First Page Of Google Costs More Than $100

As a company that works with local businesses on bringing them online and helping them with online advertising and local SEO we spend quite a bit of our effort on educating the customers.

This is quite rewarding and our team enjoys showing customers how taking advantage of how the customer uses the web everyday actually helps them bring customers to their door that use the web in the same way they do.

We like to talk to our customers about more than their website and when building the website we like to start with some level of basic SEO. With most of our customers being local businesses and local search on the rise, most of our customers understand right away how important it is to show up when people search for local services.

Although many customers are still learning how to understand that just because they are found online does not mean people are buying from them online, they are understanding that they need to be there.

We have another set of customers that start to see the benefits of SEO and see that they can increase their market presence and expand their product reach nationally, if not globally. It is great once this realization sets in. But there is one issue.

Many customers have a look of disbelief once it is explained that it takes more than $100 in extra services to make the first page of Google for a one word term. One way that it is easy to explain this is by showing the number of results shown for a search term and the companies that are on the first page and showing some simple results of why they are there.

Another way of showing the value is equating it to something that customers are familiar with, things like paying more for higher eyeball having TV shows, larger reach radio stations, etc. If a term has 500 searches a month it is likely to be much less competitive than a term that has hundreds of thousands of searches a month.

If organic SEO cost is a concern it is typically a good plan to offer PPC help up front but as we all know it makes much more sense over the long term to have a solid organic SEO plan in place.

Large companies understand this and as time progresses smaller businesses will start to understand this as well. It is great when a prospective customer starts to see the potential, they start to think about how they use the internet. For those customers that realize that but do not have the budget in place for a larger marketing plan it is important to start them from a base they can build from in the future for a larger reach SEO plan. Sooner or later they will want, or NEED it.

Selecting A Small Business SEO Company

All SEO companies targeting small businesses are selling snake oil!

OK not really but there are many out there you need to watch for which I believe has given the industry a bad name. Search Engine Optimization is something every company with a website or developing a website should take into consideration as they develop their plan for implementation.

If you are not familiar with SEO the simplest explanation without getting technical is the following:

SEO is the process of building your website in a manner that allows it to show up in the search engines for specific items that people maybe searching for, and more importantly it is optimizing it in a way that draws in searches that are specifically targeted at the products you sell.

There are many more technical explanations but that one really is the gist of it.

Now, why did I say many companies are selling snake oil, well let me first say, my company is not an SEO company, I say that very specifically because we do more than just optimize sites. That said we do work with customers that do want some level of SEO work done on their websites and we do build every customer website with SEO in mind from day one. Our success getting customers the search traffic they want has been great but we never guarantee anything, period.

There are a few things that you need to pay attention to when selecting a search engine optimization partner.

If they promise you page one listings run away, here is why. In many businesses you can guarantee something, when it comes to the search engines you are always at Googles (or Bing, or Yahoo) mercy. The provider can do everything right but at the end of the day there is always a chance that Google may not rank the site on the first page number one listing.

If they guaranteed it there are a few things they may be doing that you need to ask about or be aware of, there are companies that will take advantage of the lack of awareness of how the search engines work and will sometimes do one of the following to show you a first page listing:

1. Paid submission directories or search engines - Many will pay a fee to have your site listed number one in a lesser search engine or website directory or possibly take advantage of pay per click advertising on a lesser search engine or directory. These listings are only there if you are paying, quit paying and the listings go away.
2. Black Hat SEO - When it comes to search engine optimization there are two main types without getting to technical, there is white hat which is the proper way to optimize the site, and there is something called black hat. Black hat is the process of trying to trick the search engines into ranking your site but doing things that Google and others frown on. It may work for a short period of time but sooner or later Google will catch on and your site will be banned from search and your competitors will be smiling.
3. Using very odd searches to rank - What this means is showing you a page one ranking for a term that really no one searches for, for instance if you are interested in showing up for Chicago Hair Salons they may work to optimize for Chicago Illinois Hair Salons On Rush Street. You can see how it changes the value of a first page ranking.

Those are just a few things, there are many more but after speaking with customers lately I have a concern that there are people still working down these paths with customers.

All that said, there are many very upstanding SEO companies out there, there are MANY MORE good than bad. Make sure you select one you are comfortable with and ask the right questions.

Top 5 Small Business Website Mistakes

As we work with small business owners daily to develop their plan for their online presence we hear a lot of the same questions and at the end of the day the customer is always right but there are things we try to help people keep away from or things that we find that maybe they did not do the first time they built their site that they should do this time. Here are 5 things small businesses either need to avoid or need to think about when they have their websites built:

Music playing on site- This is a major thing to avoid, when websites were being bought and deployed because they were "neat" and new this was something a lot of people did. Also I have witnessed this a lot on customer sites that were built by non-professionals. Without fail the majority of people visiting your website will be turned off by the auto-playing music as soon as they hit your site. This is an absolute avoid. Please please do not do this.

Using templates based on framesets - This is something else I see weekly by customers who have bought websites from people that focus on vertical markets, many of these niche market template websites are based on frames and you lose the ability to link to individual pages of the site. This is very late 1990's. If you bought your website from a niche market provider or you had your website built in the late 90s or early 2000's and your site is built with frames it is time for an update.

Working with developers that do not understand SEO - This is also very common, in my mind if you are having a website built and basic SEO is not part of what they do by default what is the point, if you spend 5K for a website and no one ever goes there does it matter? No. This is a very common issue with older technology companies in an area that have never upgraded past the "tech" part of websites. This is also very common when people focus on the flashy/pretty part of the site and not on attracting customers. If you ever hear someone say "Oh yeah my sister was gonna build my website" this is probably going to be a problem as well. For the small business customer that may read this and needs to understand what I mean please feel free to use my contact me form.

Using Flash and only Flash to build a site - Last week I sat down with a potentially large Missouri.me advertising customer who also wants a custom website developed. Although we do not focus on custom websites in this case it makes sense for us to do it. But what was interesting is they brought up the site of their would be competitor and it was done almost 100 percent in Flash. Sure it looked great and did some cool stuff but it ranked no where in the search engines, all their traffic was from PPC. They focused on pretty and not getting customers. Flash is another item that decreases the ability of the small business owner to optimize their site for the search engines. Avoid making it the focus of your site.

Clip Art Animated GIF's - Just like the music reference above, this is very late 90s early 2000's. Having clip art based graphics on your site will turn users off. The little guy walking across the screen that is on a graphic is not something that is neat anymore. Please avoid this, clean nice looking graphics will be more interesting to your visitors.

Thanks to @DanSanchez for inspiring this post.

If you have questions about the right steps for your small business website please use the contact me link above to contact me. If you have more suggestions for small businesses to avoid feel free to put them in the comments section below.