The Biggest Mistakes Small Businesses Make with SEO

[CHR]

If you care about the placement of your website in Search, then this article is a 'must read':
45 Experts on the Biggest Mistakes SMBs Make with SEO and Internet Marketing (and How to Avoid Them)

The list of contributors is a Who's Who of SEOs, may who specialize in Local Search.

There are some great SEO tips, but one of my favorites is from Marty Weintraub:

The biggest mistake I see SMBs make is…


To become so preoccupied with the machinery of SEO, that they forget that the best SEO is a product that doesn’t suck. For instance, we once worked with a client whose reaction to organic damage from a terrible review was to request we teach him how to access the web via spoofed IP proxies, in order to create a series of “good” reviews that “looked” authentic, or were at least not traceable. The appropriate answer had nothing to do with SEO, SERPs, or reviews. He should have spent his time fixing his customer service procedures so customers did not fall between the cracks and get mad.


The era of playing beat the algorithm is over, and the focus should be on important content targeted to salient demographic segments who would be interested in it. The biggest mistakes small businesses make when it comes to SEO is to have the machinery of optimizing of content be the primary focus. Instead, SMBs should focus on serving their customers and potential customers by offering true content that matters, and then optimizing from there. SEO is not a strategy, nor is Google. SEO is a channel tactic, designed to increase visibility of content that matters to users.

Emphasis mine.

Which tip is your favorite?

Happy reading.

 

[bootcampguy]

You give to much homework...................and with a smile!!

 

[duanermb]

Kate Morris:

Thinking that online marketing is some kind of rocket science, or trusting people that tell them it is. For small businesses, the best things to do can be done by you alone.

 

[FANCIES]

and Duane, what would that be? "the best things to do can be done by you alone."?

 

[lori042499]

Very good info for those of us that are going this alone...I get approached by at least 7 seo companies a day wanting me to optimize through them...and I refuse to even talk to them simply because I know they are a watse of my money, they are the very low quality that many of these seo people are talking about...they will merely do what I have already done like claiming listings and cleaning up the many hanging ends online, then some othe gobbledegook that I don't fully understand, but I know it is crap...I also liked the tip that Duane picked out...so many flower shops have so many unclaimed listings that would help them just get searched and found and they don't even know it is as easy as just filling out an application and claiming the listing, this is one of the most important thing for people to do and it is free, may cost some time, but all in all it is free...Way too many florists think that getting a website is the end all be all of that function, what noone tells them is what they need to do to be found out there in cyberspace...so many buy a website or 5 from a ws or a really expensive local entity and get it published and that is it, 5 years down the road they feel bad because they aren't found, they have no idea what happened or why they don't get orders..they have never looked ta their own site since it went live, and never ever claimed a listing, added, links, developed social media, advertised their site nothing, it would be like opening a store front in a back alley behind a dumpster, you could be the best thing since sliced bread but noone will ever know.

 

[duanermb]

and Duane, what would that be? "the best things to do can be done by you alone."?

Great question:

For local florists I would say:

#1 Claiming local listings, writing succinct business descriptions and adding photos.

#2 Create compelling content someone might link to from their site or discuss on social media - typically through a blog which only you or someone in your shop can really do effectively.

#3 Find other local companies that will link to your site for you.

#4 Get involved in social media. It doesn't have to be perfect to start, but try it anyway.

In that order. All things anyone can do that require zero guru SEO stuff. Most SEO companies you work with will tell you to do this stuff in conjunction with whatever it is that they do. Or at least they should, so why not just start doing it and worry about the guru stuff later?

 

[anytimeflowers]

Cathy, thank you so much for this article. So much great information, and for the most part, the underlying message seems to be just as Duane has described.

My personal favorite I think is:

Becky McCray writes Small Biz Survival about small business issues. She co-founded Tourism Currents to teach tourism pros how to reach more visitors using new tools. Her latest project is How to Draw the Line Between Free and Paid, to help freelancers get paid for more of the work they already do. The biggest small businesses Internet marketing mistake is…
Not taking time to learn the basics of being found online. It affects every single thing you put online about your business.
Keywords are never what you think: they are what your customers think when they search for your solution, even when they haven’t heard of you yet. It’s your job to use those words and phrases as you create useful content to help your customers. It doesn’t matter whether it’s text, audio, video, slides, documents or just status updates, you have to know what your customers want to know. Then give them that, using words they will understand and would use themselves.

The green highlighted is the part that REALLY struck a chord with me. I totally forget to use this very basic piece of information, I seldom even remember to use keywords in my content, let alone the RIGHT keywords.


There was one that really rubbed me the wrong way, he came off as supercilious. I won't name him.

So here is my "report card" for my site. Obviously, I have some serious work to do still, what's with Yahoo? I've claimed my listing several times, just not getting listed. Am I doing something wrong?

Using the keyword "flowers" was like sifting through a haystack, I know that, it just wanted a very rough idea.

Everything that was Strider's job is just as obviously above par ~ EXCELLENT. Loads in one third of a second? Amazing! Strider rocks.

 

[duanermb]

There was one that really rubbed me the wrong way, he came off as supercilious. I won't name him.

A few of them rubbed me the wrong way.

"Why don't business owners understand that 3k a months isn't a whole lot of money for what we provide as a service?" I'm being facetious of course, but that's the gist.

I feel their pain, as I'm sure Ryan does. The rewards can be great, but it's tough for people to understand and make the up front investment. The first thing they need to understand is just how many people are using the internet to find and buy these days.

It's staggering and growing.

Which is why I am keen on the DIY part. No, we can't do what an SEO company can do, but we can do these things that are proven to make good sense both for our sites and for SEO and are neither rocket science or costly.

Most of us don't have lives as business owners anyway, so what's another few hours a week?