SEO and small businesses
SEO (search engine optimization) can be a great marketing tool for small businesses. A modest investment of effort can pay dividends year after year.
It is an investment nonetheless, and because of this, the kinds of businesses that go for search engine optimization more readily are ones whose products or services range in the thousands or tens of thousands of dollars per sale. With a sale or two stemming from SEO efforts, they can cover their investment. The types of businesses that fall into this category include engineering firms; attorneys and law firms; contractors such as those in roofing, basements, and home additions; and real estate agents and brokerages.
What is SEO?
What is SEO, anyway? In the context of business, SEO is a marketing channel wherein a business finds ways to make their web pages more visible to potential customers who are searching for business services via search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing. When I talk about SEO for small business, I’m really talking about SEO + lead generation (for businesses where a human will make the sale) and SEO + e-commerce (where the sale will take place on the website itself). SEO without lead generation or e-commerce doesn’t have a big part in business.
How can I get started with SEO?
SEO starts with defining terms and phrases that are important to your business – terms that prospective customers might type into a search engine if they are looking for a product or service like the one you provide. (Developing a list of target terms is part guessing game, but bear in mind there are objective ways to validate those guesses.) An example target phrase is “Civil Engineer in Reading PA.” A small business can have dozens, hundreds, or thousands of potential target terms and phrases, depending on the variety of products and services offered, and the region in which they are offered. A good SEO specialist will walk you through the process of defining a list of target terms. This person will also likely scan your competitors’ websites for terms you may have overlooked.
Developing content for SEO
The next step is to plan content development around the target terms and phrases. In simplest terms, your web pages have to contain the terms you’re targeting, and those pages have to be visible to search engine spiders so that they’ll be searchable as part of a search engine’s index. If a search engine doesn’t know about your page, it can’t list it in a search engine result page (SERP).
Now you need to develop that content, get it onto the website, and make sure it’s visible to search engines. There are some rules of thumb. Use plain text to convey the terms in the page (not Flash). Use key terms in the title tag. Wherever possible, think one page per target term (or concept).
When will I see results from SEO?
How much time will it take to get results? This all depends on the uniqueness of your target terms and the uniqueness of your content on the internet. Whether there are 10, 100 or 1000 competitors in your business space, it’s likely that some of them are doing SEO, and furthermore it’s likely that some of those have been at it for quite some time, which could make the road more challenging for you and your search engine specialist. A good SEO specialist will be able to help you navigate more competitive situations, where you’ll need to explore advanced techniques like back linking.
One thing to remember is that when a website hasn’t been created with SEO in mind, it can be (though isn’t always) very costly to adapt it to the point where it can get results. For this reason, it’s important to consider SEO as part of any new website project, assuming SEO is a desired part of the marketing mix.
Should you outsource SEO?
To outsource or not outsource? If you happen to have someone on staff who understands and can execute an SEO effort and get results, you might consider starting there. (But I’ve found few small businesses who have this option.) If you need to go outside, consider a specialist who’s done SEO work in your field (e.g. civil engineering, roofing, real estate, etc.), and watch out for conflicts of interest (same product space, same geographic region).
While this article can’t possibly cover all aspects of SEO or an SEO project for a small business, I hope it provides some guidance and help in thinking about potential next steps and what questions to ask.
