Back in May, I spoke to the St. Louis Small Business Meetup Group about getting traffic, climbing the search engine rankings and beyond.  It was a great meetup in a small restaurant in Kirkwood – a terrific atmosphere and I think you’ll enjoy this video.  In it you’ll learn:

• Why Shotgun Marketing is a think of the past
• Why You need a CMS
• What Google Thinks About Your Site
• How to Spy on Your Competitors
• Plenty More Tips

Since this ‘strategy’ has been going on, Google introduced service areas which helped alleviate a lot of the issues related to being a home-based business.  But there are still a lot of small businesses using UPS boxes to help rank in different local districts.

I’m not necessarily saying it’s the right way to do it, but there are definitely a lot of them still doing it, and it works in many cases still today.

I have a client that has a UPS box, and he informed me the other day that the US Post Office is now ‘cracking down’ on UPS boxes.  Particularly, they are cracking down on the use of the words ‘suite’, ‘office’ and ‘room’ on UPS-bound parcels.  An item mailed to ‘Suite 100′ at a UPS box is now being rejected by the USPS and returned to the sender as a non-existent address.  If the address is changed to ‘# 100′ it is delivered as it should be.

This, of course, affects affiliate marketers as well.  I’ve heard of a few instances now where affiliate payment checks were returned because of the word ‘suite’.

Since both of the business owners I’ve spoken to use the same UPS (and subsequently the same post office), I’m not sure if this is a US-wide change, or just a local postmaster on some sort of bent against UPS, but it’s definitely worth mentioning.

If you have a UPS box, and are using the word ‘Suite’ or something other than the number symbol, and you’re wondering where your mail is, I recommend checking with your local USPS to see if they are bouncing your mail back.

Sometimes I meet a business owner that has done a little research, changed a few things on his/her website, and is really proud of being on the second page of Google for one of their industry’s terms.  But how many Internet searchers actually go to the second page of a Google result?

The Internet has definitely cultured a great bit of impatience, particularly when it comes to finding information online.  We want the right information, and we want it now.  Searching the Internet through search engines like Google, Yahoo! or Bing (or the thousands of other choices) will usually yield good results, but they aren’t perfect.

On average, only 11% of Internet searchers go to page two of a SERP – search engine result page.  So ranking on page one gives you nearly 8 times the amount of traffic that a page two ranking will give you.

Even worse – only 3% of that 11% go to page three.  That means that a page three ranking is virtually useless.  While it may bring you a visitor or two a month, it’s not doing you much good.

Spiders on the Web

The average ‘stale’ website gets visited (aka spidered) by the search engines every 4-6 weeks.  Since the website hasn’t changed in a long time, there’s no real reason for them to come by every week and check for new content.

This is pretty typical of businesses.  They get a website:

• because they heard they needed one
• because their competition has one
• because all the cool kids have one

There’s no thought put into the website beyond the fact that they needed one, and in most cases business owners didn’t even put much thought into who they hired to do it.  Total waste of huge opportunity for revenue growth.

Getting to Page One

Since the average website isn’t going anywhere fast, getting the search engines to take notice of it can take some time.  A lot of time.  If you started making changes to your website today, there’s a high possibility that the search engines won’t even notice those changes for up to a month and a half.  Even then, noticing and doing something (ranking you higher) are two different things.  If you’ve optimized your home page for the term blue widgets, and currently you aren’t listed in the top 100 results (10 SERP pages) for that phrase, a move into position 89 isn’t really doing you much good, is it?  Sure, it’s a step in the direction you want, but it’s not producing any traffic.  So how do you get to page one?

Ah, that’s the golden question, isn’t it?

The way to a page one result is through constant and consistent pressure.  Blogging weekly will increase the search engines’ awareness of your website.  They’ll see that ‘movement’ and start to visit your website more often.  They’ll start to rank your site because there’s real information (content) that’s valuable to their searchers.

That change, along with link building, onsite optimization, and a ton of other things will get your site moving in the right direction – up!  But don’t think it’s a one time or quick fix.  If you do, you may see some very short term rankings, but you’ll fall right back in the no-traffic-pit.

