Seth Godin has this post titled; How to make money with SEO on his blog. The post states that if you are hoping for plain vanilla organic results on search engines such as Google, good luck.
The answer: You probably won’t be. There are 14 million matches for Plumber, and no, you won’t be #1 or #2. You lost. In fact, in just about every keyword worth owning, your chances are winning are small.
He is exactly right in that. (note: SEO is Search Engine Optimization)
But!
For you managers in the small to medium business space lets do a little excercise!
I am in the Ottawa Canada area, do I want a plumber in Peoria? – ummm nope
So first – preface the word plumber with your city name.
Good. Now notice the number of returned hits has dropped exponentially.
Now try localizing more, with the region, bourough, or commonly known section of your city. Yup – probably dropped the number of hits a bit more.
Next. Have you added your business to Google Local?
If not, do it! first it makes you easier to find, second, it helps give your business a bump.
Now lastly, search engines like fresh – as in bread – was the last time you updated your web site 3 years ago?
Make a resolution to get to that!
Even with just the first two steps – was the number of hits exponentially reduced?
The SMB Takeaway
There is the old joke about two guys walking in the woods when they come across an angry bear. The first chap yells “we can’t out run a bear!” to which the second chap yells back, “I don’t have to out run the bear! I just have to out run you!”
You don’t need to beat 14 million matches. You just need to beat the smaller number that are in your region, your market, or your niche.
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Photo Credit wallyg via flickr