Louisville Kentucky SEO Consultant

I am sure this will make a lot of my competitors happy.

I have been doing this for a while already, but I am making it official on my blog now. Don’t email me with your “big idea”, don’t call me to ask me to work on one of your client sites, don’t contact me to work on your project. Period.

Unless you willing to drop some serious money and make me a partner, I don’t want to deal with your nickel and dime project shit you can’t get off the ground. I have plenty of my own projects, partnerships, and ideas to worry about that it would be stupid of me to drop everything to work on a project that will only net me a few hundred dollars.

I get several emails a day from people pitching their ideas to me, asking me for help, or wanting me to work on their client sites. It is kind of sad in a way, a lot of these people are other companies that sold their client SEO services and then can’t provide it once they closed the deal and have to rely on 3rd party help to get them through the project. They also expect this work to be done within their budget that they closed with their client. Meaning, if they sold them a $1000 dollar SEO package and promised them the moon, I have to deliver the moon for $500 so that the company can still make a profit from it.

I DON’T THINK SO!

Unless your serious about a project and got some money in hand, don’t bother with contacting me. I can give out some free ( limited ) advice for you, but I am not about to start helping you rank in the search engines when I am doing it for myself already.

Like the title says, they sure like to talk some mighty good shit.

As I pointed out in another post ( half way through here ), there are a lot of people that jumped on the Internet marketing bandwagon to cash in on their “golden ticket”. It is hot right now and many of these self proclaimed local GURUs think they can tell you what you need to hear.

I have seen many of these people go from “designers and coders” to SEO’s literally overnight. I seen them transform and promote themselves as someone that is a master at their game. I have no problem in people learning new things, getting better, and trying to expand their services.. but don’t act like you are so much better then the next person that has been doing this for years and actually loves to do this. Don’t act like everyone else is town is crap and you can get someone first page rankings in Google. If you can do that, tell me why your not on the first page yourself?

OK, maybe you do rank on the first page of Google… but for what term? Some ultra non-competitive term like “Louisville SEO Company on Third Street”? Come on. How about ranking first page Google for all your terms that cross SEO, Internet marketing, email marketing, web design, hosting, and such? Can you do that and prove your results?

I offer up a challenge to any and all local ( must be Kentucky based ) Internet marketing people that are up for it. Outrank me for some agreed chosen terms ( both in the number of their related first page listings and their ranking spot ) and I will pay you $500 cash. A time limit will be chosen, terms will be agreed on, and a mutual 3rd party will be chosen to hold the cash.

If I win though, you will have to honor the cash payment back to me. Any takers?

What can I say, it is shit.

Kentucky, and all its cities, are about 7 years behind when it comes to online anything and this is especially true for online marketing.

How do I know? Well, lets see… I have been building web sites for myself, freelance clients, partnerships, and for companies I have worked with for the last 14 years. I have done everything from selling the services, support, building the sites and apps, marketing them online, hosting them, and even running them. I have had some sort of partnership with just about every web design and marketing firm in the state.

Everyone has the same problem. The clients in Kentucky are not informed of even what the Internet is or how to take advantage of it as a whole. Because of this, most clients are not willing to sink even a fraction of their advertising budget into their web site like they do for their print or traditional media buys.

This also leads to salaries for IT professionals as a whole in Kentucky to pretty much suck. All I ever see is jobs for C, C#, C++, Java, .NET, or VB going for at most 45k a year on average. So how about the open source PHP or Python developer? What about an Internet marketer? Well, I can say that jobs for you are starting to trickle into Kentucky finally, but for years you basically were shit out of luck and had to work outside the state traveling or working remote.

Even worse, I would see jobs like these open up and qualified professionals apply for them, only to be turned down because the company decided to hire someone fresh out of college with NO hands on experience in the needed subject and willing to train them instead of hiring someone with over 10+ experience in what they need. How stupid…

So when I look at corporations like Humana, Doe Anderson, gotolouisville.com, and Networld Alliance and see that they consistently have help wanted ads for the same position every 3 months, it makes me laugh and giggle inside because I know these people don’t try to hire the “right” people, but try to hire the “cheapest” people they can. I have nothing against this, but when I see the same job opening for 14 months straight and then see it repost every 2-3 months for almost a year, I have to assume that they have no clue what they are doing.

However, I also know the people that end up getting these jobs for the most part. A lot of them are people I have connected with over the years here in Louisville and across the state. Many of these people are starting out designers or programmers that have came to me for help with Internet marketing at one time and I have given them some advice or worked with them on projects for clients. They get bitten by the Internet marketing bug and think it is their golden ticket to riches online, so they start learning SEO and SEM themselves and end up promoting themselves as an Internet marketing GURU. They in turn land jobs at these corporations as a Internet marketing specialist, only to be let go months later.

Even worse, they might start a new company all about Internet marketing services. My my.. just months ago they were web design and programming GURUs and now they are SEO Gods! I wish I could go to their schools!

Ha, I have to laugh sometimes at all this. I see these companies pop up all the time left and right. One company ( a one man operation ) basically got his start by stealing his former employers CMS code and client list. Another one is actually some guy that knows nothing about HTML, SEO, or online business.. but outsources all his work to teenagers and landed a nice article on the CJ because he had a “few connections” there and promotes himself as a small business online marketing guru. Another good one is this company that started out doing nothing but hosting and was run by someone who primarily does construction, outsources their work, and uses of all things outdated cold fusion code.

Why would you buy Internet marketing services from these people, let alone hire them to help grow your business when you can have someone that is focused, rooted, and dedicated to Internet marketing?

The answer is kinda simple and hit me many months ago and changed my views on my career.

Real Internet marketing people don’t have clients. We don’t take on client work, we don’t send out invoices, we don’t cold call or apply for jobs. THINK ABOUT IT. If we are so good at what we do and can get top spots on search engines, build you an email marketing list of thousands of prospects, get you tons of traffic from social media and paid listings.. then why the hell would we do it for you and make you rich?

Be careful. The next time someone wants to sell you marketing and they claim they know it all, sit back and ask yourself why they need YOU.