I often try to relate concepts of SEO and social media to things that people in other industries can use. After all, who really cares about all of this, unless it can help them do whatever it is they do for a living.

If you don’t have anything to sell, you probably aren’t very concerned about your marketing. But you do have something to sell, so let me give you a hand.

My challenge is to help you translate this into earning profit for your company. In the big picture, two important questions I must address are as follows:

One way I hope to relate this into your line of work is to use analogies. This time, I will use tennis balls, but it could really be about anything.

Have you ever been hit by a stroke of Genius, telling you that automated directory submissions will help your ranking in search engine results? Maybe you thought that some nicely crafted meta tags would help your search engine ranking. I may be a bit too hard on people at times, but common sense just completely eludes many people when it comes to SEO (search engine optimization). Many website owners want to rank in the top of search results so badly that they will try almost anything. Well, as long as it is cheap, easy, and sounds techie-fancy.

When I started to write this, I was going to rant about automated directory submissions. Then I realized that I have touched on the topic of directory submissions before. I still have something to get off my chest, and I still have something to say about the toxic lies and misinformation that have been created surrounding the SEO industry. It is often fueled by greed and hope of getting something for nothing.

I suspect that you want to know, “is Twitter good for SEO?” Either that, or your bum is feeling pretty sore, and you are willing to try anything. I am happy to help with the Twitter part, and I am sorry about your rump. Try pistachio, but don’t blame me if it doesn’t work.

I am surprised that more people have not discussed the topic of Twitter and SEO to provide their opinion-based answers. I think that a lot of people are afraid to touch on this, for fear of giving an unpopular answer, or being wrong. Well, leave it to me to tell you this: “Yes, Twitter helps SEO!”

Twitter can help with SEO efforts, directly, as well as indirectly when Twitter users share the information in places such as blogs, social bookmarking sites, and elsewhere. If somebody tells you otherwise, you are listening to the wrong SEO advice.

Getting the research right is what tells us how to reach the right audience and what they will respond to favorably. It gives us the information we need to convert website visitors from lookers into buyers. Secondarily, it tells us how to bring more website traffic based on what people are searching for. Yes, bringing the people is secondary to knowing what they will want once they get there. Why should this concept be so difficult for smart people to grasp? Perhaps it is because they are blindsided by a lot of technical talk and SEO lies.

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.