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Why SMB owners should care about SEO?

Posted on 16. Jul, 2009 by admin in SEO

Your cus­tomers are look­ing for you. Can they find you?

When poten­tial cus­tomers have a prob­lem and need some­where to go, they search for it. They head to their favorite search engine, type what they want and are pre­sented with a list of results Google promises can help them. If you don’t appear in those results, you don’t exist. You miss out on the sale, the brand­ing oppor­tu­nity and the abil­ity to con­vert that tar­geted searcher into a life­long cus­tomer. And that’s the value that search engine opti­miza­tion (SEO) brings to small busi­nesses. It puts you in your cus­tomers’ line of sight and estab­lishes you as an expert.

A lot of small busi­nesses don’t fully under­stand SEO. They think it’s dirty, that SEOs are snake oil sales­men, that it’s out of their bud­get, or that it’s some­thing they don’t need to worry about because they’re not a major brand. The truth is, the Inter­net has changed the face of busi­ness and lev­eled the play­ing field for every­one. By invest­ing in SEO, you allow your com­pany to show up for those tar­geted local searches, while also putting your­self in the posi­tion to com­pete with the big dogs.

Here’s what a lot of small busi­nesses don’t real­ize about SEO.

It’s afford­able: Whether you’re doing it your­self or pay­ing some­one to help you, SEO doesn’t have to break your bud­get. Most of your atten­tion will go towards ensur­ing that your site is set up cor­rectly, that you’re listed in all the appro­pri­ate local indexes (which is free and some­thing you can do on your own), and help­ing to tar­get your site for very spe­cific, locally-based terms. For most busi­nesses, you’re going to find that this process prob­a­bly isn’t any­where near as expen­sive or dif­fi­cult as you’d imag­ine. It’s also one of the most cost-effective mar­ket­ing strate­gies out there as you’ll con­tinue to ben­e­fit from good opti­miza­tion for years to come. Quite sim­ply, a site that is prop­erly con­structed will rank bet­ter than a site that is not. And you don’t have to drain your bud­get in order to pay atten­tion to fun­da­men­tal SEO.

It means being cre­ative: Small busi­nesses have a huge leg up over larger brands when it comes to their SEO and mar­ket­ing cam­paigns. Unlike them, you have a license to be cre­ative. You can take more chances, try things faster and engage eas­ier. Use all of this to your advan­tage. Launch that Twit­ter cam­paign now, exper­i­ment with on-page SEO strate­gies, test dif­fer­ent Title tags to see which con­vert bet­ter, do inter­est­ing things for links and to cre­ate buzz, etc. One of the great advan­tages to being a small busi­ness is that there’s no legal or PR red tape to step though. It makes you more agile and gives you a lot more free­dom to do great things and to quickly test what works and what works even better.

It’s effec­tive: You will make back what you invest in SEO. If you can get your local busi­ness to show up in Google’s 10-pack, you’re going to greatly increase the expo­sure, brand­ing and prof­itabil­ity of your Web site. All of the lit­tle things that go into local SEO are designed to attract peo­ple who are nat­u­rally look­ing for you, to let them know you exist and to make it easy for them to find you. Launch­ing a Web site with­out wor­ry­ing about the fun­da­men­tals of SEO is like writ­ing a great novel only to hide it on a shelf in your base­ment. There’s no sense being great if no one knows it. Search engine opti­miza­tion puts your Web site in front of your cus­tomer base.

It’s cre­ates bet­ter Web sites: There’s no black magic here. The core of SEO is sim­ply cre­at­ing great Web sites. It’s about mak­ing them content-rich and use­ful for searchers, while also tak­ing the time to make them acces­si­ble and easy to under­stand to the search engines. That’s the goal of being on the Web and SEO helps you accom­plish that. It ensures that your Web site is set up cor­rectly from the very begin­ning so that it’s nat­u­rally a hit to both users and the search engines. It’s about make usable sites. And that’s some­thing absolutely every busi­ness can ben­e­fit from.

Your com­pe­ti­tion already is: More and more small busi­nesses are real­iz­ing the impact search engine opti­miza­tion can have on the suc­cess of their com­pany. And they’re invest­ing in it. The longer you wait to make that same invest­ment, the harder it’s going to be for you to match their efforts and stay ahead of the pack. When some­one in your area heads to Google because a pipe just burst in their home and it’s now flood­ing with water, they’re going to grab the name of that plumber listed first in Google Local. They’re going to per­form a sec­ond search or waste time weigh­ing their options. They have a flood and you need to be there immediately.

SEO is no longer some­thing busi­nesses can ignore, regard­less of their size. If you’re think­ing of finally dip­ping your toe into the SEO waters, make sure you check out Janet Mein­ers Thaeler’s recent post on how to find a rep­utable SEO com­pany or Lee Odden’s post on SEO hir­ing tips. Both are filled with great information.

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• Look­ing for Info About Inter­net Marketing?!
• Ever won­der what Inter­net Mar­ket­ing is or how it can help your business?
• 10 Inter­net Mar­ket­ing Tips for Photographers
• Reverse SEO in Online Rep­u­ta­tion Man­age­ment (ORM)
• Cre­at­ing the com­plete SEO experience

Tags: customers, potential-customers