Small Business SEO – The Great Equaliser
One of the reasons small business can’t live without SEO is that fact that it is one of the only marketing channels available where the smaller players can compete with, and even trump big business.
Consider the marketing alternatives to SEO and the costs associated with achieving global exposure on TV, Radio or Newspaper?
So how exactly can small business utilise search marketing to compete and even thrive on the web while big business can’t?
1. Focus on the Longtail
The basic premise of the Longtail is that our culture and economy is shifting away from mainstream products and markets to a number of small, specific niches. Many of the typical constraints such as production, distribution and marketing (SEO) are changing and being alleviated by technology and the internet.
Take a big site like Amazon, they must cover all their bases and sell a large number of unique items in smaller quantity. However, when consumers are faced with unlimited choice, shopping around to get exactly what you’re after becomes much easier. Niches are so successful because they allow people to satisfy and fulfill their specific interests.
With SEO and SEM it is easy to measure exactly how profitable your different niches are so that you can focus on the highest performing ones.
2. Unlimited Ad Budget
Traditional marketing tells us that we need to ‘set a budget’ for our marketing costs. When you can measure the exact cost of a conversion, why not simply keep purchasing ads while it’s profitable? As long as every ad click is costing you less than you’re making from that click (accounting for overheads), then there’s no reason to threshold your budget.
In big business, how often have you heard a marketer tell you ‘we don’t have the budget for that at the moment‘?
As a small business, armed with the tangible information of digital ads, you can now say ‘we have an unlimited budget for ads that work‘.
3. Create Valuable Alliances
Unburdened by bureaucracy, small business can easily align with other business’ when it mutually beneficial. Big business can often be slow to change because of procedures and legal issues making it take much longer to create strategic partnerships.
Ask your strategic partners to link to you and they will do your marketing for you. Make it easy and beneficial for them to talk about you and they won’t be able to help themselves.
4. The Personal Touch
How often have you phoned a call centre, only to be greeted by a faceless voice that tells you they can’t help because ‘it’s not standard procedure‘?
Small business has the luxury of taking the time to add that personal touch. If it makes sense to both the business and the customer, why not break the rules? When you can give people something they don’t expect you’re giving them a reason to remember and talk about you.
Rather than trying to disguise it, emphasise the fact that you’re small. Shout out the advantages to the customer; lower overheads, faster responses and savings passed onto the customer.
5. Change Often, and Quickly
With so many freely available research tools, it’s easy to stay on top of trends and discover new niches. When there is a shift in direction in a market, how long does it take a big business to react?
Small business has the advantage of flexibility. If it makes sense to change, you can do something totally different tomorrow. If it doesn’t work out, change again. That’s where the beauty of SEO comes out.
photo by fisserman
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Read MoreSEO Tip – How to Make Your Google Search Result Attractive to Users
SEO Tip #3
If there’s one catch-22 in the SEO game, then having a high-ranking, fully optimised search result that is right at the top of Google but is not getting any clicks is it.
This problem normally comes about because a business has spent so much time optimising their page full of keywords that when their listing appears in Google or one of the other search engines, their result is just a mash of keywords.
Having your website ranking highly is one thing, but actually getting users to click on it is another.
The trick then is to optimise your site well whilst still keeping your listing as an attractive result for the user.
One of the first ways to do this is to include your business name at the start of your listing. So instead of having ‘Neon Lighting Brisbane, Neon Lights, etc’ as your listing heading, you want to modify it so it reads ‘Search Strategy – Neon Lighting Brisbane, Neon Lights, etc.’ This allows your business’ listing to still remain attractive to the user.
This logic is also followed through to the second and third lines of search engine listings, where it is important again to ensure your description is attractive to the user. Once again, simple things like capitalising appropriately and punctuation makes a big difference, whilst avoiding those unsightly keyword mashes.
And finally, having a primary domain name, rather than a free subdomain, makes a big difference to the appearance of your listing as it gives your business a professional look.
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Read MoreWhy You Need SEO!
When it comes to operating your business online, it isn’t as easy as simply building a website and waiting for the sales to come rolling in.
In today’s electronic marketplace, search engine placement can, and is, proving the difference between whether online campaigns thrive or come crashing back down to earth with an expensive thud.
As a result, getting to the top of Google and other key search engines is critical. The way to do this is through Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).
There are many companies out there who claim to “guarantee” your business the number one position or claim that SEO is beyond the reach of everyone else but them. Both of these claims are false.
No SEO company can technically guarantee you the top of Google (or on any other search engine) as the search engine algorithms are independent and no-one actually has any influence over the way it actually works.
