I’d love to use your SEO techniques, but my website is controlled by corporate, there’s nothing I can do on it. I have no control over the site other than putting my name and hours of operation on there.

Yeah, that sucks.

There’s nothing worse than having a boss that breathes down your neck all day, making you feel little.  And that’s what these industries are doing, in my opinion; treating you like a little person that has no idea how to market their own business.

Many times these companies lock down their own employees so much that they’re afraid to even put anything on their website for fear of losing their affiliation with whatever it is.

Let’s take a guy I met recently – Wally Lionberger.  Wally’s website is a perfect example of a corporate website.  He has virtually no leverage when it comes to adding information or making his website stand apart from the next insurance guy.  He’s locked in to this website, and no more.  Or is he?

For sake of setting a foundation, Wally is an insurance agent for American Family.  He has a physical office.  American locks down his abilities to create any page outside of their corporate site.  He is not allowed to have a facebook page or twitter account related to AmFam.  His domain name, in case you didn’t notice, actually forwards to the amfam.com website.  So his domain doesn’t really even exist, according to Google.

So what can Wally, or anyone that has a coporate-type website do to rank locally and increase their online presence? Lots of things.

Dominate Local

Since Wally pretty much sells to the local Saint Louis area, it would make sense that he start locally.  His first step should be to get into Google Places, formerly Google Local Business Center – which he has done.  When adding your business, fill out as much information as you possibly can.  Use keywords related to your industry, list your email, hours, upload pictures and anything else you can cram in there.  Do the same at Yahoo! Local and Bing Local Listing Center.

Now add your information to sites like Yelp!, Mixx, Kudzu and CitySearch.  Always use your URL – not the URL of where your URL actually points to.  (In Wally’s case he should list his URL as http://www.WallyLionberger.com and not the crazy http://apps.amfam/blahblahblah URL that it actually forwards to).  This will give you more control over what you are offering – for instance if you decide to go work for another company, you’ll only have to worry about changing your pointer, not getting an entire new domain name.

Tip: Wondering what all to put on these websites?  Do a search for your industry and see who comes up.  Then see what those folks are doing and imitate that.  If you don’t see any of your local competitors, good for you!  Get your name up there and take that traffic!

Build Keyword Targeted Links

This is a big one.  There’s no rule saying that you can’t build links on other people’s websites that ultimately influence your overall ranking on the search engines.  There’s a saying in my industry- Content is King, Links are Queen. Since you can’t really control the content on your corporate website, you’ve got to come at it from a different angle and differentiate yourself from the other drones out there – and building links is the answer.

I’ve written plenty on how to get links from other sites via articles, directory submissions, etc so I’m not going to rehash that here.  But if there’s nothing else you can do on your website, this is the way to go.

Don’t have time to take on something like this?  You can still dominate the local market for your industry. Talk to me.

Paid Search

While I’m not a huge fan of paid search, it does have it’s place – and this is a great example of that.  Assuming American Family would let him, Wally could start a PPC campaign through Google AdWords or a service like AdzZoo and collect leads.  I don’t think AmFam would have a problem with this – since he’s ultimately sending the traffic to them anyway.

Create a Stealth LeadGen Site

Ok here’s probably the best tip of all – but it’s a little risky.

Since AmFam won’t let Wally have his own website that promotes their products, he needs to think outside the AmFam box and come up with other ways to get leads.

What’s to stop Wally, or you, or anyone, from building a very generic non-branded website that ranks well for insurance?  The site, say something like GetInsuredStLouis.com could, with a nice SEO campaign, rank well for all things Saint Louis and insurance related.  This generic site could then have a form that visitors could fill out for more information.  Those leads would dump to Wally’s InBox, and he could call them back with his insurance info.  He could even add weekly content with great insurance-related articles – thus pulling in those coveted long tail searchers.

Now this may or may not be against your corporation rules – I suggest you do a little investigation prior to setting something like this up – but if you go for it, you could really rake in some nice leads.  Are you ballsy enough to do it?

Locked in a Box

Don’t let your corporation keep you locked in that box.  Thinking that you can’t do anything beyond the few crappy tools that they give you can be a big mistake.  Someone with the guts to push the envelope is going to get rewarded with more customers – is that you?

I’d love to hear your comments about these methods.  Don’t be a chicken and tell me what you think.

First, let me say that I’m not an anti-PPC guy.  I’ve seen a lot of good businesses do quite well in the PPC arena.  Most of these businesses have the funding to create a nice campaign, and can keep up with the ever-growing costs related to PPC.

For the other 95% of SMBs, pay per click is nothing more than a short term solution – one that won’t stick.  Let’s create a fictional company and hash out some numbers.

Our company – ZXYWidgets, is a small operation; Mom and Dad run the retail store most days and they have two full time salesmen.  They sell blue widgets to a select local market.  Their current reach is maybe 50 miles radius from their store.

Scenario One

One day, Dad gets a postcard from Yahoo! offering them a $25 credit towards setting up a PPC account.  Dad has heard about the Internets and has been wanting to expand for a little while now, so he tries it out.  He has no formal keyword research, and has no idea what analytics are.  So he just types in some words, puts up a poorly written ad or two and sets up his credit card with a $200 monthly limit.  He then proceeds to watch his $200 go down the drain in just a matter of days.

Scenario Two

In this case, Mom and Dad have heard a bit about PPC, and have even been exposed to SEO through a friend or local web design firm.  They have done a bit of keyword research, and have a decent list of words they’d like to target.  They’ve written some fairly decent ad copy, and have settled on a one month test budget of $1000.  Their average keyword costs $1.00/click.

