SEO And Your Small Business
It often seems to me that any talk of marketing budgets and the need to sell online often seems to refer to large companies and organisations. The reality is that these are issues of real importance to plenty of small businesses too.
Despite this,
there are certainly differences when it comes to looking at the type of approaches that are being employed. In part, such differences can be seen to reflect the differing levels of resources that are available. Within a large company, as an example, there may be a dedicated Marketing Department in place.
The employees within that specific department are expected to work together to improve the overall marketing efforts of the company. This will certainly include improving search engine positioning and may also involve some work on managing paid search traffic. Increasingly, the use of social media is seen as being a key part of what should be required here.
So how does this compare to the situation in many small businesses? This is where size and scale can really make a difference. There may not be a dedicated member of staff tasked with carrying out online marketing. Instead, it's often the case that the owner gets involved and does a little bit of work in this area, when time allows.
There are clearly certain implications associated with this approach. The most obvious of these is that it becomes increasingly difficult for a small business to compete. In part, this is due to the financial situation. It's not impossible for a small business to succeed online, but it clearly helps if the owner understands the way in which online marketing works.
In order to get this right, it's useful if the owner is able to implement some strategies. If not, there's an importance attached to knowing someone who can. If you have a website, but don't have the means of letting potential customers know about the existence of that site, then you may be facing a difficult road ahead.
The truth is that most Internet users make use of the main search engines when looking to buy products and services online. If they're unable to see your own website within the listings, then there's very little chance of them buying what you have to offer. Indeed, they may not know that you even have anything to sell.
This is why optimizing your website is so important. If you haven't thought about the value of SEO, then it's likely that you're not taking full advantage of your online presence.