I was reminded of just how prevalent ignorance of SEO issues is when I was trying to explain the concepts of AdWords and AdSense to my brother a few days ago. He had no idea that these things even existed or that it was possible to earn significant amounts of money with them. As I attempted to educate him about Adwords, I began my explanation, “Okay, you know that whenever you search for something at Google, you’ll see the organic search results on the left side of the screen…”, but before I could tell him that the AdWords ads were on the right side he interrupted, “Organic? You mean we have to fertilize them first or something?”.

What makes this really funny is that my brother is a recent computer science graduate who has more technical savvy than I do in many areas. But when I try to explain Internet marketing stuff to him (or any other family members, come to think of it), I have found it difficult to hold their interest for very long because they don’t understand most of the terminology. I did manage to get my mother to understand the concept of what search engine optimization was and why people who are good at it can make money with their websites, so I guess that’s a good start!