It's amazing the number multi-million dollar companies that have no idea how powerful website optimization is.  Many have never even heard of search engine optimization (SEO).  Since I teach SEO techniques onsite to companies that wish to increase their web traffic I see all kinds of scenarios.  Most of the time I find the company hasn't focused on SEO because "it hasn't been a priority."  Go figure!  The Internet has the potential to exposure any product or service to the world and companies tell me optimization "hasn't been a priority".  Pretty shocking to hear this when at the same time they complain about slumping business and ponder where to spend their marketing money to increase sales.  This reminds me of the old saying my dad once told me ..... "you can't see the forest for the trees". 

I was talking with a company about a month ago and they stated they didn't want to be found on the internet because they didn't want end users to find them; they didn't want all the phone calls.  Yet at the same time they have a charter to double their business in 3yrs and wanted to find more target customers, which are electronic manufacturers for high reliability government applications.  That's how ignorant some companies are, they simply make assumptions that are totally off base without talking to anyone.  Unfortunately many keep their heads in the sand and continue to do business the same way they have for the last 20yrs.  I find these scenarios when  marketing departments are complacent and haven't kept up with search engine marketing (SEM) technology, as shocking as that may seem.  Simply reading a monthly marketing publication will keep anyone informed about marketing trends, opportunities, and SEO.... if you so desire.

Most the time I find the problem is communications between two departments.  A company will have a web designer (in-house or consultant) that is competent at designing websites.  Often the site looks nice, navigates well, and looks very professional.... but the designer may not be up-to-date about SEO.  Other times the designer can be knowledgeable about SEO but keeps quite about the power of SEO to secretly minimize his total workload.  I see this happen ALL THE TIME.

Marketers OFTEN don't know what information the designer needs for SEO.  Marketing folks often get intimidated about HTML coding and think SEO is way over their head and avoid what seems like rocket science to them.  They often assume the job of tuning their website is the total responsibility of the designer.  Many times I see marketing departments blame the designer for ineffective SEO.  But in reality it's the marketing department's responsibility to provide concise direction to the designer for an effective SEO implementation.  It's also the marketing department's job to verify SEO has been implemented after the job has been completed. But often I find marketing departments lacking the training to perform  these crucial steps, and that's where I can help.

Even if the designer knows how to code and implement SEO they rarely know the products or customer base well enough to effectively implement SEO in the website.  That's where I find the breakdown of communication exists most the time. Marketers don't understand SEO (and they should) to provide guidance to the designer..... and the designer doesn't understand the market or customer base...... and as I mentioned they sometimes avoid SEO to minimize their workload. Unfortunately avoiding SEO is self destructive for any company in today's world.

Another scenario I occassionally find is the animosity that can exist between departments such as web designers and marketers, especially in-house designers. I won't get into the reasons, but this is a common scenario at companies of all sizes.  Neither department wants to tutor the other nor listen to each other out of egos.  They actually need a third party to come in and tell them who is suppose to do what.  Sometimes that's all it takes, for someone to decide who's job each step of SEO belongs to. Once assignments are in place a well oiled machine usually develops into an unstoppable SEO team.  I've seen departments actually drop their egos and become friends when they get kudos from the boss for how much they have increased their web traffic. Teamwork can be a beautiful thing.

You can find a plethora of information about SEO from all kinds of sources.  You can also find consultants who will come in and offer their SEO services to optimize your site, some are good and some can be mediocre.   But it's rare to find someone to bring the web designer and marketing departments together to educate both how to optimize their site as a team and capture the best information from both departments.  Both of these departments are critically needed for an effective SEO implementation.  Usually.....ONLY the marketing department is the expert on their product features and capabilities, and how it will solve a customer's problem or fill a need.  And usually the website designer is expert how to write the HTML code to utilize this valuable marketing data with SEO techniques in each page.  When both of these departments come together as a team  the site can be highly tuned to allow their products to easily be found with Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc.

SEO isn't rocket science, but the acceptable techniques for SEO do change with time.  It's critical these techniques are understood by marketing to create a concise and effective SEO plan for the web designer.  Marketing should drive the SEO plan, designers execute it. 

Major search engines crawl websites and use over 100 secret criteria to properly index website for position.  The folks at Google and Yahoo (among others) do this to provide relevant information to Internet searches to keep searchers addicted to their search engine.  Search engine technology has evolved dramatically over the last 5yrs and continues to evolve.  To keep your website optimized you must keep abreast of the changes that occur and continually tune your website.  www.upfrontseo.com