Why Most SEO Contracts are Long Term

A good SEO will require (at minimum) a six month contract.  Personally, I won’t take anything less than a one year commitment from a new client.  Why?  Well, just like I said earlier – six months of work might get you to page three or two of a term.  It’s still useless unless you’re happy with sitting at 11% of your potential.  I’m not happy with that.  A one year commitment tells me that the business owner understands that they are investing in a long term strategy, not a short term bandaid.

Want to find out more about Search Engine Optimization for Small Business?  Contact me and let’s talk!

Many business owners are surprised to find out that changing just a few things to their website can result in a decent raise in their overall site rankings.  What they may not realize, however, is that there are more than just a few things that Google measures when ranking their website against their competition.

The complex algorithm that Google uses to determine where your website should rank contains over 200 parts. So while those few things you’ve done will bump up your site a little bit, there’s still a lot to be done.

And no, no one but a very select few know what all 200+ parts are.  If you come across an Internet Marketing guy who claims to know the secret, you should run the opposite direction.  Google isn’t in the business of sharing their trade secrets, and with good reason.

The latest addition to the 200-part algorithm measures site load time.  That means that slow loading sites will actually be penalized in their ranking if they take longer than average (1-2 seconds max) to load.  If your site is taking a while to load up, you’ve got something else to fix.

A business owner should be aware that there are a ton of variables involved when building a website that ranks well for industry-related terms.  If you’re in the position of needing to hire a  search engine/Internet marketer, ask them if they know just how many parts of Google’s algorithm there are.

But by all means, take the time to do it right. You don’t want to look like an idiot because you ran through it so quickly. And it’s not something you can pay your twelve year old son Jimmy to do, neither. You don’t have to pay some business $299 to do it, either.  That’s just crazy.  Take the time on a Sunday night to get it right.  It’ll be worth it.

List Your Business Correctly

The first step to getting your business on Google Maps is to visit the Local Business Center (LBC) section on Google.  If you don’t have a Google account, you’ll need to sign up for one.  Once that’s out of the way, you’ll need to claim or add your business.  Chances are, they already know about your business, but have incorrect and very limited information about it.

Take the time to fill this out in detail, particularly the section labeled Description: This is a great place to put in some keywords about your business, list the things you sell or services you offer.  Don’t forget to add your website.

Pick the Right Categories

Last, enter as many valid categories for your business as they’ll let you.  All five, if they all fit.  but don’t just add categories because they’re there.

See that third listing? Hair of the Dog is a bar.  They don’t have pool supplies.  They don’t have a pool.  They have beer.  Unfortunately, they don’t have a beer pool, although that’d be pretty damn awesome if they did.

After listing your site, you’ll need to verify the information that you just entered.  In the past, Google always sent a postcard to the business address with a pin number for verification.  They also called the phone number and asked you for a pin number.  From what I understand, the postcard is no longer offered, or is only offered if other methods fail.  However they offer to verify your listing, make sure you follow through and verify your site!

For Yahoo, use http://listings.local.yahoo.com/csubmit/index.php

For Bing, use https://ssl.bing.com/listings/ListingCenter.aspx

It does have some great SEO benefit, though.  Think about it.

To get to the WW, do a search for anything.  I chose “Saint Louis Coffee”.  Once that SERP comes up, look above the results for a text link that says ‘Show Options’.  Click on it, then scroll down the left column until you see ‘Wonder Wheel’.

The wonder wheel is a wheel that spits out other suggested searches that you may want to try.  If you’re unsure about what you’re looking for, this is a great tool to give you that ah-ha “Oh! So that’s what it’s called” moment.

It’s also a great tool for small business owners that are trying to do their own SEO and are unsure where to start doing keyword research.  Sure, it’s going to be a slow painful way to get keywords, but if you’ve got no customers, you might as well be researching, right?

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Meet me at the Look at Me SEO seminar in Saint Louis on August 27th.  I’m speaking on “What is SEO and How Can it Help my Business?“, along with several other SEO experts during the one-day event.  Be there.