The sun’s warm, the leaves are changing color, people are smiling, there’s a breeze in the air… and suddenly the tempting smell of freshly baked goods slips past. You look, and it’s coming from a little bakery, its windows filled with delectable tasties and its door wide open to let out the wonderful aromas inside.

The pastries in the window seem tantalizingly perfect, tucked amidst decorative coffee cups that remind you of a cheery breakfast at home…

You have to continually feed it new content, keep up with WordPress updates, maintain your hosting account, moderate comments, respond to readers… dozens, maybe hundreds of little tasks. And then there’s promoting and monetizing your blog, which is even more work.

It’s hard for anyone to manage, and the larger your blog grows, the worse the situation becomes…

You know, the kind of idea that leaves you slack-jawed and wide-eyed with wonder at the sheer potential of it all. You want to grab someone by the shoulders and explain the whole thing in a breathless rush, watching their eyes grow in wonder as they realize you’re going to be rich and famous. For the next few hours or even days, you find yourself revved up in high gear, eager to turn your big idea into reality…

Well, imagine this: a potential client searches Google for products or services like yours, picks a likely-looking site from the search results, and lands on a site that displays… a bunch of articles.

You can guess what happens next: “What is this? Am I in the right place? I was looking for a store… I must have the wrong site…

No, you’re not an expert, but you know what’s good and what’s not. You also know when you’re being taken advantage of. All you wanted was a website that would help you succeed online, and what you got instead wasn’t worth the pixels it was painted on…

We judge based on looks all the time. We’ll pass a dirty-looking, disheveled person on the street and assume he’s homeless, or crazy, or a drunk. We’ll meet a savvy woman at a meeting and assume her home is sharp-looking and neat.

Maybe that ragged man has a million in the bank…

You need to learn it. You have to have it. You have to do it.

The problem is that you really aren’t sure where to get started, and you can drive yourself nuts trying to "get it right." Keyword densities, back links, trustrank, neighborhoods, link architecture — who has time to do it all?

You’re a marketer, not an SEO specialist…

Well… yeah.

It’s sad, but in the years I’ve been in the business, I’ve seen companies burned, stung, robbed, and strung out by unethical copywriters who couldn’t care less about them…