Small Business SEO

Search Engine Optimization / Domination

 

You may or may not be familiar with the term "SEO", which is short for "Search Engine Optimization". SEO involves a variety of things that can be done to improve a given web page's placement on search engines like Google and Yahoo when someone searches for terms applicable to that web page.

Some aspect of SEO deal with "on-site" tactics, meaning things you can do with the content and coding of the web page to make it more important in the eyes of the search engines.

Although on-site SEO tactics are important, "off-site" SEO is much more important in determining your search engine rankings. Simply stated, off-site SEO is done by getting links from other websites to your website, preferably using "anchor text" that reflects the search terms that are applicable to your site. The more links you have to your site from good quality link sources and the better the anchor text reflects the content of your site, the better your site will rank in the search engine listings. There is a bit more to it than that, but that's basically the way it works.

Quite a number of consultants now exist who do SEO for small businesses. Some of them do excellent work, while some provide such limited service that the net result is either short-lived or non-existent (as will be explained further in a moment).

So what is search engine domination? That's a term I use to describe the service I perform. My goal is to not only get my client's websites to the top of the search engines, I want there to be MULTIPLE results that all point to my client's business.

There are a number of ways to achieve this, from having multiple websites, to article marketing, to video marketing, to blog and forum posting. In other words, if someone types in a search term that is relevant to my client's business, potentially they could have their website, an online article that links to their website and promotes their business, a video that links to their website and acts as a commercial for their business, a blog post related to the search term that directs to the clients website, etc.. Using this method, I have achieved situations where my client's business appears as many as 7 out of the top 10 listings on Google for a given search term, and as many as 15 out of the top 20.

Here's an example:

The screen shot above is from the first page of results on Google for the search term "Spinal Decompression San Antonio". The results in the red boxes are all for my client's business. In this case, I have performed SEO for his existing website (drgolabdc.com), as well as have developed additional websites for him (one of which, spinesanantonio.com is shown here), and have done other forms of online marketing such as article marketing (one of the articles appears as the last result in picture above). As I continue to add articles, videos, and other content that is optimized for his search terms, and continue to do off-site SEO for the existing content, his presence on the search engines will continue to grow.

This has three main effects. One is of course that my client's business becomes highly visible and anyone searching for related terms will be very likely to find my client. The second effect is that it essentially blocks the websites of my client's competitors from being found and increases the odds that the prospect will choose my client to do business with. Finally, because my client seems to "be everywhere", he or she is perceived as an authority in their area of business, which also increases the likelihood that the prospect will choose to do business with him or her.

As I mentioned earlier, some individuals who claim to do SEO for small businesses take advantage of the fact that most small business owners don't have a clue as to how all this works. Many will guarantee a #1 listing on Google as an inducement for people to hire them. To those unfamiliar with SEO, that may sound pretty good. But it can be a trick that leads to you not getting any return on whatever you invest in the SEO service.

The trick is, it is pretty easy to get a #1 listing on Google for non-competitive search terms. A search term that has little competition is like that for a good reason: nobody is actually searching using that term!

So, a lot of these so-called "SEO Experts" contact business owners, promise them a #1 listing on Google with a money-back guarantee if they can't achieve the #1 listing. They then find a search term that has little to no competition, make a few tweaks in the client's website, and send a few links to the site (all of which can be accomplished in a matter of minutes). Within a week or two, the client's site gets its #1 listing for a worthless search term. The impressed and excited client pays the SEO expert and waits for the business to roll in. As the client waits, only to be very disappointed, the SEO expert moves on to rip-off the next client.

Even if the SEO expert is legit and does work to get the client a good search engine placement for search terms that are actually used on a frequent basis, the results can be short-lived. The search engine environment is not static - it's constantly changing as new sites come online and existing site owners take actions to improve their SEO. For this reason, to stay competitive in the search engines in the long-run, it is necessary to have ongoing SEO activities.

The necessity of ongoing SEO for continued small businesses is the reason why we primarily work with clients on a long-term basis, rather than doing a one-time service. This allows our clients to continue to reap great rewards from their internet marketing, and also allows for their marketing to be quickly adapted in the event that the client changes their products or services and/or preferred target market demographic.

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Phone: (210) 535-4388

E-mail: George@BestMarketingProfits.com