I hear so many times from customers or "would be, on the fence",
etc... customers that they are having Godaddy or another web guy
or their internal web guy look into it. Unfortunately - these
are the guys that put them in this spot anyway. Not that Godaddy
is a scam - but you get what you pay for and most people will
not pay Godaddy's custom rates, so you get the next best
thing... sort of....
I've done quite a few
FREE SEO
reports on sites and I've found that everyone knows they have a
problem even before I "prove" it to them. Even if they fight it,
even if they deny it, even if they think they have the best site
in the world. Because all of them are muttering the same thing -
why can't I get more calls off my website. Yet they are
unwilling to embrace change.
If you're not a big fan of Kitchen Nightmares - you should see one episode called Oceana. This is really a classic look into the fact that the owners stop their own business from growing. Gordon did everything in his power to make the restaurant successful, even calling in exterminators and having the staff completely scrub down the kitchen for the first time in its existence.
Even after a total makeover, new menu, rave reviews from customers and money being made finally, one of the owners still felt picked on and was confrontational to Gordon. The other owner, his brother saw the light from the beginning, even pointing out that Gordon was being lied to... but in the end Gordon just had to walk away....
I have so many times (still do actually) dealt with unnecessarily confrontational owners who get in their own way and refuse to change. However it is not our mission to change these people, but simply do the job we were hired for, prove our point and at times even walk away when necessary.
Bottom Line
There are so many things that need to happen to get to the top 10 rankings and then another set of things to do to keep them there - it's a constant moving target. However making sure your ads sell, your functionality sells, your graphics and site layout sell and even your text sells are just the necessary things you need to do AFTER a custom decides to click on your link. To get them there is code, keywords, META tags, backlinks, page ranks, etc.... on top of that is other external factors such as competition, market demand, economy and more... so when an owner gets in the way, or you hear "we're having our web guy check this out" sometimes, it's better to just cross the street and try the next shop.