ZERO Out Of 15 Random People I Asked Know What SEO Is
So over the weekend I took a little break from my computer (I know - hard to believe), and attended a 10 year class reunion for my wife. Class reunions are a whole different topic that I don’t think I will ever get into! The one thing I will say about class reunions if you have never been to one is that they are a big “size you up party” more then anything. Of course people wanted to know what my wife had been up to during the last ten years, and with 3 kids and me … that was pretty much it! Then the conversation would always come my way because my wife would tell people that I worked from home, and ran my own businesses. Then the question would come; “What do you do?”
I decided to turn it into a little un-scientific marketing research, and turned it into a question; “Do you know what SEO is”? I would ask, and not one of the 15 people that I asked had a clue. I am talking serious deer in the headlights here. It would not get much better when I followed it up with “search engine optimization?”. Even when I told them when they go to Google and type in a keyword phrase, those results that come back … they would interrupt and say, “oh you get those sponsored results” …. by this time I was DONE with the conversation, and just told them I ran Internet businesses, and helped others by consulting.
The point here is we have a great opportunity as SEOs. We are in a field that is ready to harvest. I am amazed how many people call me back after talking to them about what I do, even when they still have no clue exactly what it is. They just know that they need help online, and I seem like the person to do it. It seems almost everyone has a need, or knows someone who has a need for SEO services. It does scare me though with so many worthless companies out there claiming to know SEO, and I usually go in and clean up a mess, and try to polish our reputation as SEOs.
Anyway, I just thought it was very interesting that not one person out of 15 I talked to had a clue of what SEO was, or even understood the industry enough to have a conversation. My next post? I think I will talk to you about the lady who asked me how old my son was, and when I told her 13 months, she said … oh so almost a year? Um… yea….
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as some times it is too hard to explain what a publisher is or SEO, etc.
i agree 100%. i have only been working full-time on it for the last 7 months, and in that time i have had to actually develop a business model to capitalize on the amount of queries (people wanting to throw money at me) when they hear it is an “internet business”. and the really great thing is that it is not smoke and mirrors stuff, people really can increase the value of their business (or start one from scratch) as a result of the web economy.