I've written this many times, but again today I was amazed. Jolted back into reality. What I am talking about is the state of the SEO industry. We swim in the middle of the SEO ocean. We live and breath SEO. We are talking to our SEO resellers daily and trying to improve our SEO reseller program with every action. But being that close to something, you can lose perspective easily.
It all started when Chad sent me some SEO and PPC market research a few weeks back. I read it and was very excited by the statistics that confirm that this industry is growing. You could actually say it is infantile. And this report supported that thesis with numerous facts and figures. This is always comforting for us. We've set up our shop in the middle of what feels like very competitive territory. But this report said that the growth curve is still in the very early go-go days when it comes to SEO and PPC services. But it doesn't always feel that way.
Then today we were talking to a potential client. We launched into the opportunity associated with SEO services and were well into our ROI pitch when they stopped us and said "but I don't have a website." And this was an established business that had been around for a long time. Yes, it is true, not everybody embraces SEO to the full extent that we do. In fact, some people have not even moved online. We dug further with this client and learned that they did not have email addresses either. But they wanted us to fax them information about our SEO services.
We try to advise members of our SEO reseller program that these are great prospects. These folks have a great deal to gain by migrating their marketing efforts, at least in part, to the Internet. We are finding that even businesses who identify their target market as 65 years old and up are seeing the Internet as a viable play.
In short, it is easy to get caught in the every day hub-bub of the SEO industry and think that you have been left behind. But in truth, the industry is still in the very early days. It will, no doubt, take a ton of twists and turns along the way as it matures. Whether you are an SEO reseller or service the market directly, the clever early birds always get the worm.