I agree with a lot of this article: I will put some notes below. Again, my notes will look like this:
Search Engine Optimization for Small Business Owners
Small business owners are often limited by small marketing budgets and manpower. But that doesn't mean they can't compete against larger businesses or websites when focused on search engine optimization. SEO is a basic marketing tool that everyone should use regardless of size.
Can the small websites compete with the big guys?
I'm often asked by small business owners if they stand a chance against larger websites when it comes to organic search results. My response is that size doesn't matter. When it comes to improving natural search results, it's all about the keywords you choose and how competitive those keywords are.
Yes, the small guys can compete with the big guys, and I'm not saying that you shouldn't, but be careful what you wish for. What I'm saying is, don't compete with the big guys if you can't handle the business that comes in. An example of this is: I'm the only web developer in Net Magik Pros. One person can only do so much work, and one person can only spread themselves so thin. There was a time when I started competing with more medium sized companies, and we were able to compete successfully with the medium sized companies, but then pretty soon, there was so much work coming in that I was putting in 18 and 19 hour days. The money was great, and if the work kept coming in like that, we would have been able to hire someone else to help keep up with the demand, but the fact is, we were not in that position at the time. If you can handle working 18 and 19 hour days 7 days a week, then go for it, compete with the larger companies, but my advice would be this: Be prepared to get more help if you need it.
What makes a keyword competitive?
One way to determine the competitiveness of a search term is to simply type that search term into Google and notice the number of web pages that contain that search term. This number appears in the upper right-hand corner of the search results page and appears as, "Results 1 - 10 of about 228,000,000 for [your search term here]."
The large number you see gives you an indication of how many websites contain the keyword term or phrase you're searching for. Not all of these sites would necessarily be competitors, but have been indexed by Google none-the-less. From my perspective, when this number is less than 3 or 4 million, the particular search term would not be all that competitive in and of itself.
The above is very good advice, and I do this myself.
Determining just how competitive the search term is.
There are a variety of methods to determine true keyword effectiveness (KEI, etc.). However, if you're just a regular person trying to figure out how difficult it will be to rank well for a particular keyword, consider the following. In addition to the number of sites that contain your keyword, how well optimized are the top 3 sites that appear on the search result. You can determine this by:
1. Visiting the site and determining the Google PR of the page. This information is available by downloading the Google toolbar and looking in your browser. You will see a green bar and ranking (ex: PR5), which tells you how Google ranks this page/website with regard to popularity. Any site with a Google PR6 or better is well established and will be difficult to outrank in the near term.
Even though I really don't believe in PageRank, this is a pretty good tool for the purpose of determining your competition. Basically, you need to know how popular you need to get your site in order to compete with your competition.
2. Visit Google and type, "link:www.competitorwebsite.com". Be sure to replace 'competitorwebsite' with the website name you are researching. Remember, this should be a website that appears on the Google search result for the keyword term or phrase you're researching. This will tell you how many sites are linking to this particular website. The larger the number the more difficult it will be to outrank.
Again, this is something I do for my clients all the time! This is very good advice.
3. Look at the website code. Simply visit the competitor's website and go to "View", "View Source". Look for the meta tags of "Title", "Description", and "Keywords". Are the meta tags at the very top of the page? Does the website also use h1, h2, and h3 tags? If so, they probably know something about SEO and have applied some on-page optimization techniques.
While this is also very good advice, if you are not "geeky enough" then you should consult someone on this. Even though it may cost you money, it's money well spent and it allows you to do what you do best instead of doing all kinds of research on how to use Title, Descriptions and Keywords on your site. A true professional will give you good advice in plain english without trying to get even more money out of you by just taking over the development and maintainence of your website. Be careful as there are many developers out there that will try to do this very thing and if all you want is a little advice, it could be a very negative experience.
Using the above will give you a good sense of whether of not you can compete for given keywords. As you've figured out by now, a company's size is no indication of their level of experience in optimizing their own website. You'd be surprise of the type (and size) of companies that call me for SEO advice.
While big companies don't always have the knowlege, they do have the money to spend and find someone with the knowlege, it's a matter of whether they want to spend that money or not. Most of them don't, or most of them will not want to spend the money, or do the research on people to make sure that they have the proper knowlege to make sure they are going to get what they want. Don't be cheap about it, but don't spend more than you can afford either.
Keep this in mind the next time you think that size matters!
About the Author: Michael Fleischner is an Internet marketing expert with more than 12 years of marketing experience. To discover how to improve search engine rankings on Google and other major search engines visit http://www.webmastersbookofsecrets.com and the Marketing Blog.
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