During the month, they see some nice traffic to their site.  They can view their analytics and see the jump during the month.  Within less than thirty days, their $1000 is gone.  Immediately their ads stop showing, and website traffic goes back to near zero.

Two outcomes: Either they made money off that $1000 or they didn’t.  It’s a bit of a crap-shoot.

And the worst part – as soon as they stop spending, everything comes to a halt.

Why SEO is a Smarter Investment

…for most businesses.

The residual effects of any SEO campaign are phenomenal, and can be felt for months, if not years.  Depending on the amount of competition (or lack thereof), you could rank for a nice term and hang onto it for some time.  A simple link building campaign will provide ongoing ‘juice’ to your website even after you’ve gone through your budget.  Spend that same $200 or $1000 over a month or two and you’ll see nice revenue for an extended period of time vs. what you’d see with PPC.

Summary

I want to make it clear again that I’m not against PPC.  For some business models, it is the way to go.  For most, though, it’s a costly bandaid on a poorly created and managed website.

Interestingly, I’ve seen scenario two play out on an even bigger scale, with monthly PPC spending in the tens of thousands per month.  Even some of these big spenders are realizing that SEO is far more attractive and provides a much better ROI over the long term.

So, my suggestion: Use PPC to ramp up your traffic, but use SEO as the backbone that will keep the traffic coming. Then wean yourself off the PPC (unless its converting well, and you can afford to supplement the organic results with your ads).

More People are Using the Internet than the Yellow Pages for Local Search

While this may not be a surprise to most of my readers, it should be a jolt to small business owners who are stuck in their ways when it comes to marketing.  Since most SMBs have small marketing budgets and little or no knowledge of how to get the best ROI for it, they just assume that the Yellow Pages is still the way to go.

Sorry folks, it’s not.  While I encourage any SMB to continue to put their ad in the YPs, they should drastically reduce the amount of money they are spending on it.  A simple ad that has phone number and website URL is all you need.  Target the local phone book and maybe the large ‘city version’ if there is one.  That’s it.  Put the rest of that money where more people will see your information – online.

Most Searchers Won’t Go Past Page Two of Google

This applies to all search engines, but since Google has around 70% share of the US search market, I’ll use them.

Most people when searching for something, expect it to be there when they hit the ‘Search’ button.  If it’s not, they may go to page two of those results, but most will not venture any further.  Instead, they’ll change their search string and start over until they find what they want.  So if your business isn’t listed on page one or two, those customers are just going elsewhere.

Being on Page One of a Result is Like Getting a Referral

When someone is looking for something, and you have it, they are more inclined to buy from you simply because you had the information they were seeking.  Having good content that answers questions they have is like you talking to them in person.  You become a ‘subject matter expert’ and therefore gain trust.

SEO Lasts a Long Time – PPC Stops when You Stop Spending

I was talking with a client last night who has been doing SEO for about a year and a half now.  They are so far beyond their competition that it’d take a while before the others could ever catch up.  Some of his competitors are doing PPC, which is good, but once they stop spending for those clicks, they go back to a negligable amount of visitors (if not zero).

On the other hand, an SEO’d website could withstand literally cutting their budget for 3-4 months and not lose a lot of ground.  Sure, they’d lose some, but the overall effects of it would dwindle over time, not immediately.  (This isn’t something I recommend you telling your SEO clients – they may just try it!)

PPC has it’s place in the overall world of search, but it shouldn’t be the hinge you balance your entire marketing platform on.  Just like the Yellow Pages, it should be used in conjunction with your SEO efforts, but should not be the main focus.

Top Ranking for Long Tail Keywords is Money in the Bank

As a general rule, the more specific the search, the higher rate of conversion.  This means that if you rank at the top of the search engines for ‘blue widget with 12hp motor’, the chances of that visitor buying your widget is definitely higher than someone searching for ‘blue widget’.  These longer tail keywords are easy to attain high rankings on, and they bring better overall traffic.

Ranking Brings Brand Recognition

Think about this – if a person is searching for something, and your website keeps coming up at the top, they are going to see your logo several times over the course of their searches.  Even if they don’t buy from you on that day, you still had your brand in front of them several times.  What is that worth to you?

Location, Location, Location

Just like picking out a physical location for your business, you wouldn’t want some backstreet that no one sees, would you?  Same goes for online marketing.  You’ve got to be where the traffic is driving past.

Summary and Shameless Plug

While this is far from a complete list of the reasons you should consider SEO, it’s definitely a good start.  I’d love to hear what you think about the list, and let me know what I missed.

If you are a business owner who needs to get your website to the top of the search engines, it all starts with a phone call (888-341-2551) or email.  Give me a call and I’d love to discuss what I can do, or visit my website at http://www.WhereIsMyBusiness.com

Do you use one of these?  If so, what are your thoughts on it? Do you like it? Is it worth the money? How did you choose which to use?

If you use a different program altogether, what is it? What are the things you like about it?

What concerns me is ‘St Louis SEO’ isn’t really a very competitive term.  This isn’t exactly a hotbed for SEO services.  So why would an SEO company use PPC instead of just rank for something that is what they do?

I can hear the phone conversation with some of these companies..

“Do you rank for the services you provide?”

“Yes, look on the righthand side of the page – we are near the top”

The article profiles several older people who have started niche websites and have put AdSense on their sites to generate income. One man claims to be a handyman that now makes $250k/year in adsense revenue. True? Probably.

What’s the catch? Quality content often. You can’t think you can put up a site and it’ll start bringing in the dough. You’ve got to put new content up, and you’ve got to do it a lot. It’s a lot of work, don’t let the numbers fool you.