What Every Small Business Owner Needs to Know About Going After
the Top Spot in the “Free” Search Engine Rankings
So you want to get the #1 listing on Google (and every other major search engine, for that matter!)?
You’re not alone! Everyone wants to top the “free” listings. There’s no doubt being in that top spot can put you in the catbird seat for attracting visitors to your website.
But is trying to get that top spot for your small business worth it?
A whole new industry called Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has sprouted up over the past few years to convince you that it is. However, there are a few things business owners should consider before hiring someone to help them try to climb up the free rankings.
1. It’s not really free. Want to hire a SEO firm to try catapult your website up the rankings? Be prepared to pay hundreds, if not thousands of dollars up front and then an ongoing retainer each month. While the clicks themselves may be free, trying to get those coveted top spots can be anything but.
2. It takes a lot of time. With SEO, it can take months (6 or more) before you will see any significant improvement in your rankings. When you’re trying to build a small business, time is not your friend. You want to focus on landing new customers today, not months from now. (Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising, or paid search, works much faster. With PPC, if you bid enough, you can claim the top spot in minutes.)
3. SEO is a never-ending process. You’ve invested the time and money to optimize your site and are lucky enough to claim the top spot (or a spot on the first page). Time to celebrate, right?! Not so fast.
What you may not realize is that while you’re celebrating, engineers at Google are tinkering with the algorithms they use for their search rankings. Google’s made changes that have literally taken companies from the #1 spot to out of the top 1000 – overnight.
4. There’s no guarantee of success. You’re not the only one gunning for that top spot on the rankings. Many of your competitors are hiring SEO firms to help them climb up the rankings as well. Especially for companies in highly competitive markets (and isn’t that just about everyone?), there’s no guarantee your efforts will get to the top spot or even the first few pages of results.
If a SEO firm says it can guarantee you a top spot, run the other way. It’s the search engines and their algorithms that determine who’s in the top spot, not a SEO firm.
5. Optimize for people, not search engines. With SEO you run the risk of trying to please the search engines at the expense of visitors. And when it comes down to it, it’s only the visitors who have bank accounts.
SEO, done right, should make sure the layout and content of your site appeal to your target audience first and foremost. Optimizing for the search engines comes later. There are talented SEO folks out there that know how to do this – the trouble is finding the reputable ones and paying their fees.
6. What keywords do you optimize for? Finding the right keywords can be tricky. Sometimes keywords that you’re sure are going to attract visitors, don’t. On the other hand, there may be keywords you don’t consider that would get you a great ranking.
Also, just because a keyword attracts a lot of visitors, it doesn’t mean those visitors are going to convert (a conversion is the action you want someone to take when they visit your site like making a purchase, signing up for a newsletter, calling your company, etc.). And when it comes to your website, conversions are more important than traffic.
With SEO, you run the risk of spending a lot of time and money optimizing your site for keywords and phrases that aren’t attracting your target audience and/or getting them to convert.
One trick to avoiding this problem is to use Pay Per Click ads to quickly test a large number of keywords and phrases. Once you learn which ones get the results you’re looking for, you can then incorporate them into your SEO strategy. This will give you a much higher confidence level that they will drive the type of traffic you’re looking for to your site.
7. Good web design = Good SEO. If you hire a good web design firm or are savvy enough to design a good site yourself, you’ve won most of the SEO battle. It comes down to this: deliver good content, update it regularly, and earn relevant links from quality websites. Not only will this go a long way to helping your search engine rankings, but more importantly, it will help you deliver quality content that turns visitors into customers.
The purpose of this article is not to dismiss the merits of SEO. When done right, it can
make a huge difference in a company’s bottom line.
The purpose here is to make small business owners aware of the potential pitfalls involved with pursuing a SEO strategy. It is important weigh the pros and cons of SEO before deciding whether it’s right for your business.
Above all else, make sure you don’t put the cart before the horse! Quality content and design come first. Then figure out the best way to drive quality traffic to your site.
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