There are so many things I can discuss with clients. There are a lot of options to choose when you are looking to promote your web site or business blog, but must you use every possible method? Do real people have the time to use every method constantly? I don’t think so.

I have spent the last couple of months trying to keep up with just Stumble, Digg, Sphinn and Netscape and I am worn out…And I am not even really that involved!

Which Two Areas Are Most Important, in My Opinion?

I will always say an effective web site- which appeals to potential and present clients. You have to sell trust in your company, products and/or services. Without the ability to do this there really is no point in doing anything else.

I will always say SEO and SEM are very important because without it you won’t bring in the clients and customers you need to grow.

What About Social Media?

There are many benefits to social media, but how long will it last? Is it just another trend that will be a thing people got sick of a year from now? How many of your potential clients use social media? Most of mine have no clue that it even exists. Honestly, social media brings me traffic, but that is it. I was doing better professionally when I was just focusing on blogging.

Social media, SEO and maintaining an effective web site can be too much for a business. So, I say that if you are a business on a tight schedule use social media to promote the big things, but don’t worry about spending a lot of time on the smaller things. If you release an article on your site you can promote it with social media and bring people that are actually interested in the subject.  Businesses need to focus on their work and making money to stay afloat. Wasting time is wasting money.

What the Heck Am I Trying to Say??

Well, social media helps bloggers, but does it help businesses? I don’t know for sure, but I have experimented a lot lately and have come to the conclusion that SMO can help some businesses. It depends on the industry, but most of the clients I work with do not benefit from social media at all.

I have been trying to give my clients every possible option, but SEO, SEM and a good web site are the things that I see creating the most benefits. There are areas of SMO and web 2.0 that bring some benefits, but I do not feel many of my clients are benefiting from the time spent on these options.

My dad has been in the car business for over 30 years. Sometimes people think the way he does things is “old-fashioned” and that he should adopt a faster way of doing things. In some areas this may be true, but from what I see he has built an extremely successful business (or many businesses) because he has found methods that work…methods that are effective. Trends are trends and sometimes they just disappear and one must go back to the traditional way of doing things.

A Strong Foundation

I think if we build a solid foundation for our clients we are creating a strong foundation that will endure. We can always try the trends out and see where they go, but if they disappear we haven’t invested everything in it and our strong foundation remains. This is my strategy for everything.

I have built a strong foundation on the net for my businesses and guess what? No matter what changes the search engines have made I have remained solid. I do believe keeping an eye on all the changes, trends and updates is important, but you must wisely choose which changes and trends you are going to follow.

Melissa- SEOAware.com