But before I get further into that, let’s do a little step by step exercise.

Let’s assume you have a site and want to attract more readers. You are already well aware that the only way people or search engine bots are going to find your site is through a link to your site. So the logical conclusion is that you need inbound links.

Step 1: Visit Google.com and type the following bolded string into the search box, including the quotation marks. Of course, use a keyword phrase relevant to your own site: “Your keyword phrase” “0 Comments” site:edu

Step 2: Click on the first, second, third… links in the organic search results (not the ads) and you’ll find one or more blogs on .edu sites where you can leave a comment on one of the blog posts.

Step 3: Read that blog post, then fill out the comment form at the end with your name, email addy and the url to one of the articles or pages on your site. Then proceed to write a comment highly relevant to the blog post.

Step 4: Submit your comment.

What’s the result of following the 4 steps above? Once your comment is approved by the author or site admin, you have a coveted live link back to your site from a .edu site. Everyone knows (ok, everyone theorizes) that links from .edu sites are looked upon by the almighty Google and other search engines as carrying more weight. And it took you all of a few minutes to do, or maybe as long as a half an hour if the post you read was long.

Now, here’s what the procrastinators have been doing while reading what I wrote above:

They’ve been arguing with me in their mind that, oh, what if the link in that comment has the rel=”nofollow” attribute. Those links don’t count. Are links on a .edu site really more powerful than links on any other site? Are links on a PR0 page on a high PR site any good at all or will I be wasting my time with this? There’s no empirical proof that what you say will work! What if I wear purple underwear while submitting my comment? Will Google still value the link as much as if I were wearing my tighty-whities while clicking the submit button?

Procrastination. All of it.

Sure, it’s good to know your stuff when doing link building and SEO, or marketing, or boiling an egg, but there comes a point when the rubber has to meet the road in order to get ahead.

And while the procrastinators were doing their thing, you just got yourself a one-way inbound link from a .edu site.

There’s a big dust-up going on over at the Outspoken Media blog today after Robert Scoble questions whether SEO will be as important in 2010 for small businesses. Scoble says:

The writing is on the wall. Small business marketing is moving away from focusing on SEO. Why do I say that? Because, well, Google and Bing are changing the rules so often and are getting so good at figuring out the real businesses that deserve to be on pages.

…and then goes into using examples in both the text and video portion of his blog post. He makes his case.

Lisa Barone, a rising star on the tech, social media and internet marketing scene, uses her relatively newfound clout (backed by a degree in Journalism and several years experience in online marketing) to confront Scoble, saying that since he still has some “street cred,” he “should know better” than to say SEO isn’t important, or AS important as it once was.

Of course, the gloves come off in the comments on Lisa’s post.

You gotta love it – two characters in a performance who are so good at polarizing their audience while they play in each other’s sandbox.

So who is right? Why, they both are. Because they’re both stressing different aspects of the same point.

And then there’s Loren Feldman. The guy who turns the whole damn thing into a puppet show. Mr. “It doesn’t mattah…”

And he’s right too; especially about the “New Web Order.”

All the Web’s a stage.

But if I had to choose one of the actors who I thought could help my business the most in the long run, my money would be on the girl with the dimples. Because she’s on the winning team.

Photo credit: Lisa Barone’s Daily Booth