Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, from our ongoing review of online discussion seems to have begun to receive an undeserved unsavory reputation.  This must be a result of “black hat” practitioners that have caused problems instead of delivering results.

I was speaking with one of Google’s SEO consultants recently and I mentioned that there were people being quite vocal online about SEO being some sort of “scam”.  She laughed.  Of course the fact that Google, Yahoo and all the other search engines have SEO people on staff should alert everyone to the validity of the art of SEO.

In fact, SEO not only helps with organic search engine return position (SERP), but also results in the improved relevancy that keeps costs down in a paid online search advertising campaign (SEM) and ensures that people looking for what you offer find you easily.

Being relevant is critical in the lightning quick world of online search and the more one’s website is honed to be relevant to its prospects, the more successful it will be.

sem[c]‘s combined SEO / SEM campaign for a major Chicago real estate firm nearly doubled the number of visitors and tripled the number of registered site users interested in buying and selling real estate.  These numbers were achieved in a “down” market.  This is the effective power of SEO.