I recently looked closely at purchasing an internet marketing franchise from a franchisor called WSI. For various reasons I chose not to pursue it. However, the SEO/SEM industry itself is very appealing to me and something that I believe I would enjoy immensely. I don't have any direct experience in doing it, but I would like to leverage my 20 years experience in corporate marketing to possibly start up a search marketing agency.

I would target very small accounts at first in order to get my feet wet. What software packages would you suggest I purchase to assist me with helping small businesses take advantage of SEO and PPC opportunities? Also, if I wanted to get into web design work as part of this, what software package would you recommend?

I appreciate and look forward to your counsel.

For various reasons I chose not to pursue it.

That's a good thing. I'm personally not very fond of SEO franchises like WSI.

What software packages would you suggest I purchase to assist me with helping small businesses take advantage of SEO and PPC opportunities?

Well, there really aren't any software packages out there that would be helpful to actually perform the SEO. But, you'll need some web analytics tools to measure ROI and you possibly a PPC bid management tool.

Unless you're a web designer and have web design experience, I would recommend outsourcing it or hiring a web designer in-house. All those "templates" and other generic web designs aren't very professional and typically aren't very SEO friendly.

I've been doing organic SEO since 1996 and I can tell you that SEO and PPC isn't just something you can "jump into" and expect to be successful at. Sure, you can probably be successful at selling the services, that's not the issue. It's actually doing the work and being successful at it that takes a lot of patience and practical experience. So, hiring someone who has that experience or hiring an SEO consultant to help you with questions might be your best bet.

I'm not saying that you won't be successful. However, I've seen too many companies jump on the SEO/SEM bandwagon lately and sold the services--and when it came down to it they couldn't deliver results for their clients. So, it they ended up getting sued by their clients and went out of business. Or they just went out of business.

The SEO/SEM business has a big learning curve, and even if you're going to take on "very small clients" that doesn't mean that you'll be able to get them top rankings for their keywords in the organic search results. Some of the "very small clients" are harder to optimize for because they don't have a budget to work with: it takes a marketing budget to be able to be successful. So, the "very small clients" might not be the ones you'll want to deal with, even at first.

I don't want to seem pessimistic, but if you're going to go into the SEO/SEM business you need to understand that you just cannot go out and purchase software and throw money at it and be successful nowadays. SEO and SEM takes more of a personal touch, as does marketing in general. And it takes experience at it (there are too many people out there selling snake oil) like you found out when you looked at starting a WSI franchise. Besides, when was the last time you saw a WSI-related website rank at the top of the search results for any SEO-related keywords?

Other than what Bill said above, I'll suggest you research the Sitepoint.com manual on seo. They have a useful chapter on managing your own firm and tell you what it will take.

You'd better be good at all aspects of Search Engine Marketing, as clients will expect it, you'd better be good at managing expectations, as everyone seems to "know" about this stuff now, and 9you'd best be extremely good at time management, as even one client can fill a week's worth of work time.

Best of luck with the endevour, and good choice staying away form the franchise idea.

There are some indications that SEO and search engines as we currently know them may be less critical in the near future. As the volume of information on the Internet grows, the recency of information is becoming more important.

I would read up on Social Networking, Web 2.0 (think MySpace, Squidoo, Faceparty, Friendster, Tagworld, Digg, Technorati, Furl, Stumbleupon, Craigslist, blogging, blog and ping) and focus on offering a new service where you can be ahead of the crowd instead of competing with SEOs/SEMs who already have deep experience.

When I worked for IBM my "niche" was learning the latest equipment that the experienced old-timers didn't want to learn. That made my skills more valuable to customers and the company.

One way to identify what is important and build advanced skills is to identify the best at each aspect of online marketing and work directly with them. Instead of having an SEM company that does everything (Jack of all trades; master of none) you could be one of a group of independent specialists sharing knowledge, experience, and clients.

A fast way to build a great clientele is to share them among the group as the client is ready to move their business to the next level using another aspect of marketing.

Have you seen the blog post by SEMPO Chairman Gord Hotchkiss SEM Has No Future?

Very interesting article.