A lot of my recent speaking engagements at both Search Engine Strategies and SMX have been geared towards running an SEO company, dealing with a changing economic landscape and similar issues. It is with this in mind that I got thinking about what separates one company from another. There are many great SEO and SEM firms out there, I like to think that Beanstalk is among them but there are also a number of poor ones. What separates the two and why will some succeed and others fail?

In thinking this over I considered skills first. Is it that the companies that weather the years, ride out the ups-and-downs in the fiscal year and the trends in the economy have the highest skills? Not entirely. At first this seemed like a logical, "survival of the fittest"-type scenario but I have seen skilled people (in this industry and others) going down while those who have very little in the way of skill succeed. So it's not entirely about the ability to get the job done. Or is it ...

One defining trend that I have noticed (though I would be very interested to hear about any exceptions to this you might have) is that the companies that specialize tend to be more successful than those who try to do many things. Companies that start by doing, say, web design and get lured into SEO ("Why give away the client to someone else - it's just a matter of packing in some meta tags and buying some software to submit the sites to a billion search engines every month right?") or try to host their own client's sites ("My reseller package gives me unlimited domains and unlimited traffic.") or offer other services that get into trouble.

So my advice has to be (and I'm not the first to say it) - do one thing, be excellent, and leave the rest to the experts in other fields.

Honestly, I've been tempted over the years to try to delve into other areas. I'm a half-decent designer and I know my code well enough (or what kind of SEO would I be?) so when a client comes with no site but a great idea it's always tempting to take the whole contract, but then reason sinks in (even when I have staff who can do the parts that I can't). Even the Beanstalk site was designed by a professional web designer (and many thanks to Frederick from W3 EDGE Web Design for a solid site that converts well). The key then is to find experts in other areas that you can trust with your clients. To that end I personally look for other, similarly-minded companies that specialize in what they do best and leave the rest to others.

The growth of the Internet world as a means for producing revenue and gainful employment has provided those in it a unique opportunity. Rare is it to find an industry where one can produce little in the way of non-recycleable garbage and can easily and painlessly offset the negative impact they have on the world. Can those involved with the oil industry claim to be eco-friendly? Certainly not (though nothing against them – like it or not we need oil to keep our society running … for now). Can even the food industry with the chemicals they use and the methane they produce claim to be eco-friendly? For the most part … no (though again, no problems here with the people who produce our food).

The Internet world however has opened up new doors where one can reduce their footprint significantly and offset that which cannot be eliminated. As we at Beanstalk have constantly strived to reduce our footprint and have just recently purchased carbon offsets to “zero out” that which we cannot eliminate, I thought it well-timed to write an article on the ease and relative low cost of doing this in hopes that other businesses would follow suit.

Google has recently launched a new service called Google Reader. This service, available at http://reader.google.com/ allows users to search for and easily manage RSS feeds, giving quick and easy access to the most current information and news on the topics that interest you most.

I had the great pleasure and privilege of speaking at Search Engine Strategies 2008 in San Jose. The topic? Net neutrality. This is the point where your eyes glaze over and the inevitable question, “What is net neutrality?” comes forth. And that’s the point of this article.

The session had very low turnout and Kevin Ryan, the organizer of SES, was there asking to all, “What could we do to increase awareness and attendance?” The issue is important to Kevin, important to me and in fact – it’s important to anyone who makes their living on or uses the Internet.

The quest for higher search engine positioning on the natural search engines is generally the quest to increase revenue from a product or service. It is not the rankings themselves that hold any special value; it is the visitors that they bring and the resulting increase in business. It is for this reason that the PPC engines and namely the secondary ones are a great tool in developing a campaign strategy for the natural engines that will produce the highest return on investment.