“With the rise in awareness in the public domain of the term SEO (search engine optimisation), SEO experts are now in great demand by ambitious website owners that want to increase targeted traffic to their websites. In order to generate leads, enquiries or sales via your website you need a professional that knows just how to get great results with a substantial ROI (return on investment).

SEO or search engine optimisation is the process of optimising a website in order to achieve top rankings on major search engines that attract vast numbers of searches every single day, which could be providing your website with lucrative sales.

Whilst it isn’t rocket science, search engine optimisation requires some hard work, smart strategy and patience, in order to achieve the substantial growth in targeted traffic that is possible for your business.”

For more, please click on this.

Recently, Snell visited Washington D.C. to explain to our congress people what the Search Engine Marketing business can do for small business people.  As he said, he went from “doing $400,000 a year and struggling to pay the bills to a multi-million dollar retailer in a few short years.”  His story on record went a little like this:

“Good morning. Thank you for asking me to appear on this panel. I’m here today to talk about how search engine marketing has transformed my family’s business, my clients’ businesses, and to show how other small businesses can take advantage of this effective and affordable way to drive visitors to their Web sites.

My name is Rob Snell. I’m from Starkville, Mississippi. These days I wear quite a few hats. I am a co-owner of Gun Dog Supply, our family retail business that sells supplies for hunting dogs. I’m also the managing partner of Snell Brothers, the consulting company my brother, Steve Snell, and I started that helps Yahoo! Store owners with their online marketing. A couple of years ago I wrote a book on Yahoo! Store: “Starting a Yahoo! Business For Dummies.” I’ve included information from a few of the marketing chapters at the end of my written testimony for your review.

Today, I’m going to share real numbers with you, so you can see the impact of search marketing on a real small business in dollars and cents. Every year our Yahoo! Stores get millions of visitors from the search engines. Tens of thousands of those visitors convert into paying customers. This year we will sell over $10 million dollars though several different Yahoo! Stores.

The Internet levels the playing field for small business folks like us. As a consultant and speaker, my job is to teach the little guys how to compete with the big guys. We use the Internet to leverage the strengths of small business: unparalleled product knowledge, enthusiasm for what we sell and do, and outstanding customer service and support. Bigger retailers cannot compete when we go head to head, product to product. They sell too many things!

Background

My parents, Warner & Anne Snell, started GUN DOG SUPPLY, back in 1972 on their kitchen table in Jackson, MS. They ran tiny display ads in hunting dog magazines and went full time with the business in late 1970s. Slowly, the business changed to a retail store with less emphasis on mail order sales.

In 1996, Petsmart opened across the street. 50% of our competitors went out of business overnight. Our sales dropped, too. We dusted off our mailing list and put together a new catalog. Unfortunately, our list was stale, and we lost money on every single catalog sent.

In 1997, I built a 5-page Web site. I wrote a killer Yahoo! directory listing, and we started getting tons of visitors from Yahoo! We had to figure out how to sell online and fast. Fortunately, we found the online store builder which is now Yahoo! Store.

For my family, selling on the Internet has literally changed our world. We went from a retail company doing $400,000 a year and struggling to pay the bills to a multi-million dollar retailer in a few short years.

Search Marketing = Free Search + Paid Search

Search marketing is the one-two punch of free search and paid search together. By performing search engine optimization on your Web site, you rank better and get more free traffic. Buying paid search ads insures you control your advertising message, and you’re not at the mercy of shifting search engine ranking algorithms.

Almost 40 percent of the traffic from the Big Four search engines (Google, Yahoo!, MSN/Live, and Ask) comes from paid search ads. I believe you should buy paid search ads when you already rank well for your keyword terms in the free search results. Why? When do you normally get two chances to make an advertising impression with a prospect who is ready to buy? It’s like buying an ad in the newspaper that runs right next to your feature story. You can’t control what they write about you in the paper, but the ad is all yours!

Using all the content from our print catalog for our online catalog was the secret to our initial success with the search engines. Those 50 pages of text covering hundreds of products would help us sell our dog training collars, Garmin Astro GPS, Tri-tronics collars and retriever dummies.

Originally, half of our traffic came from banner advertising and half was free traffic from search engines. My Yahoo! Store stats would tell me not only where the traffic came from, but what keywords folks were searching for. This information was gold!

For example, someone would buy a leather dog collar and the source of the order would show the sale coming from a search on Yahoo for “leather dog collars.” Another order would come in with a search for “retriever training supplies” and they would buy some training dummies, and/or a book or video on training retrievers.

I caught on pretty quick that keywords were important. People were buying the things they were searching for, so I started to obsess over our keywords and their search engine rankings.

By 2003, the search engines started selling text ads based on keyword searches. The free ride was over. I opened an account with Google Adwords and started buying ads on different keywords. I also had a Goto.com account which later became Overture and is now Yahoo! Search Marketing.

