I recently was invited to an Entrepreneur Summit sessions held in Round Rock, Texas by a close friend and business partner.

I always find it an intriguing challenge to hear from business owners looking for ways to launch, sustain and grow their businesses.

Having had a chance to address a small group of entrepreneurs about how to grow their businesses as it relates to SEO and domain names, at the table was a photographer, baker, imports/exports operator, and an online retailer.

I didn’t learn much about the online retailer as he wasn’t too forthcoming with his business or business model.

However, I thoroughly enjoyed answering internet marketing and business strategy questions about the photographer, baker and imports/exports operator.

We talked about and discussed many aspects of launching, sustaining and growing their businesses. I’ll attempt to highlight some of the questions asked and addressed in our short time together.

If you haven’t heard or read somewhere across the Internet in recent weeks, Google is stepping into the domain space as a registrar, and full force too!

Personally, I’m not sure what this all means for the Internet in general other than saying that Google has now put 1And1.com, GoDaddy, Register.com, Web.com, Network Solutions and the likes clearly in the crosshairs of their radar.

In addition to forcing their way into domains, Google has also partnered with service providers to offer unique drag-and-drop, no coding required, website creation platform via Wix, Weebly and Shopify.

These partnerships are huge because now customers are able to streamline finding and buying a domain, and easily developing and hosting their website with best-in-class intuitive tools.

For GoDaddy, this has to be the worst timing due to their recent IPO announcement. Not only that, but Google once was a domain partner that referred their customers to GoDaddy and Enom for domain purchases. Well, no more!

The more and more I think about Google Domains, which is currently in an invite-only beta mode, and it’s impact on domain names and search in general, things could very well be changing for domain and search industries, and in big ways.

So, what does this all mean?

It’s the silver bullet to SEO: Automation.

Every small business owner would love for SEO to plan, implement, execute, measure and sustain itself automatically.

However, the truth and reality is that it doesn’t. The End.

Okay, there is more to it that just stating the obvious and calling it a day.

This doesn’t mean that certain aspects of SEO cannot be automated.

In fact, there are many aspects of SEO that can be automated.

But the wisdom in automating SEO is knowing what to automate and how to go about automation.

Blinded by future rankings and the expected tsunami of traffic to be receive moments after signing their SEO agreement, business owners fall prey to paying large sums of money for services that either can’t be rendered or are rendered and leave their website severely penalized or de-indexed by search engines.

Too many times, business owners and businesses fall victim to the ole’ foolproof SEO automatic packages that tout overnight page one rankings.

Instead of taking the time to invest in SEO for the long haul, most business owners opt for the silver bullet approach.

Now, I can’t stop you or any other business owner in search of SEO strategies and services from falling prey to automating SEO.

While you can automate some of your SEO actions, there are some SEO actions that you should never automate.

Things have definitely been moving at a fast pace around Kickstart Commerce, especially pay-for-performance SEO (white hot!).

Customers that signed and executed agreements nearly 6 months ago are finding profitable success in generating greater website traffic and new customer relationships.

Their rankings have not only increased, but their website is listed for multiple listings and a variety of keywords on page one and two of Google. That’s right, the big kahuna of search, Google!

One of the reasons I make mention of the pay-for-performance SEO customers is that the commonality in their success is domain name and high-quality content. Yes, there is more to SEO than just domain name and high-quality content. The focus on domain name and high-quality content is what sets these customers apart from their competition and highly visible search rankings.

Again, a good bit of present day SEO and future SEO will depend on high-quality content being shared by real people finding value in that content, generating and boosting greater backlink profile and link building value. And one way to build and boost your website’s link building value is ensuring your website has a solid foundation in regards to a domain name.

It’s easy to write high-quality content, if your website is information driven, and place that high-quality content, or any type or quality of content on a long and not easy to remember domain name. Can the website rank? Why, yes it could and can rank.

But the real question, will the customers remember the website without having to go back through their varying search steps?

Subdomains have been around for a long time, but it’s only quite recently that internet marketers learned how invaluable they can be. In fact, there was a time when using subdomains was thought to be ultimately bad for SEO.

However, with every cat, dog, and bird update constantly changing search engines, many small business owners and internet marketers are clamoring for anything that can even remotely increase views and ranking.

This has given birth to loads of white-hat, grey-hat, and black-hat SEO marketing tactics.

One marketing tactic many use to boost their rankings is using subdomains.

Once considered gray hat, making use of subdomains for the sole purpose of manipulating search rankings for specific keywords or keyword phrases is now considered black-hat SEO.

But don’t lose hope just yet, as subdomains can be ethically and effectively used via white-hat SEO tactics and strategies.

Don’t believe me? Just check out such sites as Tumblr, Blogspot, WordPress, and Shopify, to name a few.

These popular mainstream websites offer services that allow users to create their own websites using subdomains instead of subdirectories.

So take a step back before we venture too far down the path of subdomain SEO. Let’s take a moment to define domains, subdomains, and subdirectories.

The short answer is “yes” and “no”.  I know, confusing right?

Search engine penalties can expire after a certain time period.

However, a search engine penalty expiring depends upon many factors.

The following factors can determine whether or not search engine penalties expire:

• Whether corrective action has been taken to remedy penalty
• Whether the website is deleted or domain name expires
• If the website continues to garner additional penalties
• If no corrective action is taken or performed to the website

And this leads us to discussing one of my current customers and their search engine penalty saga.

With search engines closing in on 20 years, it’s safe to say that we are still in the early years of search although there have been many advancements along the way.

We’re just now turning yet another corner in search as social and mobile search both progress beyond their infancy.

Small businesses stand the greatest chance to capitalize on learning SEO because of the markets they serve. Small businesses tend serve geographic-specific audiences.

Nevertheless, search plays a key part to every business’ marketing and advertising, not only small businesses.

Whether a small, moderate, or critical percent, ranking your website, once considered optional, has become a mandatory task that businesses can no longer afford to ignore.

If you’re a small business owner with a website, then chances are likely that a good bit of your business, outside of word of mouth and referrals, comes from search engines.

Whether Google, Bing, Yahoo!, Yelp, AngiesList, or another source, small business owners that are looking to boost their local business presence are in great need of learning about small business SEO and local SEO.