Though this blog of mine is primarily about making money with adsense I felt that since I do work for one of the top SEO firms in the country I should talk about this. Its a subject I feel strongly about. Its about small to medium sized businesses and the world of search engine optimization.
And many of them still do not trust it (rolling eyes).
Where I live many pacific northwest businesses have resisted it for a long time. They could have started building their web presence years ago when it was much easier but for some reason thought it was a scam or received bad advice from people just set in their ways. Its funny because, now, sooner or later all of them will need professional SEO services. They do not have a choice.
Unless any of them wish to be left behind its an expense they will have to get used to. The budget that used to be focused on other forms of advertising will have to be directed towards where everyone is going: the internet.
Phone books are completely dead in places like Portland, Seattle, Vancouver, and many other more technical savvy cities around the country. In some other areas they can literally be labeled a dying industry because if they are not bankrupt they soon will be.
People have just realized that instead of flipping a thick 350 page book for what they need its far easier just to type their query into Google. And that is just what they are doing. The growth now on the internet is in the local searches.
If you are a business offering a service and you are not on page one of Google then you are dead unless you already have a cult following of thousands of people.
Best Buy, Target, and Home Depot would do just fine without a strong online presence (though they have one naturally without even trying) but you local companies who do not will be hard pressed to find a steady stream of new customers.
In the past…
the phone books were king. Lets say you lived in Portland and sprung a leak in your home. You frantically went to the phone book and turned to the plumbing section. The guys with the bigger and more colorful ad would probably get your attention the quickest. The one who was either the most reasonably priced or available to come out the soonest got your business.
In the present…
that same Portland resident needs a plumber he or she does not even think about going to the phone book. They cannot even remember where it is! A rush is made to the internet and a search is made into Google for “plumber Portland” or “plumbing Portland Or.”
The companies who not only provide that service but who are on page one for those terms will get that business. How they got there does not matter a lick to the consumer. They assume, and incorrectly I might add, that the best and most popular businesses in town are on page one. If they were not why would they be number one? The majority of the public do not have a clue about SEO, in fact does not even know what it stands for, and if they do their knowledge of it is vague to say the least. All they know is that this particular company is #1 and that is who they will probably trust to do business with.
A local company could dominate his industry now just by ranking high for his major search terms. The fact that he is really smaller than some of his competitors also doesn’t matter. They could be five times bigger than he is but buried on page ten for all their search terms in which people would actually find them on the net.
What this means for business owners…
I live in northwest so I can speak for certainty when I say businesses need SEO if they wish to survive. That is where their potential customers are so that is where they must be. If you know very little about search engine optimization then you need to learn the basics quick. Not so that you can do it yourself unless you have countless hours to burn but so that you can hire the right SEO company to do it for you. Any smart company has an in house crew that handles this or hires a company to do it for them.
Keep in mind there are a lot of crooks out there looking to make a cheap buck. Because SEO is a relatively new industry there are no standards. It will always be a theoretical science more than anything because nobody knows exactly how Google works. They tell us many of the factors they use to rank websites but never all of them. A person can claim to be an SEO guru and know nothing. There are a a lot of quick talking salesman in this industry who know just enough to BS people out of a couple thousand dollars by promising “#1 on Google pipe dreams.”
Do yourself a favor and ask to see top rankings they have achieved for clients in the past. How many people work for them? Do they have different jobs and specialists. SEO requires several people who are good at different sets of skills.
The owner of a legitimate SEO company has a lot of costs involved in ranking your website. He has to:
- have a web designer build one for you if you do not already have one
- have an optimizer properly code your website and make sure its easily read by Google
- have a content writer write content that makes sense, appeals to users, and have the proper amount of keywords
- have a link builder build links using multiple sources (articles, directories, IYPs, guest posts, etc)
- have all the other non related computer jobs filled like accountants, managers, quality control, salesmen, appointment setters, customer service agents, hosting fees, etc
Each of those guys are professionals who will demand $20-$30 an hour if they are good at what they do. The front end will be top heavy and the only way the owner of an SEO company can make any money is if they charge a lot of money upfront (ie. $5-$10K) or bill you a monthly fee like the Yellow Pages which could be as low as $300 a month or as high several thousand a month depending on the search term. Keywords that are in high demand will demand a lot while other less valuable terms will be cheaper.
There is no way of getting around this expense. Businesses cannot survive alone on word of mouth though many of them would like you to believe they can.
No matter who a person uses for their SEO its wise to make sure they can prove what they say. Half this industry should be put into jail while the other half has to constantly work harder than they should because less than ethical people do everything in their power to ruin it for everyone.
You cannot avoid this industry though. Nobody can. You just have to make sure that you pick the honest people to do business with.
