SEO (search engine optimization) can be a confusing three letters to a small business owner.  Most understand how important a Google search is, most want to be at the top, but with a business to run.  Their spending extra time with social media, or their being told they need to be in social media and let’s not forget you need better SEO.

In some ways SEO gets a bad name due to the competiveness of the industry.  You don’t have to be in the same location as the business to improve their SEO, so some businesses get bombarded with how they can get better search engine results.

Plus there are all the SEO spammers out there trying to get back links.  While backlinks can be important, for a small local business you can dramatically improve your search engine results without even getting into backlinks.

Some SEO packages can be expensive, some can be reasonable, like every industry it has your good companies that do it the right way, then you have your others.

It is important for any business no matter how small to spend some time, energy, or a little money to improve their SEO.  Here is an example of an analytics page, and how SEO played a part in increasing web hits.

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Not hard to see that in mid to late July that some SEO work was being done on the site.  This website since mid July has seen an average increase of 3 to 5 times as many hits since applying SEO techniques than prior to any SEO applications

If your website is a good reflection of who and what you are, and does a nice job of stating why people should do business with you or buy your products, then hits will translate into dollars..  In this case a ROI of the time and money put into SEO has already been achieved by converting new inquiries into sales.

A better SEO can be achieved a few different ways.  You can take a SEO on-line class.  There are a number of good SEO teaches and with today’s technology it does not matter where they are located.  Time is money and if you don’t have the time you can just pay someone to do it.  The upfront cost will be a little more as your entire website will need to be SEO’d.  The cost will depend on how many pages your site has and how many images are on your site.

If you are just looking for better search results locally and are not in a highly competitive e-commerce industry the SEO upkeep is fairly simple and not that costly at all.  Results and how soon you will see the increased traffic very from business to business.  Results and time will vary on how competitive your industry is.  It’s safe to say if you are in a competitive industry and you are not practicing good SEO you are losing business.  If you are not in a very search competitive industry then you should be practicing SEO to take advantage and own your industry in your area.

Remember 80% of consumers won’t go past the first page of a search.  Don’t be intimidated by SEO, take advantage of it.

 

About the Author:

Mike Frey

Before co-founding Paradux Media Group, Mike spent more than 15 years in the world of marketing and advertising. While working with hundreds of locally owned businesses, he developed an appreciation for minimizing clients’ dollars while maximizing tangible results for those clients.

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2 Comments

  1. Gray on January 31, 2012 at 6:35 am

    SEO in business really need a great time and a great planning. You can’t just sir their and watch your business, you need to work so that it can be seen by possible visitors.

    • Mike Frey on January 31, 2012 at 8:02 am

      Thanks for stopping by Gray… Indeed time and planning are critical and sometimes the hardest thing to get the small business owner to bite off on is having the patience to do the research.

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