I come from an Online Business background.  I had a business that sold a product nationwide, before the internet.  I know that makes me a dinosaur compared to some of you.  But I have been working at finding the answers to high natural search rankings since the net went public.

So how come I’m not one of the SEO giants?  I wasn’t trying to do this for everybody, just my own site.  The problem was that as a full time business owner, I had very little time to devote to figuring out the actual workings of search engines.  I had to use trial and error.

I had to try to discern between internet shysters and what might actually work.  As you read this from your SEO position it may seem painfully simple to you, but I want to attempt to get you to see this from a business person's perspective.  

In the beginning of the public internet, all kinds of spam (keyword stuffing, doorway pages with redirects, etc) were actually outranking relevant results in all categories on all the then-known search engines. I kept track of different companies I had paid to do various services so that I could begin to see what worked.  As the net was evolving all I could tell from a business perspective was that I had a very long list of things that didn’t work. I had given up on trying to find an SEO and was instead self educating, reading everything I could find on the web, taking copious notes, and printing out reams of pages to compare what was written with what I knew.

To be honest, when I first found SEOmoz, I chalked it up to just another website selling something (no offense). After you’ve read a few hundred web pages all promising to be the answer to higher rankings and all it costs to join is so much per month, it gets tough not to treat them all with the same skepticism.

Obviously I was able to see through the smoke and mirrors and I am still here.  I watched while SEOmoz went through some changes.  I checked their history. I met them in person.  I have seen the tools they have to offer, compared them to others available.  At each of these things I have found SEOmoz to be outstanding. But I had to know a lot about SEO already to be able to say that.  And more to the point, most business owners don’t have that kind of time. They need help right now.

Recently I revisited Rand's post on Core Values and the SEOmoz BHAG. With the recent release of Linkscape, I think they may overshoot the goal.  But I have a challenge for SEOmoz. I think you have an opportunity to take a good idea to something bigger than you have envisioned.

The original McDonalds was two brothers. The guy that delivered milk shake mixers was the one who saw a much bigger picture (Ray Kroc).  

For the consideration of the MOZerati:

SEOmoz has made a name for itself online as a premier authority of SEO.  Taking nothing away from other players, they have developed an authoritative resource for interaction between others in the field.  And not only outstanding tools, also a repository of insight.

My thought is that SEOmoz could serve many more than they have if they became the clearing house for reputable SEO, the resource for finding a company or person to fit an individual or business's needs.  From the smallest local business to the largest International Business.

They have a great start on this with their Marketplace, but they should focus their enormous brains on making this more user and member friendly and they will never look back.