by Jonathon Hyjek | Jun 21, 2013 | Online Marketing, Search Engine Optimization
For many small business owners, cost-effective marketing is crucial to the success of their business. Thanks to technology, marketing for small businesses has become less and less expensive over the past few years. Investing a few hundred or a few thousand dollars can go much further than it did in the past.
Unfortunately there are still a lot of small business owners who aren’t embracing the new trends in marketing and specifically online marketing. Almost everyday, I talk to small business owners who don’t yet have a company website, a company Facebook page or any other online presence.
Here are just a few of the most common mistakes that I see in dealing with small business owners in various industries.
“Investing” in Online Yellow Pages Services – We all know what the Yellow Pages are, but when was the last time you opened the Yellow Pages phone book or went to the Yellow Pages website? At home, we haven’t had a Yellow Pages book in more than 5 years. I don’t even know where I would find one! The Yellow Pages website ranks well in various industries, but I would “assume” that not many people actually go to their website directly to look for services. Yellow Pages offers services to help you get on top of their listings, but the problem is that people have to go to their website first, before they can get your business in front of a client or customer.
I know from speaking with a number of people who have dealt with YP, that they employ very good salespeople. The trouble is that for most small business owners, the prices that they charge for the services are astronomical. If someone is asking you to invest $1000+ per month in their services, they better be generating A LOT of business for you! I would suggest that for a small business, there are many other places that you could be investing your money.
Neglecting Social Media – I understand that not every small business owner is tech savvy and understands social media, but just because you don’t understand it or use it personally, doesn’t mean that you can ignore it completely. Your business can benefit from being on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Linkedin, just to name a few. If you don’t know where to start, use the services of a company that can help you with Social Media Marketing. Social media is a great way to get in front of your prospective clients and customers and to keep top of mind for your current clientele.
Neglecting SEO – When it comes to online marketing, the term “just Google it” comes up time and time again. Any time I want to know about anything, including the products and services of small businesses in my area, I just Google it. Usually I glance through the first page of results and hopefully find what I’m looking for. The businesses that are on the front page end up being the winners. If your are the owner of a small business and your website isn’t anywhere to be found when you search for terms related to your business, you need help! Think about it: What’s it worth for you to get one more customer? or better yet – how much does it cost you to lose a customer because they couldn’t find you easily? It’s time to invest in SEO to get your website in front of your prospective customers and clients.
The Bottom Line
Online Marketing for small businesses is a powerful way to generate leads for your business. It doesn’t have to cost a fortune to have a big impact. If you don’t know where to start, hire the services of a social media marketing or SEO company. Online marketing isn’t going away and it’s your best ally when it comes to marketing your business on a budget, so it’s time to embrace it!
by Jonathon Hyjek | Aug 16, 2012 | Search Engine Optimization
The key to being on page one is complex yet at the same time, quite simple. Many brands and websites are doing “seo” without realizing that they are doing it because it comes naturally to them and their marketing. Getting to the first page of Google might be much easier than you think.
Here’s the Secret:
Be good at what you do, talk about it on your website, talk about it elsewhere on the web, make other people talk about it and then talk about it some more.
That may be a very simplified way to look at it, but it’s true. The old days of marketing are long gone. Gone are the days when you could slap an advertisement in the newspaper every quarter and rely on it to bring you new business. You need to be everywhere, all the time but without being annoying. You need to be blogging about your business, your accomplishments, your product offering and blogging just to give helpful tips and information without self-promotion. In fact, these types of useful pieces of content are the ones that get shared and spread broadly across the internet and help your SEO efforts tremendously.
Blog Your Way to the Top
If you aren’t blogging or writing content on your company website on a fairly regular basis (more than once per week) then you are missing out on tremendous opportunity to get higher rankings. You may not be a great writer and that’s ok, because blogging doesn’t require you to be a prize winning writer; It requires that you have something to say and that your personality comes out in your writing.
Here’s a good method to follow that is sure to get you noticed by the search engines and it’s a great start or a local business with limited funds.
1. Make sure your website includes a blog on the site. If the website is built on WordPress, that’s easy.
2. Write a blog post at least once per week. Make sure it’s not completely promotional, but actual has some value. Give tips, tricks or information about your product or service and take time to educate your readers.
3. Tweet your new blog post out to your Twitter followers and post it to Facebook as well. Make sure people see it.
4. Hopefully you have written something that gets shared, re-tweeted and commented on.
5. Rinse and Repeat. Do this as often as you can to generate discussion and soon enough you have visitors and your search engine rankings will improve.
One Step Down, 20 to Go
As I said before, this is an oversimplified way to improve search engine rankings, but it works. It’s not the ONLY thing you need to concern yourself with though. There are other elements to SEO and each step you take will further improve your rankings.
by Jonathon Hyjek | Aug 15, 2012 | Search Engine Optimization
A sobering reminder for any SEO professional or website owner desperately trying to crack the front page of the search engines.
