Every time we pay Google, I have a fantasy of showing up on the first page of the search term associated with our business and being able to stop making those Google folks even richer.

I say fantasy as I have essentially surrendered on Search Engine Optimization. I’ve done all the things that were supposed to: key word density, <h> tags, <meta> tags, content update, blah, blah, blah. Not even close. The best we’ve been able to do with one of our search terms is get it from about 500 to 60. Not bad but we’ve exhausted all the conventional wisdom on what to do to improve ranking.

What’s the problem? I know that there are ways to go higher, but they seem to involve a fair bit of time and money. For example, one of our larger competitors boasted had the #1 SEO result for “sales training”. I met one of the principals who said that they hired a bunch of Indian contractors to create links back to their site – boasting their ranking. Unfortunately, someone must have come up with a better ploy as that same company is now #9 and dropping. So even if you crack the code, you need to stay on it and figure out how to stay on top.

I remember back in big company days where we had a good size marketing budget and could hire an external SEO consultant, it was hard. We good initial relatively good results but things changed so quickly and we were continually getting bumped.

That’s really the problem. I wouldn’t mind taking our annual Adsense budget and paying for an SEO consultant to do their magic – but how long would it last? As a micro business, we do not have the time or resources to dedicate to the ongoing SEO battle.

Now – all these Internet marketing folks will be screaming that this is B.S. That you, too, can get top SEO results. One method often discussed is choosing niche search terms. More obscure search terms that a much smaller number of people search for but that a smaller number of competitors focus on. But then you are creating web copy with a high keyword density of more obscure terms which screws up people that go to your site from other sources. And you need a bunch of them.

Screw it! I will pay my $.50 a click and make Eric S richer, and Steve B (more) frustrated.

C.