Small Business Owners–Don’t Optimize Your Website!
February 6, 2012
Al Hanzal
Am I crazy to recommend you not optimize your website? How will internet searchers ever find your business?
Achieving a top ranking in organic search is impossible for the vast majority of small business owners. Search engines are constantly changing their formulas for rating organic searches. Unless you want to work full time and spend a lot of money, you will never keep up. Organic SEO will leave you with no time to run your small business!
A far better use of your time and money is local search marketing. With local search marketing you can create a micro geo-location website that high lights your local business. Now you have a website that matches what searchers are using on the internet. Remember, 50% of all searches are for a local product or service.
Put your business on the local MAP
Using a traditional website with organic SEO does not create the match search engines want to find. By creating a geo-tagged local website with customer testimonials, local articles, geo-tagged photos and videos you create the exact match the search engines want to provide to potential customers looking for a business just like yours. Put your business on the local MAP and start to get the customer calls you have been missing with your traditional website.
Al Hanzal,
View more posts by Al Hanzal
Filed under: Business Planning,Website Design
3 Comments Leave a Comment
1.
Midwest Web Developers | February 6, 2012 at 8:30 am
There is some truth to this, especially if you are completely based on a physical location. If customers cannot purchase from your website (your website is just a brochure for your company) it makes far more sense to get yourself on Google maps and then spend money elsewhere to get customers in.
On the other side, sometimes, you need to reformat your website to make it into more of a draw to your store. One of my clients had us add a “schedule an appointment” option to their site and saw a very big increase in local traffic.
The second easiest thing you can do to promote your business through online tools (after getting listed on a map) is to start an email list. It does not have to be a “regular” email newsletter. It can be as simple as sending out an announcement a week before your yearly sale event. You can do a list for free through numerous websites ( I like mailchimp).
2.
Al Hanzal | February 6, 2012 at 9:59 am
Thanks for your comments. The beauty of the web is that one shoe does not fit all situations. I do believe we have seen a significant internet shift in the last 2-3 years. People are now using the internet as they once used the yellow page books–to find local products and services. Google says as high as 50% of all searches today are for local businesses. As you clearly pointed out, local searches are different from world-wide web searches. Thanks again for your comments.
3.
Mike Clough | February 7, 2012 at 12:49 pm
MainStreetChamber has two free events on just this subject in the upcoming weeks:
2/17 – Bloomington: http://rybomsc.eventbrite.com
2/24 – Brooklyn Center – http://mscnmgoogle.eventbrite.com
Space is limited so if any wish to attend they should register right away.
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