I just received my 14th SEO email for the day with latest scare em and save em sales tactics and it made me reflect on older marketing tactics like telemarketing. I remember when people used to sake for our scripts like they were some kind I secret sauce. Don’t get me wrong scripts are important but they are only part of a very basic story, the fundamentals of which don’t really ever change. 
It’s funny how important fundamentals are and easily we forget them. When I was a kid playing sports and things started going wrong the coach would always fall back to fundamentals. Later in life it was sales managers and then consultants whose mantra was back to the fundamentals.
SEO isn’t black magic and Google isn’t the boogie man and all of this applies to the insurance internet marketing world. If you want to succeed online there are fundamentals you have to follow and a few “black hat” tactics to avoid and you’ll have as good a chance at doing well as anyone.
Google wants us all to have a positive search experience. They would rather relevant, helpful search results than clutter created by marketers gaming the system with artificial results created by software designed specifically to truck the search engines. That’s why Panda and Penguin updates occur. Its Google keeping the playing field level by going after the machine created content and link spammers. Google is just protecting its business. Think about it; how many times are you going to come back if the search results aren’t relevant?
If you are going to spend the time and money to rebuild your website, do the research and find out how people are looking for businesses like yours. Don’t make assumptions based on your own narrow perspective of how people use the internet. Too many people are replacing old “brochure ware “sites with new “brochure ware” sites. They look nice but no one will find them.
Search engine marketing works. That debate ended a long time ago. It doesn’t work for some businesses and not work for others. It works for everyone. If you have a business you most likely should have a website and if you have a website, you need to get found. Search engine marketing and social media marketing accomplish that. Search engine marketing through content creation and link building and social media as a support system to reinforce authority, relevance and to drive traffic.
This is a slow-and-steady-wins-the-race approach to marketing. It requires a bit of education and a follow up investment of both time and money. If you decide to delegate, delegate to someone with some understanding and experience and make sure you give them enough budget and authority to get the job done.