I have a few friends that are trying their hand at starting businesses. It’s a really scary thing. Recently, my co-worker gave me a great little book called the The E-Myth by Michael Gerber. It chronicles “why most small businesses don’t work and what to do about it.” Pretty interesting, I recommend it.

But reading the E-Myth has gotten me thinking about how SEO factors into small businesses. When somebody starts a new company, they often end up “wearing a lot of hats.” They start off as a focused, highly skilled technician, and become a frazzled entrepreneur that is part manager, part accountant, part salesman, part technician, part donut fetcher, etc. That’s where the trouble begins. Lot’s of times, even if they’re blessed with the ability to do all of those things, they simply don’t have the time.

If you throw in “part SEO-expert” on top of all of that, things can get really messy. What I’m saying is that even if a small business can do their own in-house SEO, they might be wise not to. For small businesses it seems best to focus on their product and outsource all the tasks that are not cost-efficient for the company to perform itself.

Determining a good ROI on SEO for a small business isn’t easy, but it’s a task that’s worth the trouble (and perhaps essential).