Does the small business need SEO?
SEO tools
I recently met with an SEO expert! Yes, they seem to be coming out of the woodwork lately! I have spent a lot of time researching this area over the last 6 months. Here is what I have found out for small business owners.
1. If you go to an expert or a company, it is going to cost the average small business $300 to $600 per month if they go for an SEO package that is maintained. What does that give you? Well the IT geeks in the background will optimise your site with key words, build links, and set your site up well so google can crawl your site and select you in the top five for a particular statement. I found out that it is very expensive to rank for one or even two works and the most you can hope for is a phrase like small business marketing consultant.
2. I found out that pay per click which is google ad words is very expensive and perhaps Facebook is a better option depending on your target market but is getting better conversion for click through.
3. That most of this you can do yourself but you need to do it consistently so there is a cost associated to this. Tools include google analytics, google key words and google resources.
4. That there are some free tools out there to get you started. Hubspot has a web grader that is a good place to start. See below for tools and tips.
5. That there is some value in doing some paid SEO if you are in a small niche and need a large number of visitors to your site. The example was given to me of a car dealer that spends thousands per month but gets many more thousands to his site and converts enough to make this advertising spend worth it.
I am suggesting for small businesses a starting point is to ensure the following is done before you go down the road of SEO via a company.
1. Optimise your site for key words your target market uses to find you. Try it.Type in words into google and see if your competitors and you are listed.
2. List the key words in your headers and in the alt tag for pictures and through the copy. Do every page of you website
3. Have a call to action on every page. Contact phone number and form to collect email details.
4. Do a little bit often. SEO is a changing landscape. A little bit often is the best strategy. Link to your blog. Post articles on other sites that link back to your website. Keep an eye on your google analytics and tweak things to optimise your site being found by your target customers. I have increased my web and blog exposure from hundreds to thousands per month (thank you) and all by tweaking things using the tactics above. Love to hear if you are looking at your SEO?
Tools and Tip:
video 10 things you can do for your small business online.
Google places – video on how to do this
How to get found online – podcast by Tim and Luke
How to build a website – thanks Luke some good optimising tips like start with wordpress which is search engine friendly!
Related posts:
Top 5 tips for Google listings
So how are you going getting found on the web
5 Keys to designing a great website
Optimising a press release for SEO
Great article Danielle, and you’re spot on about everything.
I’ll just add my two cents worth.
The two main keys to SEO are great content and backlinks. And these days getting links to your site happens more and more thru social media.
And these are two things that most people can do themselves, as you point out.
That said, I would still recommend specialist SEO if the client can afford it. SEO is such a specialized field these days, you really need someone who’s on top of all the changes to help you.
$600 a month is about right in what you should expect to pay, but try and avoid packages as often they are just automated services and you get cookie cutter results.
Try and find a small firm or consultant, that way they have less overheads to service and you get personalized service.
Yeh, I know hard to find such people as how do you tell the good ones from the snake oil salesmen?
The other main thing I would highly recommend is to make sure your site is built for SEO right from the start, don’t leave it until after the site is finished.
Properly built sites can get tremendous SEO improvements. I’ve seen clients jump millions of places in their rankings just because they took the time to build a site properly.
This is one area where you should call in a specialist SEO guy to help plan and optimize your site. The one off investment will be worth it.
I know most web developers say they build optimized sites, (and they probably even believe it) but in most cases they don’t, because they simply aren’t SEO specialists.
I should stop now as this has turned into more of a guest post than a comment.
Thanks for your great insights, obviously a man in the know! I appreciate you re-entering your comments so everyone can benefit from your knowledge!
Outstanding details! I have already been looking for something like this for a time now. Cheers!
Well done Danielle
Excellent information
Best Regards
Fay Chamoun