Marketing is what makes things sell, and it is what makes businesses profitable. Without marketing, whether word of mouth, television, radio, print, Internet, or some other medium, even the best companies with the best products will fail. Somebody has to make buyers aware of an offering, and do so in a desirable way, before it will sell. That is marketing in a nutshell.

Great marketing takes us by the nose and leads us to a brand. The best marketing makes us think. Sometimes it makes us laugh, and sometimes it makes us cry, but it always makes us think. When it makes us think enough, it makes us talk about it. It enters our conversations around the water cooler, at little league games, sitting at a bar among friends, and in boardrooms. When marketing is done at optimum levels, it permeates our conscious and our subconscious. That is the kind of marketing that makes the difference between Fortune 500 companies and all the others who came and left. It is also the kind of marketing that makes the difference between your little company and the little bigger company you want it to be. It only makes sense for you to want to know how to market better.

You can often catch me defending the importance of search engine optimization, but I am just as likely to criticize the industry. Actually, I tend to be more critical than defensive, but today I am defending the industry honor. This is because although there are a lot of slimy, no good, low-life, bottom feeding, liars, cheats, and rip-off search engine optimizers on the fringe of my industry, there are also many SEO with integrity. These are the men and women in the SEO field who work hard and uphold good business values and deliver on their promises. These are people who take pride in their work and are as excited to see their clients succeed as the clients themselves. So the question must be asked, “Why do SEO lie?” and we should also question the reasons it has become an expected norm in the field. It turns out that a lot of people simply cannot handle the truth and the market started demanding lies. The truth is that it takes more time, knowledge, and expense than most SEO will be willing to tell you. The lies are a whole lot easier for most people to take.

I have done a lot of thinking about why SEO lie and I think I have some good insight to the matter. I have been in the Internet business since about the time graphical browsers came into existence and I have earned millions of dollars for myself and my clients as a search engine optimizer. This is nothing new to me, and I have watched the evolution from beginning through today. I want to share a bit of that with you, and I hope you will understand this from the point of view of a guy with no reason or intent to lie to you. Note that although I may say I am “for hire”, I am extremely selective about who I will work with, and it is statistically unlikely that you will be one of them. That said, if I bullshit you once, just stop reading and move on.

Get ready to feel defensive, because I have you pegged, and I am going to tell you what you are doing wrong. I am going to share seven (of many) things that suck about your marketing efforts. These are things that you are doing wrong, or not doing at all which suck so bad it is like a vacuum cleaner pulling money right out of your pocket. I am not telling you how terrible you are at your marketing just so you can pout about it and leave nasty comments on my blog. I am telling you this so you can stop going broke and making bad excuses for your failures. Note that I am also not telling you this to sell you a solution, because if you are screwing these things up, you are probably not in my target audience. I get paid for my work, and if you are screwing up this badly, you cannot afford me.

Got it? OK then, pick up your bottom lip and stop drooling on yourself about all the money you are going to earn with this new information. I am not giving you the keys to the kingdom. I am just going to try and help your marketing to suck less. So let’s stop sucking and start fixing some of your marketing screw-ups.

Think about paper clips for a moment. They are about the most basic thing you will find in your desk drawer. When you consider your marketing, try to imagine selling paper clips. You probably do not think much about what brand you are buying when you need to replenish your paper clip supply. This is likely true of your product or service, too. Unless people have a good reason to remember you, it will be a lot harder to grow your paper clip market share and to become more prosperous.

If you challenged multiple companies with a truckload of paper clips to sell, somebody would sell out sooner than the rest. One would almost surely hit their stride and empty that truckload of paper clips before the others, and there must be a reason.

People search for the craziest things online. Looking at your website statistics to see the searches people use to find your website can be an eye-opener. I discover thousands of bizarre and unexpected searches which lead people to my websites, and some of them quite useful. This can be quite entertaining, and also very beneficial for understanding people and the ways they search.

I constantly hear from people begging to be at the top of search engine results for specific terms. I often find that the things they want to rank for are about as well researched and thought out as balancing a three ton hippopotamus on a popsicle stick above your grandmother’s fine China collection. There are two problems with this: 1.) Somebody is going to get hurt. 2.) It does not work well, mathematically.

Most website owners do not have a clue about how to select the search terms to target, or even what people are already using to find their website. Even fewer know how to target useful search terms, or anything at all about the enormous value of lateral keywords which can often account for far more website traffic than the terms they desire. This is to your advantage, because now you do have a clue. You can thank me with your comments.