The following is a guest post from digital marketing specialist Harley Rivet.

“I can guarantee you first page rankings within one month”. If you ever read or hear this phrase from a search engine optimization firm I advise you quickly turn and run.  Aside from pay-per-click campaigns there is no sure way to guarantee quick results for natural search engine rankings.  There may be some devious methods (I.e black hat techniques, keyword stuffing, link farms, etc) to trick search engines and gain some short term results but it will likely be unqualified traffic and you run the risk of being blacklisted by search engines.  If you want to rank better in search engines for your choice keywords the best place to start is with a well programmed, frequently updated blog of valuable content.  This is direct advice I received from Google: Good content targeted towards your audience is the best search engine optimization technique.

There are many things and tactics to consider when trying to improve search engine visibility but something you can do on your own that will deliver tremendous value is starting a blog.  Search engines tend to ignore static websites that don’t offer fresh content on a regular basis.  The search engine bots that crawl the web are constantly seeking new information to index so give them what they want and you will be rewarded with more pages and mentions of your organization being displayed in search engine results. But, make sure the blog content is valuable.  Your audience is seeking information to solve a problem or educate them about something, so don’t use your blog exclusively for company news, opinion pieces, self-congratulation, or event notifications.  It’s alright to have some of this stuff in the blog but if you want to really leverage the power of blogs for search engine optimization then produce insightful, knowledgeable, and helpful articles that your target audience is seeking. Research is actually the primary activity carried out on the web. In fact, 70% of all internet activity starts with a search and this figure climbs to over 90% when talking about business usage.

Speaking from personal experience, my blog has been one of my most powerful marketing tools.  By simply producing and promoting blog articles on a regular basis I have grown my website traffic from zero to an average of sixty unique visitors per day in just three months. That might not seem like much, but it amounts to 2000 visitors per month and I only launched the blog in February.  I try to post once a week and to promote it I mainly use Twitter, LinkedIn, and syndicate certain posts on other blogs as well as submit articles to ezinearticles.com and goarticles.com for further distribution.  My blog has been a place I can showcase my expertise and it does a far better job of relaying my capabilities than other pages on my website pertaining to services, portfolio, and experience.  In addition, almost every blog post is indexed individually by search engines so it helps increase my chances of being found when people search on a variety of digital marketing related topics.

So if you had to ask me what the best way is to get listed well in search engines, I would have to agree with Google; good content targeted towards your audience is the best search engine optimization technique.  Besides, it’s also the best way to showcase all that knowledge you have swimming around in your head.  Write it down and share the wealth; somebody is sure to appreciate it. To quickly get started consider using free tools like WordPress, Posterous, or Blogger.  You can be rolling with a blog in less than an hour.

Harley Rivet is a digital marketing specialist who provides website strategy, online marketing, and social media consulting. With over ten years of experience in the interactive industry he has worked with clients such as ESPN, CN Rail, Rogers and Tim Hortons. His experience spans online research, internet software, and website development. To learn more you can visit his website at http://harleyrivet.com

There is a Taoist story of an old farmer who had worked his crops for many years. One day his horse ran away. Upon hearing the news, his neighbors came to visit.

“Such bad luck,” they said sympathetically.

“We’ll see,” the farmer replied….

The next morning the horse returned, bringing with it three other wild horses.

“How wonderful,” the neighbors exclaimed.

“We’ll see,” replied the old man.

The following day, his son tried to ride one of the untamed horses, was thrown, and broke his leg. The neighbors again came to offer their sympathy on his misfortune.

“We’ll see,” answered the farmer.

The day after, military officials came to the village to draft young men into the army. Seeing that the son’s leg was broken, they passed him by. The neighbors congratulated the farmer on how well things had turned out.

“We’ll see” said the farmer.

Which social media tools are the best? Which strategies will become the standard? Who will win, Facebook or Google? Is Twitter a fad?

You could try to plan every possilbe scenario. Or, you could jump in and say, “We’ll see.”

One of my favorite places to eat in Saskatoon is Spicy Bite. The food is to die for. Spicy, delicious Karachi soul food. Home cooked and quite unique. Culinary art. If you don’t believe me just ask the Boston Globe.

However, I’m sad to say that they have a marketing problem. Their sign proclaims: “Spicy Bite. Karachi Soul Food and Pizza.” Spicy Bite doesn’t need the ‘and pizza’. Even if their pizza is fantastic. And, yet we often see this approach with many entrepreneurial ventures.

Entrepreneurs have a problem with focus. They think that if they hedge their bets by trying to do a bit of everything they will eventually hit it big with one. The problem is that this rarely works. It spreads your scarce resources too thin and eventually you can’t sustain what you originally set out to do.

For every pizza Spicy Bite makes, they are distracted from their destiny: making great Karachi soul food. Each pizza equals less time to cook their delicious naan.

Resist feature creep and the reward will be the time to create art. Succumb to it and soon your sign will be a long list of ‘and mores’.