speak” and use of complicated terminology about how they are going to “leverage” this and that is just a cloud of terms thrown out to establish that they know what they are talking about and it’s too complicated for anyone but an expert to understand.

SEO simply consists of having a quality product or service and letting people know about it until you become established as the most relevant answer when people ask questions about your field.

So the next time anyone in your marketing department or an agency starts throwing around SEO “Mumbo Jumbo” and you start feeling foggy, just realize they are covering up lack of knowledge of their subject with techno-speak. If they are really experts, they will explain it so it makes sense. It really is quite simple.

Michael Figueroa

Chief Administrative Officer