Posts tagged SEO

Could you use a First Page Dominator
4-Point SEO Strategic Plan?

Or better yet – is SEO harder for smaller businesses?

First off – is SEO easier for a bigger business?  Well… it does seem that way.  But – for everyone… small and large businesses alike – SEO is getting harder.

Here is a TOP 9.5 LIST of STRUGGLE-POINTS.

If you’re a small business – see how many of these you can relate to.

1. LESS MONEY – This is the #1 reason SEO – and everything else! – is harder for small businesses. It’s an old saw but it’s true: You have to spend money to make money.  SEO isn’t a magic pill, nor is it a wave of our magic wand.  It’s work.  Sometimes very tedious, repetitive work… that frankly you don’t have the time to do.  If you can devote more money to your search engine optimization efforts, you’ll see better returns. Bigger companies have bigger budgets they can allocate towards hiring more employees, bringing in top-notch consultants, investing in “big content” and great web design, and so on.

2. NO TIME-  Time is money, and if you have less money you also have less time or no time at all.  Fewer heads on the marketing team means that everyone is juggling multiple tasks and nobody can focus 100% of their time on SEO  Relate to this:  most small businesses typically have a few strong people doing the job of 10.  When most entrepreneurs think about running their business – marketing, unfortunately is often an after thought.  And finding the time to do quality SEO work is virtually impossible.  Real SEO takes a lot of time. Creating worthwhile content, optimizing your web pages, promoting your assets and securing links, running A/B tests – none of this is easy. Small businesses end up doing a rush job or neglecting it altogether, resulting in under optimized

sites with poor rankings.

3. SEO is always the last thing people think about – When you’re short on resources, SEO-related tasks always seem to get pushed to the bottom of the list. Blogging and other forms of content creation are a prime example – everyone’s got the best of intentions, promises are made (“I’ll get you that blog post by the end of the week!”) but nothing ever really gets written and published. Bottom line – big companies hire someone to do this.

“Get me outta here!”

4. It’s harder to keep up with changes – LIke #3, if your resources are tight – then forget about keeping up with change.  In most cases – you’re just happy to have a website up and running… :-)  But we all know that just isn’t enough.  Rent your shop – throw up a sign outside and people will beat a path to your door… right?  Nope.  An SEO specialist who lives and breathes search has time (and incentive) to follow industry publications and keep up with the rapidly changing search landscape. They’ll know if Google has released a big algorithm change or other significant update that could affect your rankings and strategy. They’ll hear about new techniques and be better able to judge what’s worth trying and what isn’t.  WE KEEP UP WITH SEARCH.  You keep up with what you do.  Time is money – and your time is best spent on running the daily activities of your business.

5. Uncle Google favors brands. The reality is that big brands get more clicks and Google likes more clicks.  So if you want to compete on a keyword that bigger brands are also going after, you’ll have to work that much harder to prove your content is relevant and worth the user’s time. For a lot of branded keywords, you’ll never be able to beat the bigger companies  A 4-point domination strategy is just what the doctor ordered if your coming up against a Godzilla in your industry.

6. Bigger businesses have been at it longer.  And so – they typically have not only been online longer, but their domain name is older.  Other sites have been linking to them longer.  If you’ve been operating as a small business, doing well but staying small, for many years, that’s great – you’ll have an advantage. But lots of small businesses haven’t been around that long, and it’s tougher for them to rank because their younger websites haven’t accrued authority and a great link profile yet. This is why it’s harder for new websites to rank on competitive keywords. Aside from the fact that Google likes older domains, big brands have simply been doing SEO longer, so they’ve more things and they know what works and what doesn’t.

7. Your website is smaller.  Is that actually a true statement?  Probably not – if I really thought about it, but here’s the point.  Most small businesses have less content and fewer pages on their websites.  This also means that you have less keywords to to rank for and potentially less traffic as a result.  The simple formula is that Google and Bing love content.  So if your goal is to rank higher – you need to publish more content.  But not just any content… quality, useful, keyword optimized content.  Content that you can rank for on the web.  Really big websites get more traffic in part because the sea of search queries they have the potential to rank for is so much bigger. And big brands have bigger websites because (you guessed it) they have more resources to funnel toward creating content, and because they offer more products and services. Think of Amazon and all the individual pages they have for each and every product they offer!

8. You have fewer tools and less powerful software. Small marketing budgets – typically yield cheap web and SEO software.  Large businesses can afford to invest in great software to build a website, run SEO and publish.  OR they just hire an expert.  The in-house SEO at a big company has tools at his disposal that automate away some of the time-consuming tasks involved with search marketing. They can afford to buy up for better analytics, better keyword research, better reporting tools, better conversion optimization tools, etc., etc. Small companies are often stuck with free, which makes it harder to gain a competitive advantage. More manual work also takes more time.

9. You have less clout to leverage for link building and media coverage. Where you build links and how you build links does cost money.  If you’re brand is big… you can garner more attention.  Most small businesses, however don’t have that luxury.

Don’t let your head explode!

9.5  Half way through this list your mind exploded.  When your mind explodes you can’t do SEO.  Big businesses typically have backup for when one of their marketer’s blows their minds.  Unfortunately – you don’t.

Where to go from here?  SEO?  Link-building?  Pay Per Click advertising?  Writing articles and blog posts?  Shooting and posting videos?   The trick for small businesses is figuring out what you can accomplish given your limited resources.  AND THEN… hiring an SEO specialist who can help with a plan that fits your budget.  If you want different results – get as far away from what your currently doing – and make a change.