Search Engine Optimization

Even small businesses can benefit from a strong SEO program. We live in an online world, and even 50 year old mom-and-pop pizza joints have a basic web presence nowadays, even if it’s just a one page website with their address and phone number. If you are looking to take your small business SEO to the next level, here are three pieces of advice:

Try to learn the basics of SEO for yourself.
In my opinion, small business owners shouldn’t be so quick to outsource their SEO the minute their website is live. Take a year (which gives your site time to age and gain trust) and learn the basics of SEO for yourself! Maybe signup for a local SEO workshop or download a few SEO 101 webinars so you learn what goes into creating an executing a successful small business SEO strategy. Even if you just start reading a few SEO blogs each day (spend a ½ hour in the morning), you’ll slowly learn what is and isn’t white hat SEO, best practice SEO tips and other valuable small business SEO lessons. The more educated you are the less likely it is that you will be taken for a ride by a black hat SEO company, and the more your eventual SEO partner will be able to do for you. Since you have the basic knowledge and SEO framework in place, your white hat partner can help take your small business SEO campaign to the next level.

Start writing now.
Most of the major search engine updates in the past few months have been focused on rewarding quality content. If you want your small business SEO campaign to be successful, I would suggest you start writing now. Get your company blog up and running and try to publish at least one post a week. Start cultivating relationships with other industry bloggers so you can become a guest author on their sites. Send out newsworthy press releases, create a video marketing campaign, maybe even write a white paper—you want to get comfortable with creating great content on a regular basis. Remember, great content takes the reader into account first, and SEO second. A small business SEO campaign needs content in order to thrive.

Spend your limited budget wisely.
In most cases, a cheap budget is going to get your cheap SEO if you try to outsource the work. If you don’t have a lot of money to throw at SEO, pick and choose your battles and spend your limited budget wisely. There’s no need to hire (in-house or outsourced) a social media manager AND a content manager AND an SEO expert right away. Hold off on purchasing expensive SEO software until you know that you really need it. Maybe take one or two paid SEO training courses, but augment your SEO knowledge with the thousands of free resources available online (blogs, white papers, webinars, podcasts, guidebooks, etc). In short, be smart with your money! SEO is a long term process, so there is no need to blow your limited budget at the start. Find out what you really need and how much it’s going to cost and budget accordingly.

This is a guest post written by Amanda DiSilvestro of Business.com

There has been a lot of buzz about one of the latest Google Panda update, so naturally many bloggers are writing about the importance of content and how to better the content on your website. For those who are unfamiliar, on September 28th, the Panda update (known as Panda 2.5) put a stricter emphasis on unique content and caused many small businesses traffic results to lower. Although some businesses such as FoxNews.com and YouTube benefited from the change, the complaints from small companies have not declined.

Content has always been important, and Google has always valued good content and tried to keep the unique content ranking high. This makes sense, and most would agree that this is the correct move. However, small businesses see this strict change as a way to keep the “big names” at the top of organic search rankings. Some smaller businesses have even gone on to say that the change was issued to help Google owned sites. This led me to wonder: Now that the update has been in effect for a just about two months, what have small businesses done to accommodate the change?

Why Small Businesses Are Now Having a Hard Time Competing
As with any Panda update, businesses have to change and adapt their methods to stay competitive. This idea has generally been accepted in the past, but this latest update has left many thinking that SEO is dead. There are really two reasons that the future of SEO has changed for small businesses:

Cost—While the main elements of organic SEO are in essence free, you have to consider the actual amount of effort and man hours that go into developing an SEO campaign. Many of the top companies have a content team as well as an SEO professional working full time to make sure their company is ranked well for an organic search. With the new stricter standards, this is almost a must for success, and this gets expensive. Most companies do not want to apply for a small business loan to pay for their SEO, but the latest changes leave many with few options.

Time—It takes months, or even years, to build back links, quality content, and positive reviews. These are the types of things that are (now more than ever) crucial when it comes to SEO; even if you have the team to make it happen. If a company decides to splurge with the expenses, they will need to see results immediately to prove to managers and investors that it was worth the cost. If not, they may not have the money to continue for another six months.

I bet I know what you’re thinking: Time and money have always been a factor when it comes to SEO. The only difference is that now it will be more expensive and take up more time. Since Google changed their algorithms, it’s really a question of degree for those left behind.

SEO Isn’t Dead; It’s Just Taking a Break
Although it is a bit too early to tell, I predict that we will see small businesses utilizing pay per click marketing much more than SEO. It comes down to traffic and sales, and small businesses need both immediately. They need the customers right away so that they can begin establishing a customer base, and since SEO is so long term, they can’t afford to wait. Although organic search is more valuable than PPC in the long run, small businesses may not have the resources to make this happen as quickly as they could in years past.

However, while many are up in arms about Panda 2.5, saying that SEO is dead is a bit extreme. Although small businesses might shift focus to PPC advertising for the time being, SEO will come back eventually. After all, even if a small businesses uses PPC advertising to generate traffic and customers, they will not grow unless their site is at least on its way to becoming a site with quality content. Do you agree?

Photo Credit: blogs.theage.com.au

About the Author
Amanda DiSilvestro is a writer on topics ranging from SEO best practices to small business grants. She writes for an online resource that gives advice on topics including social media to small businesses and entrepreneurs for the leading business information website, Business.com.