As a small business owner do I need to worry/think/do anything about Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?

Whether your company has a website or not, most people have heard something about Search Engine Optimization (SEO).Often it’s from the sales and marketing manager who instructs a staff member to “do something about SEO” so that their site can appear on Google’s first page (good luck with that by the way…). Sometimes it’s from an “SEO” company who can absolutely guarantee that they’ll get your site on Google’s first page of results – maybe they should talk to that staff member? More often with small businesses its one of those topics that gets discussed once or twice and is then consigned to the “someday, maybe never” file.

To answer my own question – I’m here today to tell you that in this Google-dominated, internet-driven, 24/7 world SEO isn’t just something to worry or think about its EVERYTHING if you want to get found on the internet. Here are my top 5 SEO “do’s plus 5 “don’ts” that every small business owner needs to be aware of: (more…)

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Social media and small business

social_mediaMany small businesses have embraced the concepts behind social media and in-bound marketing – primarily those in the B2B services and consultancy industries, where they make their money promoting  themselves as opposed to a product. On the other hand many product based small businesses (manufacturers, distributors, etc) have done next to nothing with these new marketing avenues. Why? Because, I think, they think there’s very little ROI in it for them.

No-Cost / Low-Cost

But what investment are they referring to? The one really great thing about the new world of social media & in-bound marketing is that it’s either no-cost or low-cost. The major investment is one of time and to a lesser extent of creativity. (more…)

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Small businesses and their web presence

I read an interesting post the other day titled “Guide to Building a Small Business Site With WordPress Pt. 1” which included a sub-section “6 most common reasons for building a small business website”.

The six reasons given were:

  • I simply need my address and phone number online so people can find my business
  • Everybody says I need a web presence
  • I want my business to look more professional
  • I want to be number one on Google and Yahoo
  • My competitor has one
  • I want to sell online

On the face of it all are reasonable and seem to reflect the needs and desires of sales managers everywhere. And of course they all miss the point (more…)

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Content is king! And a complete pain in the neck

In my last corporate job one of my tasks was to create a new web site – pretty much from scratch. The basic design and layout was decided within the first couple of weeks of the project and then the hard part…filling those empty layouts with content. Adding the content took months and months and I don’t think my bosses ever understood what was taking so long. Writing relevant copy, making illustrations, collating product information is very, very time consuming and then formatting it to go onto the site was a job in itself.

There are thousands of “web providers” out there that will be happy to take your money to design and create a web site for you. But when they are finished what next? All they’ve built for you is an empty vessel that needs filling. They don’t know your product and aren’t going to spend the time to learn it. You need to fill the vessel with content but as I allude to above it’s a) time consuming and b) tricky for the non-programmer. One of my friends called it ‘web geekery!” (more…)

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