Great post Shaun! I wish all small business owners understood this concept. I am running into the same issues. As small business owners get more and more savvy with SEM, they are realizing that SEO is probably a better long term solution for their traffic needs instead of PPC.

I used to be an ex AT&T Search Engine Marketing Specialist and those big companies push PPC so hard that most businesses are tired of hearing about it. Everyone and their mother cold calls these SMB’s to try and get PPC business. Advertisers hate it and are tired of it!

They are now more interested in SEO and Social Media, but the problem comes in when they don’t understand the amount of hours it takes to correctly perform SEO.

The research and analysis that goes into the initital phases and then the hours after that of link building, content writing, etc. It’s a skill set, as you mentioned, that cannot be learned overnight and takes years of practice.

You can’t put a price on that. The experience us SEO’s have is invaluable and priceless in my opinion. Think about what happens when you finally get that SMB in the top spot for his/her keyword phrase. It can change that company’s future!

If small business owners can’t afford a true SEO, which is seemingly quite expensive to the SMB because they don’t know what they are dealing with, then I agree with you in that they should try and learn it on their own.

Great post. Thanks again.

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