The way most people think of SEO is the same way they do about finding money in the gutter.  We have all done it, we are walking down the street we look down and find a wadded up dollar that probably fell out of a prostitutes bra the night before and we are then soooo excited we can’t even think straight.  None of us would ever try to base our business model on finding money in the gutter.  But that is what many companies do with SEO.  They get a few sales from organic search and they are so excited that they got sales “without spending anything” on marketing and advertising they immediately hire a bunch of people and spend a bunch of money to “find money” again.  Let me first say this.  Every week I get a few people emailing me asking if I do SEO.  Then I will take them down a line of questioning to find out if they should do SEO.  You see I have had over 100 clients over the years and although most of them were young companies in only one of those did SEO play a significant role in their business.  Guess what % of their marketing budget was dedicated to SEO? 0.00% They were an old company and a leader in a niche industry so every month no matter what google changed in the Algorithm they would get about 500,000 visits from organic search.  Once I started working with them we doubled sales in 8 weeks.  Want to know how?  Paid Search (PPC) we bought some clicks from google.  The traffic was very targeted and converted really well.  Add to that it was easy and instantaneous and I would suggest most companies should start with Paid Search every time.  Once cash flow is good and you can afford the long term investment of SEO then do it.

As you know I have a love affair with infographics…well it’s not really a love affair because I am pretty sure these infographics don’t even care if I exists and so really I am more of a creepy infographic stalker, but I digress.  This is a great graphic on PPC vs SEO (put together by an SEO)

And the top Facebook pages are …. #1 Barack Obama (no surprise) …. #2 Coca Cola (of course) …. #3 Nutella (What?). Yeah, that’s right. The Italian hazelnut/chocolate spread.

It’s safe to assume that most of the fans were from Europe but the craziest thing about Nutella‘s high ranking is that they don’t advertise. Well, that’s not true; they spent $300,000 on media last year, which is pretty much equivalent to nothing. Here’s the impressive part: their Facebook page was created by a fan, Nutella has 5 million Google search results, there are 5,000 videos on Youtube featuring Nutella, and there are 17,000 photos featuring Nutella on Flickr.

Despite it’s European base, Nutella has become very popular in the U.S. as well; and the U.S. fans are very loyal. For Americans, it’s probably associated with memories of trips to Europe and then they spread the word about Nutella to their friends and family at home. In some ways, it has become a form of social currency.

It’s interesting to see that a company can have a crazy online presence without even trying. They’re obviously doing something right. So here are 3 easy steps to follow that will create the online buzz we all hope for:

1. Become a European staple so Americans will have no choice but to think you’re cool
2. Gather a cult following effortlessly
3. Be kind of like peanut butter, except use a weirder looking nut and add chocolate