Marketing Sherpa - Don't Give up on SEO!

I am sitting in the opening session of the marketing Sherpa B2B Demand Generation Summit.  I love Marketing Sherpa and think they have some of the best research out there.  Sean Donahue, Senior Reporter B-to-B with Marketing Sherpa, kicked off the event with an overview of the top 5 challenges facing marketers today.  A lot of the information was based on research I had seen before.

In fact, he showed a slide I am very familiar with, showing that the most frequent place B2B purchasers go when they are looking to research a product is Google.  If you want more info, here is an article I wrote about how important Google is to B2B marketing.  That's when my ears perked up, and I head Sean say basically that "search engine optimization is so hard that you can't really count on it" and "most companies are frustrated that they cannot get listed in Google organically" and "PPC rates are increasing so much that getting good ROI is challenging" (this last one about PPC I agree with).

I disagree completely.  SEO is not rocket science.  With a little bit of work, the right Internet marketing tools and some time, you can make SEO a successful strategy as part of your marketing mix.  HubSpot is a small business, we have been around only a little over a year.  And yet we are doing great with SEO.  We are on the first page of search results for terms like "Internet marketing software" and our Website Grader tool is ranked on the first page for terms like "grader" and "SEO score".  Read this article about how HubSpot saved $183 in one week by using SEO.

Are people really that frustrated with SEO?  Are there really that many bad SEO consultants out there that everyone is shrugging their shoulders and giving up?  Leave a comment below and let me know what you think.