Many small businesses intend on staying small.  They are run by one or two individuals whom are more than happy to simply increase their customer base and revenue to a particular point, but no more.  They aren’t interested in growing beyond their means.

It’s not that they aren’t interested in growing - quite the contrary.  But many Mom & Pop businesses want to simply earn a nice living off their business and go home at the end of the day.  They are interested in growth, but not to the point of them turning into full-time managers.  They prefer to get their hands dirty.  They don’t want to manage people.

I have several clients like this.  Some have services that requires them to physically visit a property to perform, and others have a local business that requires the customer to actually visit their location in order to complete the transaction.

So when these types of clients hire an SEO, they will naturally start to see nationwide traffic, whether they like it or not.

I recently started doing SEO for a company that provides bounce-houses and other inflatable items for birthday rentals, etc.  This client is already ranking nicely for her related terms in the Saint Louis area.  But over time she is also getting more and more traffic (and requests) from other parts of the country.  She’s starting to rank nationally when, in reality, she doesn’t want to.

So, is this a problem?  Perhaps.  It depends on how/if the small business owner is interested in expanding.  Does she want to start another office in Chicago? Grand Rapids?  Does she have the financing to buy another entire set of equipment for another location?

Most likely not.

So then the question becomes simply: Do you ignore these requests, or is there a way to profit from them?

Ignoring them would be a bad idea, even if you’ll never make a dime off the contact.  Heck, they’ve already been exposed to your brand name once, you should at least reply with some sort of ’sorry we can’t help you’ message.  Get your brand in front of them one last time.

And if you start getting more and more of these requests, what can you do?  Do you start an anti-SEO campaign?  No way!

You could start a website similar to Service Magic and get people in your industry to sign up and pay you commissions whenever you send them an out-of-town lead, but do you want to be burdened with yet another part of something that isn’t part of your main business plan? Again, probably not.

Now, if your company provides products, and you start ranking nationally, all you have to do is start contacting your vendors about drop shipping, etc.  You’re in a good position.

Ranking nationally, especially at this time, when SEO is really still not very well-known, can be a good thing.  It (hopefully) opens your eyes to the global potential that the Internet can provide for your small business.  It may even change the way you look at your small little shop - going from local to national - but is that what you want?

Seems that the Yellow Pages, contrary to popular belief, are continuing to take the same path as newspapers had to take a few years back.  Dwindling usage and interest is forcing them to either stay innovative or eventually go out of business.

It’s a wonder that my small-town newspaper is still in existence.  Most likely its only because there are plenty of old-timers still in this town.  But not forever.

Enter the new Yellow Pages opt-out proposal? A genius idea, considering more and more people are going green as well as using them less and less.

While many people are saying this is a new idea, it’s actually not.  Years ago, Southwestern Bell started sending me a CD called LitePages.  It was the entire Saint Louis yellow and white pages on a CD.  I could load the CD onto my server and place an icon on everyone’s PC desktop.  They’d click the icon, and up would pop a virtual yellow pages.  From there they could search and read listings and ads just as if they had an actual phone book in front of them.

And what did I have to do to get the CD?  Simply sign a statement that said we’d order X number fewer books than we had in years past.  It was a win-win.  The environment won, and Bell didn’t really lose any of their usage.  At least in theory.

But still I wonder if my kids, when sitting around the Christmas tree reminiscing twenty years from now, will mention some new techno way to find a local business.  I’ll respond by looking at my beautiful bride of forty years and say “Remember when we had to look up phone numbers in a book?  Those were the days…” as my mind drifts back to thoughts of Pong and amber-colored screens.

Those days are numbered, for sure.  Several of my clients are scaling back on their YP spending and instead putting that money into online efforts.  These efforts can pay long-term, something the current print Yellow Pages can’t promise.

