Here's the rub. Owning a website is a responsibility. You are responsible for keeping the site informative, up to date, interesting, market focused and above all something that is of value to your clients. Back in the day of advertising on the Yellow Pages (and even today), almost every Yellow Page ad in your category looked like every other company's. You got attention with simple tricks like starting your business name with a number or the letter a (or multiple a's like A-Able). You generated phone calls with big ads and half page advertisements that cost 1000's per month.

And many of you took that strategy to the web. You built a website that looks like every other website in your category with the exception of the logo and color scheme. That's OK I guess. I won't charge you much to do that very same thing and you shouldn't expect to get much from it. And all the SEO gurus have been plowing your inbox with proposals to make you show up first in the search engines. Here's just some of the features of one of those emails I got today and I get about 10 of these a day.

1. 40 Press Release Submissions (8 press release x 5 press release websites)
2. 05 Press releases, 400+ words written
3. 5 Unique Articles will be written
4. 5 Web 2.0 Properties will be made
5. 5 unique "how to Articles" will be written
6. 1 YouTube channel will be created
7. 10 YouTube videos will be created by Animoto.com (paid)
8. Will likes, shares, tweets, reedits, and 1+ in order to get natural back links
9. Anchor text diversity (will not use exact keywords for back links).
10. Will get Natural back links by link worthy articles
11. Will draft & submit 5 articles to Ezinearticles.com
12. Will create Google+ page for your business
13. Will distribute 15 posts daily via Google+ Page
14. Will make 1 post daily on your blog
15. Meta tags/Title tag changes
16. Keyword research/Analysis
17. Competitor Analysis
18. Alt tag changes
19. Interlinking wherever required.
20. Keyword density in site content.
21. HTML Site Map
22. XML site map and Submission in webmaster tool
23. Ror.XML File creation
24. Robots.Txt File creation Extra work activities
25. Google Webmaster tool
26. Google Analytics
27. Html to text ratio optimization
28. Keyword Prominence

28 SEO things that can be done to boost your search engine results and not a single one of them improves the actual value of your website! Let me ask you something? Is it good enough just to show up first in Google? In some industries, the answer is still yes. If I need a plumber NOW, and I don't know who to call, the first guy that shows up on my phone with a phone number to call gets my attention. Expediency has a lot to do with the value of SEO. If I have time to shop, I'll call around. I'll look for references. I'll dig deeper into your website to see what you have to offer. You need to ask yourself how much expediency is a factor in your business.

Also, what's the point of showing up first in the search engines if you look bad? Every Real Estate agent out there will tell you that you have to clean the house before you can sell it. It's no different on the web. Web management takes a front seat to SEO. There is no point at increasing your exposure to a website that has no strategy, no value and very little to offer over a competitive brochure. You might even be affecting your market in a negative way.

To add to this, Google has realized that the industry of SEO services has artificially popularized sites that are not the best sites for the search in question. With the latest algorithm updates, they have taken significant steps to change how a site gets ranked and I can tell you that as time goes on, the value of Web Management will increase and the value of SEO in its present form will all but disappear. Now you know why it says under our logo: "SEO and Web Management Services". You can't do one without the other...or at least you can't do it right!