The Evolution Of Small Business SEO

The following is my nutshell breakdown of the evolution of local small business marketing, and in turn, local SEO. I know this because I lived it as it happened, both as a small business owner and as an SEO:

• 20 years ago you could advertise in one or two places (local newspaper, direct mail, and TV or radio) and have as many leads as you could handle…
• Ten years ago you had to advertise in multiple places offline to get enough leads for your small business to grow and thrive…
• Five years ago you could get enough leads by having a top five ranking in Google for your most important keywords, along with implementing all the offline advertising methods as well…

But today, the internet is like offline advertising was ten years ago. There are numerous marketing channels online, and numerous ways to be seen (or found, if you prefer that term) by potential customers.

Now you have search engines, pay-per-click, social networking sites, article marketing sites, press release sites, CPM, blogs, social bookmarking sites, online video, micro-blogging, podcasting, local directories… the list goes on and on.

Only a few of these really matter to the typical small business owner. But the way things tend to work is that the more places you are seen and the greater your internet presence, the greater the likelihood you’ll be found instead of your competitors.

Too Many Choices, Too Much Confusion, Too Little Time

Did you know that Google only accounts for 6% of overall traffic online? However, it receives about 70% of all searches, meaning it’s the undisputed big daddy of online search. But one in four page views online can now be attributed to Facebook, and online video is by far the fastest growing internet application in its class.

This all begs the question: “Where do I advertise online?”

To most small business owners, this is all a huge confusing mess. And the internet does in fact level the playing field somewhat between small business owners and large companies. However, for many small business owners it isn’t the great equalizer we’ve been told it is, because it changes too much, too fast for most small business owners to leverage it effectively.

Think about what it takes just to keep up with your own area of expertise in your business. It takes a significant amount of your time, right? Well, imagine if the nature of your business changed on a monthly, weekly, or even on a daily basis… you’d have a full-time job on your hands just keeping up.

That’s what SEO is like, and that’s what it takes for a good local search consultant to stay up with trends and changes so their clients stay on top. And that’s why you simply don’t have time to do it all yourself (I know, because I did it for my own small business – the learning curve was pretty steep, and it took me years to figure it all out).

And That’s What Search Engine Marketing Consulting Is For…

My job is to know what to do, where, and how much to get your business seen on the internet. The number one goal is still to have your site show up at the top of the search engines, but for multiple searches under multiple search terms and in multiple ways.

It’s not enough to just have your main website show up at the top of the search results anymore. You need to have multiple results in many categories of online media to outpace your competitors.

And that’s what a good small business SEO does for their clients.

The good news is, most of your competitors are slow to adapt. Change is hard for most people, even more so when it comes at today’s breakneck pace, the likes of which society has never seen in the entirety of our existence.

The question is, will you take advantage of that resistance to change and use it to outpace your competitors, or instead fade out due to marketing and advertising obsoletion?

I can’t make that choice for you, but I can tell you one thing – get a good search marketing consultant on your team and you won’t have to worry about it.

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“But Can’t You Just Fix My Site So It Stays On The First Page Of Google Forever?”

You’d be surprised how often I hear comments like that from new and potential clients. And, while I could just flat out lie to them (like many companies offering SEO services do – mostly the ones who spam your inbox and have call centers with hundreds of telemarketers selling their services) -

But I’m an honest guy.

So, I tell them the painful truth… that SEO is a moving target, and it changes constantly. Yes, I can get them a first page ranking in Google for their most relevant keywords, but it will likely require some ongoing maintenance and work to keep them there.

Not only that, but “overnight” top three SERP (search engine results page) rankings are rare, and often fleeting at best. It may take weeks or months before their site gets in the top five (typically, I get much faster results – but you never know with Google), and there’s really no way to predict precisely how long that will take.

I may get fewer clients this way, but at least the ones I do get have realistic expectations of the SEO process, and subsequently are a lot easier to work with. (Besides, I’d rather under-promise at first, then over-deliver in the end.)

So Why Is Seo A Moving Target?

The thing is, search engine rankings are by their very nature dynamic and ever-changing. To understand why, we have to first look at how search engines find and rank content. Without getting overly technical, here’s how it works in a nutshell:

- Search engine spiders (sometimes called “robots” or “crawlers”) are software programs that are typically unique to each search engine. They are designed and built to constantly “crawl” or “spider” the internet, looking at web content and indexing information on that content in their vast data banks. They do this in an attempt to store (for future retrieval) the most important and relevant information on each piece of content (websites and pages, blog posts, videos, podcasts, etc.).

- In turn, search engines rank that content based on various (and varying) ranking criteria that are written into mathematical algorithms. The algorithmic programs (proprietary to each major search engine) crunch the data the spiders find, and spit out results that are the search engine rankings.

-  That way, when someone uses their search engine to do a search for a specific topic, they can serve up the most topically relevant content based on what the user requested.

A Quick And Dirty Explanation of How Search Engines Rank Content

The factors that search engines rank pages and content on are numerous, and include on-page factors (related to content relevancy) and off-page factors (mostly, how “popular” a page is on the internet).

It bears mentioning that nobody, except for the engineers at Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft, know exactly what all those factors are or exactly how important each one is according to the algorithm. So, SEOs do their work based largely on what has been proven to work time and again through trial and error. (Hint: If you’re going to hire an SEO, make sure they have a track record of getting results for their clients.)

On-page factors have to do with how often and where exactly key search terms show up on a page. Off-page factors mostly are related to how many times a site or other piece of content is linked from other sites, how topically relevant those sites are to the search term, as well as how popular those sites are in their own right.

