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SEO is important. But it's one small component in a marketing campaign. To be sure, we are an SEO company that champions search engine optimization. But, time and time again, we come upon technology and online startups who develop a great product, put up a website and then sit in their offices burning through VC money waiting for clients to beat down their door.

When that doesn't happen, they start coming up with solutions-most of them have nothing to do with sales-such as changing the code that their site is written in, hiring expensive consultants to rebrand their company and going over every little detail on the website copy to make sure people understand their value. They come to us when they decide that an SEO company is going to be the salvation of their business.

Far too often these startups have no realization that they need people to go out and sell the hell out of whatever they're offering. We're an SEO company. We're good at what we do. But we have three full time sales people driving the wheels off their cars following up on leads that SEO generates for us. We also have a full time inside sales person that does nothing but generate leads from cold calls.

Don't be duped by duplicate content.

Google hates duplicate content. Write a press release that takes identical content from your website and you'll pay because Google sees duplicate off-page content posted on PR sites as an attempt to get off-page linking with content that is worth nothing to readers.

That means you have to be careful. We have an SEO company client that began offering a brand new product. The product's marketing helpfully offered a press release to go with it. "Just change the name at the top to your name and post it online," the product's helpful marketing person said. The only problem with that is that if dozens of other providers of this new product are posting this identical release, they'll all be docked by Google for duplicate content. So remember, if someone offers you content and gives you permission to use it, you would be wise to rewrite it to avoid headaches from Google.