Yesterday I had a chance to sit down with a company in the satellite television market.  They are a local Utah company that does door-to-door sales for satellite tv offers from Dish Network and from DIRECTV.  They had asked me to come in, sit down with them, and tell them what I could do for them on an SEO level.  I always like the opportunity to discuss SEO and of course always like the opportunity to provide a quote on my services for online marketing.  After a long discussion about my background, current and previous clients, SEO theory, and the expectations they could have with building a website and marketing it online, they asked me what would stop them from just learning this and doing it themselves.  My answer to them was simple…nothing but your own desire, time, and effort.

The reality is that SEO isn’t a magical potion that only a select few can perform or understand, rather anyone can do SEO but the level of success will depend on your desire to do it well, the time you have to dedicate to learning and performing the trade, and the effort you put forth in making SEO work for you through you and your network.  I basically said, if you want to take your focus away from your successful business to try and do this on your own, that is fine with me.  In the end I think they realized it was much better to hire a professional SEO to do it for them.  I’m not sure if they will hire me or not, but I at least think they realized that they are going to need some help on it.

There was no were else in my career that taught me this fact more than while I was working at Prosper Learning.  While at Prosper Learning I literally worked with 1000’s of small ecommerce start ups and these business owners basically had two choices…they could either learn SEO and do it on their own, or hire it out to a professional.  Most of them, due to lack of funds, decided to try and learn SEO and do it on their own only to fail in the end because they didn’t have the desire, time, or put forth the effort to really do it well.   We’ll see what happens with this satellite tv company, but I hope they find someone to help them reach their goals and honestly, I hope it’s me.

Earlier this week while at a scouting event I had a chance to talk to a few young scouts about how they were doing with their personal finance merit badge.  To get the merit badge a scout has to keep a three month record of all their financial transactions including all debits and credits to their checking and savings accounts…that is if they have account as compared to just keeping their money rolled up in a wad in their nightstand drawer.  Well one of the boys pulled out a wallet he had made of duct tape and said…”I’m doing great and I have a $100 right here in my wallet”…yes you heard me correct, a duct tape wallet.  The wallet was completely made out of duct tape and as I tried to grab it to threaten to take his $100 if he wasn’t keeping a history of his transactions part of the wallet tore off.  Oh well, he can just add more tape to fix it he said.

Anyway, he had money in his wallet and in his savings account, but he had not been writing down his transaction history and to get the merit badge you must keep that record.  So here is the idea…for a company that specializes in home budget software or home budgeting software you could show a group of scouts that used your household budgeting software to help them get their personal finance merit badge and title the post something like, 8 Scouts Use “Company Name” Personal Finance Software to Get Their Personal Finance Merit Badge or Get Your Personal Finance Merit Badge by Using Our Home Budget Software for Free if You Are a Boy Scout.

This merit badge is by far one of the most difficult badges for any scout to receive because they have to apply themselves for a period of 90 days to keep that record and in the last 4 years I have only seen 2 scouts do it.  My brother is working to get his Eagle Scout Award right now and before he turns 18 (has 10 months left) and the last merit badge he has to get is, you guessed it, his personal finance badge.

There you have it!

The other night I’m at dinner with a few friends and there was a couple there that we hadn’t seen for some time. The husband had recently left his old job for a new job in event management. I asked him some questions about his new job and the things he likes about it and what he didn’t like about his old job. Pretty common answers came back like his new job is more exciting and more flexible than his old. He then asked me for an update on my business life and I let him know some things that were happening and that I was happy with business. He then asked, “so how did you get started in online marketing and SEO”; that is a very common question I get asked so I figured I would toss this post up explaining it.

I launched my first site in 2001 with a partner that I still do business with. It all started with us sitting around saying…we need to do something that let’s us be in control of our lives and gives us a chance to make a lot of money. We decided on the internet and launched our first site MyLDSMissionary.com which is still online and profitable today. From there I started working with a number of small business consulting firms and eventually decided to work full-time for a company named Prosper Learning. My experience there is what really gave me the push I needed to really dig deeply into online marketing and SEO and while working there I launched 5 additional ecommerce sites, most were successful, a few failed.

Prosper Learning is a company that coaches or mentors small business owners on how to launch, grow, and create a successful business. The specialize in mentoring in 5 major areas of business: Ecommerce, Real Estate, Personal Finance, Stock Investing, and General Entrepreneurship. While working at Prosper Learning I had the opportunity to mentor thousands of small online business owners through the concepts and process of building a website and marketing it. I got to rub shoulders with many extremely successful entrepreneurs including: Robert Allen, Mark Victor Hansen, Anthony Robbins, David Bach, and many more. I also attended every convention you can imagine in the realm of online marketing and SEO including: SMX, Pubcon, SES, CJU, etc. I already knew what it took to build an launch a successful website before working there, but having the chance to hone my skills and work with thousands of businesses really gave me a unique look into ecommerce. Most small business owners rarely start and build more than 1 or maybe 2-3 business during their lifetime, but I had seen thousands of business launch. Of course not all succeeded, but I could see why they failed and learned from it.

After leaving Prosper Learning I have gone on to create my own SEO firm, Dream Systems Media and Utah SEO Firm along with my two partners and have continued to build and create profitable ecommerce businesses. I think my greatest moments of learning where watching a business that I had high hope for fail. It gave me a direct seat to see what should have been done better to make it work. I have been involved in ecommerce and online marketing now for 8 years and like to think I know how to do it well now.

So there you have it…how I got started in online marketing and SEO.

I get asked this question all the time, “I’m getting all this traffic, but no one seems to by buying, what should I do?” That is a great questions and it’s normally followed up by me with this question, “what information are you seeing from your web analytics; like where is your traffic coming from; what are they searching for you by, etc.?” Almost always I get a blank stare and a great big, uuuhhhh I don’t know. Well of course you’re not getting any sales because you are clueless. Most small business owners don’t have a clue what information is in their analytics software, or even how to access the data; my advise…start getting that information ASAP so you can answer your own question. One client had tons of traffic coming to their site and were finding all sorts of information on which celebs have Alzheimer’s, that great unless you are trying to sell Alzheimer’s vitamins or drugs. If that is the case then you are getting the wrong traffic and of course it is converting low for you.

Here is how you fix that, call your web master, host, or who ever is taking care of your site and say, how do I access my web analytics? Once you have access log in and start reading the data. If your web master replies with, you don’t have any web analtyics software installed then get on it. Install a software and then give a few weeks and then start your data mining.

There are tons of applications you can use to track your online traffic. If you are looking in the arena of free then I would check out Google Analytics. Google Analytics is probably the best free analytics software on the market and it’s really easy to install and can be installed on just about any and every website out there. There data seems to be a little off to me every now and then, but it’s worth using.

If you have a little money to spend check out Mint and www.haveamint.com. This has to be installed server-side so no cookie cutter sites will work with it, but it’s a great program and looks sexy as well.

If you want the best of the best then Omniture is your answer. Omniture is the most accurate web analytics software on the market and is worth the price tag. Just make sure to use the data once it’s installed.

Hopefully, now you can answer yourself when asking that questions, why all this traffic and no sales!