As you might guess, the first place to start with SEO is the on-page optimization stuff. In fact, many times I can get an existing site on the first page of Google by doing nothing more than fixing the on-page ranking factors.

However, your competitors are all jostling for that top ranking as well. If they’re sharp, they probably have some idea of the importance of SEO too. So, they’re going to be constantly tweaking and tuning their content in an attempt to out-rank you in the SERPs…

Similarly, the off-page factors are also a constantly changing and evolving environment. Sites that may have linked to you in the past may remove those links. Or, those sites may go away, or their popularity may have decreased as other sites (and new social media) nudge them down in rankings and popularity.

More likely, however, is the fact that your competition is out there trying to improve their off-page ranking factors as well. So, while you may be on to of the heap one day, the next you may have fallen several spots.

Now, factor in the fact that the search engines (especially Google) are constantly trying to improve the accuracy and relevancy of the search results they serve up for their users. That means the algorithms are continually being updated and changed. (Ever hear of the Florida update? A lot of SEOs and internet marketers are still having nightmares from that one…)

And when they do, that top three Google ranking you were so proud of may very well go away completely – leaving your site languishing on the second page (or, horror of horrors, on the third page and beyond where nearly no one looks).

So, There You Have It…

That’s why SEO is a constantly and continually moving target. If you’re doing your own SEO in-house, make sure you are visiting and revisiting your rankings, and updating/improving your on-page and off-page factors on a weekly basis.

If you’ve hired an SEO, make certain they have a regular protocol they follow for “touching” and updating your site, rankings, and ranking factors. Remember, you’re paying them that monthly retainer for a reason, and that’s for them to be pro-active in (hopefully) heading off issues before they occur… not to react after the fact.

Note: No SEO can do this 100% of the time, but a good SEO is going to be looking ahead and will be pro-active in their search engine promotion strategy for your site.

So, now that you have a more realistic outlook on SEO, the next time some telemarketer calls to offer you “page one Goggle rankings at the unbelievably low one-time fee of…”

Well, you know what to do.

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The Ball of Confusion Surrounding Small Business SEO

After doing internet marketing for small business for the last nine years, I’ve found that my clients are often confused about marketing online. And quite honestly, I can relate.

You see, ten years ago I was a small business owner who didn’t understand a thing about marketing online. However, I had a client who helped build an online community (that he and his partners later sold to Yahoo) who was constantly telling me about how the internet was taking over everything. After hearing this for months, I finally started to take notice of what he was saying.

As it turned out, it was the best thing I ever did for my businesses. I started marketing online years before most of my competitors did, and as you might guess my interest in online marketing eventually grew into a business of it’s own.

However, I still remember how overwhelming it was at first… and that was ten years ago, long before the advent of Web 2.0 (basically, interactive websites) and social media. The landscape of the internet was much flatter back then, and easier to understand by several degrees.

I can only imagine how confusing all this must be for a small business owner today. Blogging, social networking, Twitter, Facebook, web video, podcasting, SEO, SEM… There’s so much more to think about than just getting your home page ranked in Google.

So, where do you start?

Simplified Internet Marketing for Small Business Owners

If you’re confused about where to start with your online marketing, never fear. Here’s a quick breakdown in four simple steps outlining what you should do first to market your business locally online:

1. Obviously, internet marketing for small business starts with getting a website. Well, duh. However obvious this may seem, there are a few things worth considering before building your first website. Most importantly, you need to decide what type of website is best for your business (static, CMS, ecommerce, or blog). In most cases I recommend starting with a blog, since anyone can start one relatively easily and inexpensively. (And rather than staying victim to paralysis by analysis, doing any online marketing activity is better than none.) So if you’re not sure what to do first just start a blog about your business. Then, begin posting articles, news, and videos about what you do and how your products and services can benefit customers in your local market.
2. The next step is on-page optimization of your site. That means doing all the basic stuff necessary to make your site as “search engine friendly” as possible. At the very minimum this should include optimizing your title tags and meta tags for each of your main pages, optimizing your navigation, and creating an XML site map for your site.
3. After you optimize your site, it’s time to start driving traffic to your site. Don’t worry about submitting your site to the search engines, because what you do in this step will typically get your site crawled (seen) and indexed (listed or included in their database) by the major search engines (like Google, Yahoo, and Bing) in relatively short order. The best way to do that is to start getting links to your site from other sites. The best sites to get links from are sites that are relevant to yours; in other words, sites that are topically related. So, if you’re a dentist, you would want to get links from other sites that were about dentistry. Likewise, a mechanic would want to get links from sites about auto repair and automotive topics. There’s not enough space here to talk about all the ways to do this, but a good small business marketing consultant can help you out here (and I’ll post more on this in future articles).
4. The next step in the process is to evaluate how well your site is doing it’s job. Namely, that would be how well it’s doing at getting you leads and sales. 90% of the time, small businesses are looking to get immediate sales from their sites, and that’s typically a mistake. What you should be looking for instead is getting leads from your site, in the form of phone calls or (even better) collecting contact information (name, email address, and in certain cases a phone number). Why is it better to collect contact info than to just get calls? For one, if you have a prospective client’s contact information, you can continue to market your services to them over and over until they make a purchase. The best way to do this is by providing them with useful information that helps them in some way; I prefer to use email newsletters for this purpose. So, make sure your site collects leads from your visitors, and continually find ways to improve how efficient and effective your site is in doing so.

And that, in a nutshell, is what every small business owner needs to do to market their business online. Let’s recap those four steps:

Step #1 – Get a site -

Step #2 – Make that site search engine friendly -

Step #3 – Drive traffic to that site -

Step #4 – Make your site a lead generation machine -

There you have it – internet marketing for small business, simplified.

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