"We have just spent $25,000 on an SEO project and we don't have the budget right now!"
I have heard this sales objection a couple of times in the past year
from prospects in discussion around providing inbound marketing strategy and services (we are a certified HubSpot partner) and I was going to write a post and share some lessons learned.

In preparing to research this article I ran a number of searches and Google'd up the phrase "SEO is not a one off event" as it perfectly encapsulates the sentiment of the article I was planning to write.  A couple of clicks later I came across an excellent article on SEOMoz from 16 year old Fryed7 entitled "The definitive guide to awesome Web content".

This is a long, but excellent article and well worth the 5 minutes or so it will take to read, more if you follow all the links....and maybe you will want to watch the 17 minute Seth Godin video on TED on building Tribes.

I love Ed Fry's jet engine metaphor (an original thought) and although Ed calls it Tribal SEO, in the HubSpot community, creating "manifesto" content is one of corner-stones of Inbound Marketing strategy. Bob Apollo's brilliantly titled blog yesterday social media without thought-leadership is like broadcasting into space echo's this idea.
Take-Aways

• SEO needs to be seen as part of an integrated set of inbound marketing activities, the most important of which is to create interesting and linkworthy content.
• "Definitive content must be remarkable + awesome + white-paper-worthy" states Ed Fry
  
• Beware of false guru's; - anyone can do SEO, but if you are looking for a real guru with great ideas, then Rand Fishkin at SEOmoz is the genuine article.
• Creating remarkable content with keyword rich titles, URL's and headings is half the battle, then spreading the word to a community interested in your ideas via social media will generate inbound links.
• Ed Fry succinctly captures the old vs. new thinking on SEO and the essence of this post.  Instead of “I’m not ranking number 1 - I’ll go and build some links” try “I’m not ranking number 1 - I’ll go and promote manifesto content”
• If your Website is lost on the Internet or you are not getting the results you want from blogging, or need help with creating "manifesto" content to drive inbound traffic, then we would be pleased to discuss.