How Any Business Can Benefit From SEO

By Kara Taylor

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a hot topic these days. It seems every time you turn around someone is talking about SEO and how it is essential for any company that wants to make a go of it in today’s business world. But what exactly is SEO? And does your business really need it?

Well, SEO is a marketing strategy that is intended to give you a stronger, larger web presence. And with consumers turning to the internet more and more for their product and service needs, SEO is, indeed, a key part of finding new customers and increasing the visibility and profitability of your business.

Site Optimization

Optimizing your web presence can only be a positive thing. After all, how can people know how amazing your company is if they can’t find you? When looking for a product or service people are more apt to turn to the Internet, particularly the search engines than the yellow pages. If you have a poor ranking and a minimal web presence, then potential customers won’t be able to find you online. And that can mean lost sales.

You may think that only large business need and can afford to utilize SEO as part of their marketing strategy, but this couldn’t be farther from the truth. In fact, a smaller business can sometimes benefit even more than larger companies who may already have a solid web presence.

SEO Strategy

While both large and small companies can benefit from SEO, there is a difference in how it is applied to each. Other things besides business size that need to be taken into consideration when developing an SEO strategy is whether or not your company is local or global and if you deal with products or services.

It goes without saying that a larger company will have more money available for marketing and therefore more money that can be allocated for SEO. On the flip side, larger companies will need a larger SEO strategy in order for it to work.

Larger companies will most likely also already have an established web presence with a high traffic website. Their SEO strategy therefore should be geared towards tweaking the existing website and making it more efficient in drawing traffic by implementing more and better keywords in product and service descriptions, emphasizing competitive pricing and delivery service.

Small Businesses

Smaller businesses may have newer or smaller websites and not as high a volume of traffic as larger companies. While keyword placement can help to direct traffic to the site, a much better option is to use link building in order to increase the website’s ranking and direct traffic.

Increasing your online visibility will help increase your sales and put your business on the map, even if you are a local company without global aspirations. Local people turn to the Internet for their information also. The proper linking and keyword use will put you on top of the game.

Link Building

If your company’s website is new, link building is essential regardless of the size of your company. You want to make sure that you are listed when people search for your product or service on a search engine. And, in order to be recognized and indexed you need to use link building.

The right link building will also ensure that your website is high up in the search results. The higher you are ranked, the more people will be able to find you. Think about it: when you search for something online, how often to you click past the first page of results? Not very often.

Your Strategy

SEO doesn’t just benefit the big chain companies. Smaller companies can also get use out of SEO. The key is to make sure that the SEO strategy is personalized and geared towards your business whether you are selling a product or providing a service.

Author Information

Kara Taylor is an experienced blogger and a specialist in SEO, social media and website content. She uses her knowledge to give expert advice on a variety of topics on a Q&A site. When she is not blogging, she loves to learn new recipes and cook for her family.

Photo Credit: Sachin Ghodke

3 Things Not To Say To An SEO Client

By Duncan Heath

1. “I Don’t Know”

Let me just caveat this straight away and say that telling your client “I don’t know” is not a bad thing to do. It becomes very bad, however, when you use this phase in isolation and don’t follow it up with anything helpful. SEO clients tend to believe that you should know anything and everything about websites, the Internet and the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. Whether they expect more of their consultants than in other industries…I can’t say…but it sure feels like it sometimes.

When you are asked an SEO question that you don’t know the answer to, you should of course not try to wing it and make out like you do. This technique usually has two different variations:

1.)    Make out like the client is an idiot for not knowing the answer themselves as it’s so obvious, and shame them into never asking again.

2.)    Start talking gobbledygook about CSS, viewstate, algorithms and noindex commands until the client loses the will to live and moves on.

The best thing to do is admit that you’re unsure of the answer but you will find out for them and let them know as soon as you can. This will not only let them know you are honest, but that you want to help and you know how to find the answer. What more could a client want?

2. “That’s Just Google”

Most SEOs know that Google is heavily relied upon to provide traffic, often more heavily than is comfortable to be honest. Unfortunately, due to Google’s dominant market share we have to play the game and hedge our bets by focusing a lot of our time optimising for this search engine.

Whilst the Big G can be the provider great wealth, it can also take this away in a fell swoop with one or more changes to its algorithm. Largely speaking, if you play by the rules you should be okay, but we’ve all experienced in the past some drops in rankings or traffic that have come as a surprise and need investigating.

When this happens, possibly the worst (and most patronising) thing you can say to a client is “that’s just Google, sometimes it does that”. This is not helpful in the least and does not instill confidence in the client. They know that every effect has a cause, and if you don’t understand the cause then you will not be able to alter the effect. If you don’t know the answer, offer some possible solutions, but again tell the client that you will research the problem, get to the bottom of it, and work to put it right.

3. “But look at the traffic!”

Believe it or not clients aren’t interested in rankings. They’re not interested in links, and they aren’t even interested in traffic. So what are they interested in?

…Money…

A client pays you to do a job and they expect that job to provide more money to them in return. It’s very simple, and yet lots of SEO’s forget this, instead getting hung up on ranking number 1 for a big term or delivering 100 percent more traffic each month. If you are not making your clients a positive return on investment (ROI), there are no metrics in the world you can throw at them that will make them happy.

Author Information

Duncan Heath is a marketing expert working for a Tanda client, who specialises in offering solicitar credito (loan applications) in Mexico. He writes about all things web and client management.