A staggering 75% of internet users never go past the first page when searching in Google!
The sad reminder of this fact is that if your website isn’t on the first page of Google, your website is only performing at maximum – 25% capacity in terms of it’s search engine traffic capacity. Even scarier is that the coveted page #1 position has only 10 spots available and there are thousands, hundreds of thousands or maybe even millions of websites are competing for that spot. If you don’t bring your A-Game to your SEO efforts, someone else will. When that happens, you end up on page 2, 5, 18, or 72!
You might be happy being on page #2 in a Google search, but all that means is that you’re the first loser.
I’m not trying to be harsh or insensitive, but rather make your realize that “good enough” doesn’t cut it in the SEO world. You need to be on page one for as many search terms as possible and you need to work hard to stay in that position. Every day that you’re not in the number one spot, you’re losing out on potential customers and sales. Your competitor who holds the page #1 spot for your optimum keywords is essentially taking your customers from you.
Don’t just sit back and let your website be a victim of your lack of time, experience, expertise or laziness. Take charge of your SEO efforts, or let someone else take charge of them.
Your website is an investment not an expense. It should have an ROI.
If your website has only ever been an expense, you’ve been doing something wrong. A website costs money to build and maintain, but it should have a fairly tangible ROI. You should be getting leads through your website, and leads that convert to sales or clients and this is something you should be able to measure.
The difference between a poor performing website and one that bring in sales/customers/leads/prospects is a very thin line because quite often it’s not the actual website that’s the problem. It’s the website’s search engine rankings that are preventing the website from reaching out and touching your prospective clients/customers.
An SEO audit and strategy can solve this!
by Jonathon Hyjek | Aug 14, 2012 | Search Engine Optimization
An SEO audit is the foundation of an SEO campaign because it gives us an understanding of the factors affecting a websites search engine rankings. Until we do an SEO audit, we can’t fully understand what we need to do in order for your website to be a success.
SEO Panic…
The usual scenario unfortunately goes like this: A company realizes that their website is under-performing in the search engine rankings so they start doing completely random activities like link building or article marketing in a flurry of activity, trying to get their website rankings to improve. It’s a panicked approach to taking action and often fails because activity apart from a strategy is an inefficient way to spend your SEO efforts and may even lead to a penalty.
A better approach is to have an SEO audit completed to get a full picture of where your website stands, the issues affecting your rankings and the solutions to improve. This method offers a more methodical approach to SEO and is a must for any company or organization serious about website rankings.
What’s included in an SEO Audit?
An SEO audit is the starting place that allows us to help you build a strategy. The SEO audit addresses many factors including:
- Keyword Research, Placement & Anchor Text
- Google Analytics & Webmaster Tools Data
- Response Codes (404, 301, 302 etc.,)
- Sitemap, Robots.txt & .htacess Analysis
- Title Tag & Meta Information review
- On-site & Off-site Content/Media Review (text, video, images)
- Website Structure & Usability
- Backlink Analysis
- Competition Comparison
- Social Media, Web2.0 & 3.0 property evaluation
- Up to 2 hours of SEO coaching to help implement recommendations
The SEO Audit is Done: Now What?
The good news is that our SEO audits don’t just tell you the issues, but they give you the solutions and actionable steps to improve your rankings. We write the report in plain, easy to understand language with steps that can either be implemented by your in-house developer or team, or you can inquire about an SEO package with Jonathon Hyjek and allow us to work to build your rankings.
To answer the question at the outset of this post: Do you need an SEO audit? For many, the answer will be YES without any hesitation.
by Jonathon Hyjek | Jul 25, 2012 | Search Engine Optimization
Fresh content is important from an SEO standpoint, so let me get that right out there at the beginning of this post. From a practical standpoint, I would suggest that it’s even more important. There’s nothing worse than going to a blog’s front page and noticing that the last time they posted was last year! There’s plenty of talk in the SEO community though about how fresh content ranks better in Google’s search results, but I don’t believe that’s entirely true.
Here’s been my experience with how content ranks in Google when talking about “freshness.”
1.) Established websites that continue to write fresh content will more easily maintain their rankings. Fresh content is like a placeholder for these websites.
Fresh content is important to keep Google interested in your website, but it’s not the only game in town either. It’s just part of the puzzle and needs to be supplemented by social media, building quality backlinks (or better yet, acquiring them because your content is great.)
2.) New websites that post content can see small increases in their search engine rankings each time they post new content. If you’re on page 4 and in spot 8, after new content is published, you may move up a few spots, or maybe even make it onto page 3 for a short time, only to slip back.
It needs to be noted that SEO is a total picture and looking at just one element isn’t healthy. Fresh content is a piece, but only ONE piece of a puzzle that includes many pieces.
