A Free-Reprint Article Written by: Trey McMartin
Article Title:
SEO Lessons from Local Businesses
See TERMS OF REPRINT to the end of the article.
Article Description:
More than once in the six years that I have been providing
SEO services for websites, I have had the opportunity to
discuss with individual business owners their search engine
optimization needs. Now and again, I run across an
individual business owner who is quick to say that SEO is
absolutely worthless. When confronted with such an absolute
statement, I like to press for details. It has been my
experience that people who speak in negative absolutes will
have a horror story to share.
Additional Article Information:
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945 Words; formatted to 65 Characters per Line
Distribution Date and Time: 2010-09-28 10:00:00
Written By: Trey McMartin
Copyright: 2010
Contact Email: mailto:trey.mcmartin@thephantomwriters.com
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SEO Lessons from Local Businesses
Copyright (c) 2010 Trey McMartin
Mystic Mountain Media
http://mysticmountainmedia.com/
More than once in the six years that I have been providing SEO
services for websites, I have had the opportunity to discuss with
individual business owners their search engine optimization
needs.
Now and again, I run across an individual business owner who is
quick to say that SEO is absolutely worthless. When confronted
with such an absolute statement, I like to press for details.
It has been my experience that people who speak in negative
absolutes will have a horror story to share.
In this article, I am going to detail some of the stories I've
heard, which frequently tells more about some of the people in
our industry, than it does about the effectiveness of search
engine marketing.
PROBLEM #1 - "I rank number one in Google, and yet, I have never
earned a dime from my website..."
When I first heard this story, I was very surprised... After all,
if your SEO company did good keyword research, there is no reason
why you should not be getting traffic and a few sales from a top
ranking in Google.
I pressed for more details... I learned that the company who
built the website also did the search engine optimization...
It only took a couple of minutes to learn that the website design
company optimized this fellows' website for the name of his
company... There was no other optimization performed on that
website...
LESSON #1 - It is rather pointless to optimize a website for the
name of the company... The only consumers who will be searching
for the name of your company are existing customers...
But, if your company is unknown to the general public, then the
people who would like to buy your products or services will not
be able to find you among your competitors...
If you sell widgets in Tulsa Oklahoma, your future customers will
be typing "Tulsa Oklahoma widgets" into their favorite search
engines, trying to find your business... And if your prospective
customers cannot find your business, your business does not exist
in their minds...
PROBLEM #2 - "I had a company build a website for my business,
but I have never received a single customer for my business,
through my website..."
Are you sure?
Asking this question is not meant to offend you, but rather to
get more details as to how you track incoming business...
If you are the average off-line business owner, who has built a
website to promote an off-line business, chances are real good
that you probably have never received a single customer from your
website...
However, if your website does not request for your prospective
customers to let you know how they found out about your business,
then chances are that people who did find you through your
website would never tell you that...
If more than one person answers the phone at your business,
chances are just as good that someone may have mentioned finding
you on a website, but no one conveyed that information to you...
In your business, you should have systems in place to track and
record where new customers have found your business... To do
otherwise is like driving your car in the fast lane during
rush-hour traffic with a blindfold over your eyes...
LESSON #2 - If you are not asking your customers how they found
your business, you will never know what kind of advertising is
producing profits for your business, and which advertising is
sucking the wind out of your business...
PROBLEM #3 - "I spend a great deal of money on PPC listings
(pay-per-click) to get my business in front of search engine
users, because after spending tens of thousands of dollars on
SEO, I could not rank in the search engines at all..."
What keywords were you trying to rank for in the search engines?
"Travel. I have a travel business based in Oklahoma City OK that
caters to business professionals..."
Have you ever noticed the caliber of companies who rank on page 1
in Google for the keyword: travel?
Those are companies who spend millions of dollars per year to
market their businesses online and off-line... Do you have a
marketing budget that will allow you to effectively compete with
Travelocity, Expedia or Priceline?
Besides that, where do the majority of your customers work and
reside?
"Oklahoma City of course."
If that is the case, why would you spend your limited marketing
budget to target consumers who would never buy from you, because
they are outside your local marketing area?
"I never really thought about it in that way..."
Most of your competitors are making the same mistakes that you
are... That is to your advantage, because when you start to
market your business in a more realistic and cost-effective
manner, then you will be able to compete with your competitors,
while spending far less money than your competitors are
spending...
LESSON #3 - If you operate a local or regional business, do
yourself a favor, and stop trying to compete in the national
marketplace...
Final Thoughts...
Listed inside this article are three lessons that could
potentially help your off-line business to find new customers and
to generate new sales, as a result of your online advertising...
Depending on the average ticket price of purchases in your store
or service business, how much could an extra 20, 50 or 100 new
customers bring into your business each month? You do the math...
You could spend the next ten years learning what we have learned
to maximize the effectiveness of your online advertising... Or
you could employ us to work on your behalf to support your local
business in your local marketplace...
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More consumers are ignoring their phone books and searching for
products and services online... If you don't want to compete for
those consumers, your competitors will thank you... We primarily
provide Local SEO Services to businesses in Oklahoma and Texas...
But we are happy to serve any brick-and-mortar business in the
United States... Contact http://MysticMountainMedia.com/ at
1-405-225-8932, 9am-4pm, Mon thru Fri. Author: Trey McMartin.
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