Along these lines, I’ve also heard rumors that some of the smaller Yellow Page companies (print) are even changing their tactics to keep advertisers.  In the past, businesses could list just business name, phone number and URL.  Now, in order to do that,  they are being asked to ‘upgrade’ their current ad so that they can ‘keep’ the URL mention in the print version.  Sounds to me like instead of embracing the future, these YPs are isolating their customers (and losing plenty along the way).

1. St. Patrick’s Day started in Dublin, and we all know that dublin‘ or triplin‘ the profits of a website is goal #1!
2. Irish fight songs are all about kickin ass. SEO fight songs are - what? there are no SEO fight songs? who the hell runs this place?
3. A good SEO knows how to drive the snakes out of a website
4. We all secretly want to rank our name #1 for ‘leprechaun’
5. What SEO doesn’t like to down a cold green beer?
6. SEOs love money - so a pot o’ gold would suit us just fine. Then again, so would a pot o’ links.
7. Adding an Irish flare to your name for a day is fun (I be William O’Hanke)
8. Finding a four leaf clover is like finding a niche that hasn’t yet been exploited.
9. All SEOs love Irish dancing - particularly in public (ok this one is definitely a lie)
10. No matter how geeky we may be, we still like to have our Blarney Stone’s kissed (if ya know what I mean…)

On Monday when I ran my ranking reports for my clients, I noticed a bunch of red X’s (dropped) on their Yahoo! rankings.  Since these clients have consistently been ranking in the top one or two positions for various local-related terms, and they’re still in the top slot on Google, I thought it was just an error with my ranking software.

However, it looks like other people are starting to experience the same thing.  Dammit.

So ok Yahoo!, you’ve totally dismissed some good local websites from your index.  Will they be back, or do you think your new (crappy) results are better?  Are you penalizing us for optimizing our clients to rank for “service + town name” searches?  Or is there something else going on?

Personally, the clients that took the biggest hits for me are all relatively new sites (2004+) .  They’ve just recently (within the last 4-8 months) done a redesign and are not listed in a ton of IYPs.  Is this the problem?  Is age an issue here?

Instead of good quality websites, should I be more concerned about Yelp, Local.com and Mixx?  That seems kind of backwards to me.

About two weeks ago I received an email from a lady who took one of my classes about two years ago. She was looking for a website redesign for her employer.

Well, I put together a nice proposal and emailed it off to her. For two weeks I didn’t hear anything. Then yesterday comes this email:

Will,
We have decided to go with a bid from another web company because of the time frame they can provide. Over the last two weeks, we’ve realized we need our website “yesterday”. Your pricing and other items were right in line with the other bid, but we decided to go with them because of our timeline.

Umm, ok. My response (once I calmed down from the sheer stupidity of the scenario):

Hi X,
Congratulations on your selection of a designer for your website! I personally would never build and launch a website in two weeks. I don’t think it would be fair to my clients. Nonetheless, I wish you luck (blah blah blah)

I ran the response past my PR team (aka my wife) and verified that it wasn’t a smartass reply. I didn’t want to come across that way, but rather let them know that I create quality, and I can’t create quality in a matter of two weeks.

Sure, I could throw together a website in a few days. Any web designer could. But it wouldn’t be optimized for search engines. In fact, I’d be willing to bet the ‘winning bidder’ won’t even put meta descriptions and keyword-targeted titles on each page. Heck, that’s the easy part, but I bet they don’t.

If you’re serious about building a website, you need to take the time to get more than pretty colors on a page.  You need to sit down and think about how you’ll market your site.  Will the site simply be a brochure, or will it be a full-out marketing machine, ready to suck in customers and spit out revenue?

If you’re not serious about a website, just pick any two and I’ll get started on it.

• Good
• Fast
• Cheap

Most all towns have a small newspaper, or at least a newsletter that goes out to all the homes.  Some are weekly, some monthly.  No matter what, there is a targeted audience for you in that paper.

Problem is, most of these small newspapers think they can still charge big money for advertising.  Afterall, they’ve got to pay those distrbution bills somehow.  But let your competition pay for those big  money spots.  You’re thrifty, especially with your advertising budget, so you just need to get creative.