Also, SEO can be done by anyone with a little HTML and FTP knowledge. But there’s a catch. SEO is a extremely time consuming process and there are a number of reasons why it is difficult to conduct SEO by yourself and why SEO companies exist:
- Google’s (and other search engines’) algorithm change constantly, and SEO companies are in the business of knowing how each of these changes will affect your site’s position and ranking. Unless you’ve have plenty of spare time to read up each algorithm change, an SEO company will save you time.
- SEO is competitive. If you’re undertaking SEO, you can bet that your competitors are doing it too. For this reason, you can’t just optimise your website when you put it live and expect it to sit atop the rankings forever. Search engine rankings are updated daily and hence you need ongoing SEO programs to continue to perform well.
- You need to know what keywords work. SEO companies have a variety of tools and expertise at their disposal to determine what keywords are likely to generate results for your site. They are then able to optimise your site’s pages to improve your ranking.
The best part about SEO programs from SEO companies is that they are very competitively priced.
The majority of SEO programs on the market are 12 month programs, so you are ensured that your site is continually optimised for better performance for at least a year. Basic packages start from around $2,000 per year and can range up as far as you your budget will go.
So while SEO can be done by anyone, for the vast majority of businesses, it is FAR more cost and time efficient to employ someone to do it for them.
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Read MoreDoes Pay-Per-Click Advertising Work?
There’s a lot of strong opposition out there to the notion of search engine marketing (SEM) or Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising.
Many SEO’s claim that Google AdWords and other PPC programs are simply for people who aren’t smart enough to undertake organic SEO. This, however, is far from the truth.
Organic SEO and PPC programs have two very separate and distinct uses. Organic SEO has the benefit of being able to generate unlimited clicks for free, but the catch is that you need to be in the top few results for a given keyword in order to pull it off. It is also limited in that you cannot optimise for every single search query you want as your site would be in danger of being blacklisted for keyword spamming.
Pay-Per-Click, on the other hand, forces you to pay for every click you receive, but it has the benefit of being able to be targeted to a wider variety of keywords. As a result, conversion rates from PPC ads are usually much higher than those from organic search engine results.
So when should you use PPC programs instead of SEO?
Pay-Per-Click programs should be used on keywords that are not performing organically but you would like to target. The key to a succssful PPC campaign is to ensure that your ad text, landing pages and targeted keywords are all congruent to ensure optimum placement in search results. This is because your ad’s ranking is not just dependent on how much you bid, but also on the quality score of your ad, which takes into account the relevance of your ad to your keywords, location, landing page, etc.
And just like SEO, managing your own PPC campaign is possible, but determining exactly how the quality score comes together, which keywords to set what budget, and what ad text works well is something that is generally best left to the experts, unless you have plenty of spare time.
Companies such as Reload Media are web strategy and online marketing experts in managing Google AdWords Pay-Per-Click campaigns and by employing a SEM company to look after your campaign, you are ensuring your ads are given the best possible chance of generating sales.
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Read MoreWeb strategy – why you need it first
There’s a common trend amongst businesses that, as soon as they feel the need to build their first website, or even a replacement website for an old one, they scuttle on down to a web designers office and hand over their hard earned dough.
What’s wrong with this?
Well, the most common problem that emerges from this is that these businesses tend to blow thousands of dollars on websites that are visually stunning, but don’t convert into sales. Too many businesses then put this down to the “internet being a fickle thing” or “our industry is not set up to support web sales.”
The actual reason why these websites fail is because they have not been strategically designed.
Web designers are not web strategists or strategic business consultants, and while they are great with the flashy components of your site, they are not business strategists.
Issues such as usability, navigation, search engine performance, and most importantly, conversion to sales, are not a web designers forte. This is where a web strategist steps in.
A web strategist, such as Reload Media, takes you through all of these elements and more BEFORE you see a web designer, ensuring that by the time you walk into a web designers office, you know exactly what needs to be done and the entire process is both time and cost efficient.
So what exactly does a web strategy company like Reload Consulting do?
To begin with, they determine from you what “Aims” you have for your business in terms of online sales. From there, they work with your business to develop a “Strategic Web Plan” which can be taken directly to a web designer, ensuring you don’t waste your dough on a website that doesn’t earn a crust of sales. These web strategy companies use industry knowledge gained from years of experience to assist you with all elements of planning your website.
You might be thinking that this all seems like a lot of work, after all, it is just a website. But think back to how much time you spent developing your business plan, and how much time you spent searching for retail or office space, the sign out the front, and the marketing campaign.
Your website is essentially just like another retail space, only it operates in its own medium that requires new strategies and marketing ideas. And just like your physical store, if customers cannot find their way to or around the shop, get help when needed or be able to make the purchase decision, then the investment to open that new space is wasted.
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