Paid search is good, too! With an online store, a small retailer can instantly have access to millions of potential customers. With as little as a $5 deposit in a Google Adwords account, a small business owner can buy targeted advertising and get instant traffic to his Web site.

Retailers can run national ad campaigns targeted only to folks searching for what they sell. You can buy ads but only for keyword searches relevant to your product mix.

Local retailers can also target their ads to run only in the specific markets they serve.

Selling on the Internet via an online catalog is much cheaper than sending catalogs through the mail. Advertising on the Internet is more cost effective than any other medium we’ve tried.

Search marketing is extremely efficient because you are ONLY marketing to those interested in your products. It is the least obtrusive form of advertising as the customer is literally asking for your ads when they perform a search. No other marketing method can touch search engine marketing for targeting the right prospects in the right places at the right time – when folks are ready to buy.

Thank you for the opportunity to appear before this committee. I look forward to answering any questions you may have.

The entire post is located here for you to read.

This will be an ongoing (hopefully) series of profiles and the “dirty details” (& sometimes “clean”) of some of the larger people in the Search Engine Marketing or SEO world. I love biographies. To me, I learn from stories of how people become who they are or were. Thus, my digging and exposing of how some of the SEO consultants that are more well known now have become ranked higher than their counterparts.

Conducting further research, I found out why this infamous SEO consultant who’s been around for a while, was removed.  Basically, I’ve learned Heil doesn’t stray too far away from controversy. In the SEO 2.0 Blog, author Tad Chef doesn’t mince words and basically decries War against Heil for offending him. Chef basically says Heil is an old dinosaur and that Heil hasn’t updated his theories or methods. On the Web Professor, Scott Horne writes that Heil can’t even rank high for many decent search terms questioning his abilities to truly advise people in the world of search engine marketing. In Threadwatch.org, you can see people banter back and forth about ‘whether he is noteworthy or not.’

This man named Doug Heil runs an SEO consultancy out of South Carolina for over 10 years according to his company’s website IHelpYou.com. He also provides a forum which again seems to be plagued with controversy including arguing between Heil & another heavyweight in the SEO Industry Danny Sullivan (note: you should go to the comments to find the actual thread). According to Compete.com, Heil’s IHelpYou.com is visited by about 12,000 visitors a month.  Also, Heil says he works with “osfore” on his website. When searching for that, I noticed this site: http://osfore.com

Doing further research, all I find in contrast to research on Clay, Sullivan and other SEO Sucess Stories are comments on many SEO Blogs by Heil…mostly just criticisms of other peoples’ opinions.  My goal in creating this series of posts and profiles was to describe how some of the SEO Players in the industry achieved the status that they have attained over time.  As a result, I would have more to say about the success of the SEO Consultant, but I don’t have much to report on Doug Heil except he’s successful in stirring up controversy. Since my efforts online to research more about him have been somewhat unproductive, I’m contemplating writing him directly to see if he might want to do an interview.

This will be an ongoing (hopefully) series of profiles and the “dirty details” (& sometimes “clean”) of some of the larger people in the Search Engine Marketing or SEO world. I love biographies. To me, I learn from stories of how people become who they are or were. Thus, my digging and exposing of how some of the SEO consultants that are more well known now have become ranked higher than their counterparts.

• How search engines list Web sites for free and through paid placements;
• How to get free “organic” traffic by building a site that pleases search engines and your visitors;
• How to efficiently purchase listings guaranteed to rank your company at the top of search engine results;
• How to calculate the ROI of your search marketing efforts by tracking your visitors from the time they hit your site until they buy? and get tips on improving conversion if they don’t;
• How to build links that generate traffic to your Web site, and how to avoid the penalties of “spamming” the search engines;
• What’s coming next in the constantly evolving world of Web search, and how you can profit from those changes.

For more details, visit SES Toronto’s website.

When asked “Where did you get your start in the Search Marketing industry?” by SEOMoz.org in their The SEO Industry Survey conducted in February of this year (2008) and published in April, most Search Engine Marketers said they started off by working on “Personal projects/websites” (40.17%). The second highest percentage belonged to SEO Consultants/Marketers getting their start and learning more about the business via “In-house, working on a company website” (35.87%).

In a somewhat distant third place set of results, the SEO Marketers said they were hired at a “Search Marketing Firm” (12.59%). The last place result in answers by the SEO Professionals other than “other” as an answer in where SEO Marketers got their start was in a “Consultant role” where you probably would have to be able to show off your prowess or b.s. your way to profits pretty well (8.45%).

**More details about questions similar to this in the SEOMoz “The SEO Industry Survey” here.

“In the 1980’s, Schoemaker’s mom purchased an Apple IIc. Schoemaker found it amazing! He began to write simple programs on the Apple, mostly consisting of repeating test messages that said, ‘My mom is cool.’

