Will Hanke

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?

Will SEO, local marketing, site ranking, small business

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).

Will Marketing, local marketing, yellow pages

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…)

Will Marketing

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.

Will SEO, Yahoo!, local marketing, site ranking