For this example I’m going to use a local sporting goods store.  Since it’s spring, they’ll be wanting to move their baseball stuff.

Got some old items that aren’t moving?  Or perhaps some seasonal items you want to sell? Post them on your site (each item its own keyword-targeted page) and put a small ad in the classifieds section.  Make it short and post your URL (for more information).  Some papers have a ‘Bargain box’ for items under $300.  Lots of people look at this section just to see what’s out there, and since its highly random ads, they usually read every one of them.

Example: (Merchandise or Bargain Box)
New & used baseball helmets and gear.  From $12. www.LocalSportsStore.com
Classified Cost: ~$5-$15

Ever have a sidewalk sale?  Why not rename it a Yard Sale or Garage Sale?  Or just be generic.  They won’t know the difference.  You could even go so far as buying a domain name just for the sale and point it to a page about the sale on your real site.

Example: (Garage Sales)
Sale at 500 Main Street, Springfield. Items include baseball gear, hats and more for kids and adults. Saturday 7-3.  BaseballSale.com
Classified Cost: ~$15-$25

And of course if you’re having a big sale, you’ll need help.  Lucky for you, teenagers will work cheap.  Post a help wanted page on your website. Then promote it in the help wanted section of the paper.  (Note: This will only work for smaller papers.  Help wanted ads are usually really cheap, but that’s not the case in bigger papers)

Example: (Help Wanted)
Need 2 teenagers to help move boxes from 7-9AM.  $20ea See www.LocalSportsStore.com
Classified Cost: ~$5-$15

I also run a local town forum, where people talk about the events and politics going on in town.  When someone posts a help wanted on my site, I put an ad in the local paper saying something like ‘Dishwasher needed: see www.example.com’.  Very generic, but it works.

Some of these ideas may be require a little imagination on your part, but they are all pretty cheap ways to get your brand in front of local residents.  And that’s what you’re after.

Two things: You may want to Disallow the pages you create for these ads in your robots.txt since they won’t be around long.
If you link to them from your home page (which you should, since that’s where your sending the readers), make sure you nofollow them.  You don’t want them to take away even a little of your PR juice.

Every day thousands of new businesses are born. A new entrepreneur enters the scene, gung-ho to make his/herself a millionaire.

The Small Business Administration is there for those people, to help them take those first baby steps. Register your business name. Get a bank account. Hire an attorney and accountant. Register a domain name. Print some business cards.

Pretty much everyone who joins the self-employed world is revving up for fun, excitement, and of course a big payout.

But what percentage of these go-get-em people are really serious about their online presence? Is your website going to play an important role in your business, or will you treat it as an afterthought?

“Oh, I guess we’ll need a website, too.” Wrong answer.

That answer may have been ok a few years ago, but in today’s economy, your online presence should play a significant role in your marketing strategy. Many small businesses I deal with are starting to realize that print media and advertising is taking a back seat to their website.

Business owners need to be serious about their online presence. More and more people are going to a ‘research online, buy offline‘ model in their lives. This is especially crucial for retail and service outlets that rely on local walk-in traffic.

If you’re selling the best widgets ever, and you’re not online, many people won’t even know your company exists, even if you’re right down the street.

Of course, there are many more factors involved than just being online. You’ve got to optimize your website to capture those searches, which means more time and money invested into getting your website to that point.

And this is where the breakdown occurs. Most small businesses don’t even realize the impact of optimizing their website for local organic results. Even worse, most web designers don’t either. Big problem.

A smart business owner will budget in money to get their website built and optimized. Even if it’s only a few hundred bucks a month, they need to realize the impact will be much greater than spending that extra few hundred on a bigger Yellow Pages ad. Save money, put your URL in the Yellow Pages ad, and budget that extra money to bringing in even more leads through your site.

Your website is a reflection of how serious you are about gaining customers. You can’t just throw up a splash page and think you’re done.

So, how serious are you?