Hang around in the SEO circles long enough and you’ll find no shortage of anecdotes about poorly-served clients and agencies that just don’t get it. I’ve certainly seen my share.

There are still businesses out there selling “search engine submission” services – I had a VP at a marketing company explain to me just a few weeks ago how they were providing this for all their clients. Most knowledgeable SEOs consider this a scam, but in this case I was pretty confident the marketing company just hadn’t done their due diligence. Not that that’s any excuse…

It’s mind-boggling, but not when you consider that most entrepreneurs, especially small business owners, are way too busy running their shows to keep up on search engine technology. That means the companies selling them SEO services get to slack off. There is no watchdog outside this two-partner relationship.

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It’s easy to forget sometimes that each of us is at our own point on the path of learning.

While those of us who live/breathe the Web have come to view certain truths as self-evident and obvious, many people are just starting out, coming to grips with the basics and uncertain about what information they can trust.

We all start there.

And when you’re just starting out it’s tough to separate the scoundrels from the sages.

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Wouldn’t it be great if SEO were easy?

Imagine if every project you looked at was a “no brainer” – the starting point, the goal and every step along the way laid out clear as day like Google Maps directions.

We’d all be happy as clams, sitting back and watching the money roll in, laughing as we sipped cocktails in the sun on a beach somewhere.

Uh…wait. How big a beach are we talking here?

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There is no shortage of SEO checklists out there, and they all go something like this:

1. Research keywords
2. Write optimized title tags
3. Write optimized headlines
4. Write optimized body copy
5. Optimize internal link text
6. …

If you’ve been learning about SEO for any amount of time you’ve no doubt read a few of these.

And the truth is that most of them are accurate. At least, the tasks they describe generally improve the signals search engines pick up to determine what your pages are about.

But here’s the thing: you’re still unlikely to rank competitively even when you get the on-site stuff right.

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