When taking a marketing campaign online, ranking well in the search engines is vital to your long-term success. The days of merely submitting content to the search engines is long gone, and the practice of search engine optimization (SEO) has taken over as the method of choice for implementing strategies to achieve the best possible rankings within the search engines.In an interview with Lee Odden from Top Rank Online Marketing we discussed the fact that SEO hasn’t always been a highly publicized practice. The industry was originally just another division of the IT department within most companies, and was viewed as more of a technical skill than a generative process that involved just as much creativity as it did coding prowess.In recent years, however, the SEO industry has managed to break away from the IT stigma and has begun to carve out a niche for itself as a marketing tool rather than just a technical enhancement for websites.Surprisingly, many companies venturing into the online world for the first time know little to nothing about search engine optimization, and are often confronted with myths and misconceptions about the practice that often end up turning them away from an industry that could make all the difference in terms of exposure and successful implementation of marketing strategies.One thing to remember, however, is that SEO is not a short-term solution, nor is it a one-time event. Because the nature of the Internet is intrinsically one that changes on a momentary basis, it logically follows that what helped your site rank well in searches six months ago may not necessarily have the same effect today.So if you’re serious about SEO for your site, be prepared to hang in there for the long haul. Whether you implement SEO in-house or through a outside consulting firm, consistency and longevity is the key to the ultimate success of your site in the search rankings.