Take Your SEO to New Heights

Small business owners oftentimes find themselves at a disadvantage against larger sized companies. For starters, the bigger businesses typically have more spending power, money that can go towards advertising, marketing, hiring the best talent and so on. Another advantage is big brother can put more resources forward when it comes to search engine optimization (SEO).

With that said, just because you are a small business owner does NOT mean you can’t do SEO and do it correctly.

Why Do I Need SEO?

If you have been trying your hand at SEO with lukewarm results or are considering it for the first time, you likely have some questions as to how it can help your company.

Among the positives to using SEO:

• Positive business – When you’re properly using SEO, you will find your website moving up the search engine rankings (notably Google). In doing so, your site becomes more visible to consumers that may be interested in your products and/or services;
• Positive staying power – Once you have reached the top or near it on search engines, the goal is to properly use SEO to stay there. This will involve having relevant and fresh marketing content on your site, not using links to are looked upon as simple spam, and properly marketing your site via blogs, social media and more;
• Positive conversions – The goal of course once someone comes to your site is to convert them into a customer. By using SEO, you can determine how long the consumer is on your site, what they are interested in and much more.

1. Do your research – Some companies figure they can just throw money at the SEO effort and things will neatly fall into place. As is actually quite the contrary, don’t just pick an SEO provider out of a hat. In order to hire a great SEO provider, ask around and get references. Look online at a number of SEO companies to see which rank best and can truly claim to deliver results. Lastly, see who the competition is using and what the results look like;
2. Ask questions – When you’re spending your money, you want results. If an SEO provider claims they can turn your Google ranking overnight from bad or fair to great, run. Good SEO work doesn’t just happen with the flick of a wrist. Ask each provider you court what results they have had with other companies similar to yours, if they have had any customer complaint issues (they may not tell you, but you can also check around online), and what availability their customer service team can provide you with;
3. Demand analysis – Finally, make sure the SEO provider you want can deliver simple information such as which keywords they will focus in, month-to-month reports on what is and is not working, and a strategy for down the road.