Why Now is the Time for SEO for Your Small Business

Posted by Alexander Tsatkin

February 20, 2008

If you are a small business you need to consider SEO before it becomes to late. Although SEO continues to grow it is still a relatively new practice with few seo consultants or seo agencies that do it well. There are still plenty of opportunities for your small business to rank well for even some of the more competitive terms out there. Imagine hundreds of qualified leads visiting your virtual storefront every month. Find out the questions you need to ask yourself and your SEO before wasting your time and money.

Long Term vs Short Term
No matter what anyone tells you, it is pretty easy to game Google. In fact often times it is the easiest search engine to game. Why is Google easier than the other search engines, simply because they command such a high search market share and resulting in the SEO community analyzing every strategy and its effects. What it comes down to is whether your goal is to rank for keywords as quickly as possible or to develop long term strategy involving natural link building and fundamental website changes. The pro of short term strategy is you may realize ROI from your SEO budget within a few months, the con is that if your SEO may use tactics which may in the long run get you banned from the Google index.

Building the Brand or Growing Traffic
This question is similar to long term vs short term although you can build a brand quickly through viral marketing. Both these things can also go hand in hand, however, the approach and strategy can differ dramatically based on your need. For example, you may want to grow traffic to an e-commerce product, for example poker tables, by simply renaming many of your products to include the keywords and changing internal links to match that strategy. However, if you are trying to brand your own poker tables to grow market and mind share then the tactics are much different.

Integration With other Marketing Efforts
Creativity is vitally important in your SEO campaign. Most business rely on hundreds of ways of promoting their products. A seasoned SEO will know how to leverage all of these other activities to help in search engine visibility. For example, you can use a simple press release as a way to generate hundreds of back links. You may also want to consider using your charitable donations as a great way to create link bait.

So whether you are searching for an San Francisco SEO or just someone who can take your business to the next level drop me a line.

SEO