Sales jobs and generating extra sales for free

If you're in any form of sales jobs today the chances you have a website to help sell your products. To me, what is surprising is how few companies seem to use this website to their full potential, simply using the website as a reference or an on-line brochure. To do this is a massive missed opportunity. I am referring to the subject of search engine optimisation, or SEO as it is usually referred to, this being the task of gaining top search engine rankings for your site.

Just to put this in perspective. If you had a clothes shop in Bridgend, South Wales, I would expect your potential turnover to be much lower than the same shop in Oxford Street, London. Of course in practise, it will cost you a hideous amount of money to achieve a a location like Oxford Street, meaning you have to make much more money to make the same amount of profit.

On the internet, however, the same parallel applies in relation to earnings potential, BUT without the same cost implications to achieve the prime location, that being the top of a google search for relevant key phrases. If you approach the many SEO companies in the market place this may not be true, in that they seem to charging more and more for what really are basic services, but this cost is justified by the results they know their work can achieve for their clients.

There are a number of problems with SEO companies. Firstly, not only are their costs often very high and variable, but it's also almost impossible to assess whether or not you are getting value for money, and indeed what you are getting for your money. Here's the good news, you can learn to do it yourself! SEO is not a overly complicated subject, although the many 'experts' in it would like to have you believing it is to inflate their fees. There are many nooks and crannies to it, but it's all researchable via the internet. Join a couple of SEO forums, read as many articles as you can and you will soon learn the basics. Be wary of the pool of 'doom' characters that seem to live on SEO chat sites but otherwise you should find all you need to learn the trade and will also get swift answers to any questions you post up.

If you are both patient and persistent, you could end up with a shop in Oxford Street for the rental cost of Bridgend and your competitors won't be able to touch you!