1995-Schoemaker was an appliance salesman at Sears when a customer offered him a job at an ISP in Moline, IL. He was known to have ‘computer skills’ as he spent most of his free time at work playing games. ‘I knew nothing about the Internet and had a very limited knowledge of computers.’ The ISP had only Linux based terminals so Schoemaker had to quickly learn system software, web server management and mail system management.

Schoemaker compares those early days of educations to a ‘karate kid experience.’ I thought it was all pointless hard work, but in hindsight, I could see that over the course of two years, I had gained the foundation of a very useful skill set. He also witnessed the birth of the Internet. Working at the ISP also demonstrated to him how much money could be earned in a number s game with a market place as big as the Internet.

He left the ISP and went to college at a time when there was no such thing as spam or phishing schemes on the Internet. In college, Schoemaker founded his first business making Macintosh gaming sites. Those early sites became very popular and allowed him to practice his skills, focus his talents and avoid ever completing a college degree.”

Fortunately for Shoe, his wife had a steady income as a Physician and decided to launch ShoeMoney Media Group. Despite the dotcom crash, Shoe scraped every dollar he could to continue the business and even worked at banks moonlighting. Through persistence, he’s not only survived through the crash and prospers today, but he is known as one of the leading experts in many of the Internet marketing fields: SEO, Affiliate Marketing and Blogging.

A philosophy Shoe abides by is “Embrace new trends and look for opportunities to exploit them.” He did it with the AuctionAds service in the aforementioned and he also took advantage of the ring tones business in it’s infancy. Today, you’ll find Shoe at various SEO conferences as a speaker and also Shoemaker blogging very openly and saying about anything on ShoeMoney.com which attracts over 230,000 visitors a month according to Compete.com

This will be an ongoing (hopefully) series of profiles and the “dirty details” (& sometimes “clean”) of some of the larger people in the Search Engine Marketing or SEO world. I love biographies. To me, I learn from stories of how people become who they are or were. Thus, my digging and exposing of how some of the SEO consultants that are more well known now have become ranked higher than their counterparts.

↑ Grab this Headline Animator

The article was written back in January of 2008, but the relevance is still very, very key. Matt McGee writes the post titled “Why The SEO Industry Needs Small Business:”

“… a MediaPost article said print Yellow Pages “will continue to bleed dollars to their various digital counterparts” in 2008.

Last year, Yellowpages.com opened 11 new sales offices across the U.S. because of “dynamic growth and rising demand for more local search advertising products.”

Greg Sterling wrote last year about the trend of real estate agents and brokers using online marketing, with search marketing being the most popular choice in that small business industry.

A couple months ago, Google said more than a million businesses have interacted with its Local Business Center.”

Fore more details as to why we should pay attention to small business, check the article out here.

WordZe Evaluation Roundup:

• Earners Blog’s review of Wordze
• Wordze to your mutha anlaysis of SEOMoz
• WordZe Keyword Research Tool evaluation by Top Rank Blog’s Lee Odden
• BlogPerfume’s thoughts about Wordze
• “Wordze’s Founder and Programmer Levi Reveals Future of Keyword Research“
• A decent evaluation of WordZe by Andrew Wee
• Entrepreneurs Journey’s appraisal of Wordze
• Review of Wordze by Search Engine Journal (September 2007)
• Paid pimping of Wordze on Blueverse

NEGATIVE REVIEW(S) OF WORDZE (the aforementioned weren’t clearly one sided or the other — it sort of hurts the affiliate link revenue by being negative ;):

• 45n5’s critique of Wordze

LESS DETAILED EVALUATIONS OF THE WORDZE KEYWORD TOOL:

• Ranked high in the SERPs, but weaker review of Wordze
• Another weaker evaluation of Wordze
• Manuel Viloria’s assessment of Wordze
• Jonathan Volk’s Wordze review

*If you’re patient, you might be able to get a free trial to wordze.  It looks like with some of the past posts, they’ve given free trials in January 2008 (Court’s Internet Marketing School) and a 7 day trial in April 2008 (copyblogger).

• The North American SEM industry grew from $9.4 billion in 2006 to $12.2 billion in 2007, exceeding earlier projections of $11.5 billion for 2007.
• North American SEM spending is now projected to grow to $25.2 billion in 2011, up significantly from the $18.6 billion forecast a year ago.
• Marketers are finding more search dollars by poaching budget from print magazine spending, website development, direct mail and other marketing programs.
• Paid placement captures 87.4% of 2007 spending; organic SEO, 10.5%; paid inclusion, .07%, and technology investment, 1.4%.

For more on the details about the money spent on search engine marketing, please click here.