While working for a retail shopping portal, I was able to observe over 2,500 businesses as they struggled to make money online. Some were successful but many more were not…and although my stock options never paid off due to a certain bubble…there is no question the experience and inside look did.

Learn more about he parties involved in Search Engine Marketing and the environment in which they come together. Business owners, find questions and answers to challenges you will face in your effort to form an expert search engine marketing strategy for your Web Property.

Search Engie Marketing Today

I believe there is a significant problem with the search engine marketing industry today. This problem exists because of the parties involved and the environment in which they come together. As such, I will first discuss the party’s involved, and then go on to talk about the resulting environment. Lastly, I will discuss what seems to be the most logical solution.

The Search Engine Optimization Expert

True Search Sngine Marketing Experts must spend an immense amount of time doing testing and research to maintain the knowledge necessary to achieve significantly successful search engine results. On top of this, it takes an incredibly unique ability to visualize that which cannot be seen…it is truly a special talent.

Most truly successful search engine marketing experts are able to provide an income sufficient to work for themselves and are not willing to be underpaid to give away what part of it they can, even if it is only today’s picture. This does, however, leave them in a position where they are left to work with comparatively limited resources a good portion of the time, especially when considering product and services support. On top of this, they are probably not left with the time, or most often even the skills, to assemble the resources necessary to support an incredibly successful enterprise.

The Search Engine Marketing Company

Most times a search engine marketing company will be an overrepresentation of an individual or a small group of people who are willing to share the applicable skills for an adequate fee (usually sold as an enterprise level solution when it is a small group). These situations are very much like the above.

The other side of this is when you have a larger search engine marketing company that sets out to do this work but doesn’t necessarily have what it takes, although the get by for a time since they have significant resources. In these instances, clients will be provided with more or less a ‘plug-in’ service, whereas the client website is basically plugged into a core value network. This methodology can and does work in the beginning. The problem is that this type of value isn’t re-creatable to the extent a larger search engine marketing company needs it to be, especially when they aim to support a large number of clients to cover largely inefficient overhead. Clients in this space see good results upfront, but as the network is relied upon more heavily as the provider takes on new clients, the value and results tend to fade away.

The Search Engine Marketing Client

In contrast, we have companies or wealthy individuals with all the resources necessary to create and sustain a highly successful online enterprise, but in that, can never fully understand the finer points of achieving search engine success for a website. Most times, this group simply doesn’t have the time or inclination or even insight to adequately position this piece of their business, as necessary as it most often is.

The Search Engine Marketing Climate

Quality of worldwide search engine results aside, these parties working together as they do result in an incredibly difficult business situation. On one hand, we have business owners or managers looking to hire a search engine specialist, but in their mind view the need as simply another employee or employee level contract. And on the other hand, we have self-supported search engine specialists with all the ability and knowledge necessary to make all the difference for an online enterprise, but feel it necessary to be compensated adequately for this rare and valuable talent.

All this brings us to the current situation, where true search engine optimization experts seek to charge extremely high monthly fees, not necessarily for the work being done (unless it is a large company where these funds are utilized in a largely inefficient fashion), but as much for the information they have no choice but to give up as they work on a project. In this, you are left with an intricate game of cat-and-mouse where sooner or later upper management or the business owners themselves find it necessary to seek understanding about exactly what is going on in an effort to justify costs. Search engine experts, in turn, become consumed with protecting certain levels of information as not to give the company a false sense of security, as it many times creates a perception that the specialist is no longer needed.

In the end, the company or business owner will normally decide to bring the program in-house once they feel they have a handle on things. The problem is that even if they did understand everything perfectly at the time, as unlikely as that may be, the search engines are almost constantly changing. Algorithms continue to grow in complexity, and once these owners and managers are forced to deal with a few setbacks (which sooner or later happens to everyone), they quickly go from a feeling of confidence to a feeling of confusion.

Can you simply train a Search Engine Optimization Expert?

There are a few reasons why training a Search Engine Optimization Expert is an incredibly difficult task. First, you have to find someone with a background in marketing online and off. Given this, they also need to be what I call a “statistics freak”. Now, if you are lucky to find someone who fits the bill with regard to these two things, you have a shot. You can get them reading the forums and doing the research and even attending Internet Marketing or SEO conferences.

Given a level of success in all of this, you just might start seeing marginal results, but unfortunately, to achieve true success one must also be a visionary. You can have someone read and read and read, but when the answer is found in the reading, it is already too late. You end up being just another of the masses chasing the game while getting a taste here and there. Truth be told, the real gravy in this space is seeing things before anyone else and being able to execute on that foresight.

If you are lookng to hire, find someone who has already shown they are a successful Organic Search Engine Marketer. Look for current organic results in a competitive market. I recommend you keep your eye out for middle of page one results for short-tail phrases since the capable search engine expert is normally doing far more with much less. The tough part of this is you need to be able to identify who is doing a lot with a little to understand who has what it takes.

Once you can do this, though, you simply need to find a way to incentivize the Search Engine Marketing Expert and provide them the needed resources. These additional marketing resources should include things like a budget for PPC, links, press, and other SEO placements, a copywriter, and possibly a small amount of graphic design work.

Start-up Search Engine Marketing

If you are a startup and have the ability, you should strongly consider offering a skilled search engine marketing expert equity. This should allow you to pay them a much smaller and more reasonable employee level salary compared to the huge fee’s they will normally demand.

Or better yet, you might even be able to get by without paying them any salary at all, especially if the search engine expert is truly as capable as they need to be. In these cases, the search engine specialist would be more interested in the budget set aside for the position, but from the perspective of how they can leverage those dollars as an additional optimization/marketing spend. This, along with the budget for the more standard marketing initiatives, would allow them to spearhead a much more significant and effective plan right from the start.

Enterprise Search Engine Marketing

If you happen to be a manager for a larger company, hopefully you still have options to ‘bring them in’ on the project, whether it is through equity, a revenue share, commissions, or some other type of corollary incentive.

Search Engine Marketing Solutions – Getting Results

The bottom line is, show the Search Engine Optimization Experts some upside based directly on their level of Internet Marketing success, and your job will then simply be to provide the additional resources necessary. If you can accomplish this type of partnership with someone who truly has what it takes, you will not only take away their fears of never being rewarded for what they bring to the table, you will also give them the sole focus of making everyone involved a lot of money. I promise, if you can find a way to pull this off with the right search engine marketing expert, everybody wins…and wins big.