Small Business Search Marketing

Transcript: Twitter Chat on SEM

Matt McGee — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 22:22:30 +0000

A couple Tuesdays ago, I had the pleasure of being one of the guests (along with Anita Campbell of Small Business Trends) during an hour-long Twitter chat about small businesses and search engine marketing. It was my first time ever in such a chat, whether as a guest or attendee, and it was a real blast to chat back and forth with a lot of other people over Twitter.

If you missed it, John and Chrisanne Sternal (who organize these weekly chats) have posted a transcript:

Search Engine Marketing – #smbiz Chat Recap

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This is a post from Matt McGee's blog, Small Business Search Marketing.

Transcript: Twitter Chat on SEM

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Yahoo Answers: No Links for New Folks

Matt McGee — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 02:57:57 +0000

If you’re a small business owner that’s following my advice (or anyone’s) about marketing on Yahoo Answers, things just got a little more difficult today.

Yahoo says that Level 1 users will no longer be able to include active links in their answers. You can still include a URL, but it won’t appear as an active link. As the Yahoo blog post says, this is a “small but significant” change.

What’s it mean? If you’re playing by the rules and providing helpful answers to the community, not spamming, just keep doing what you’ve been doing. It just means that, if you’re still a Level 1 user, you’ll have to work a little longer and keep adding value to the community before your links will become active/clickable. (They’ll still be no-followed, just as they have for a long time now.)

Hey! RSS Subscriber: Have you purchased my e-book, “How to SEO Your Site in 60 Minutes”? If not, what are you waiting for? It’s only $25 (for the time being). Find out why Search Engine Guide said, “I can almost promise that following the advice in the book will earn you your money back ten to one hundred times over.” Here’s where to learn more: E-Book: How to SEO Your Site in 60 Minutes.

This is a post from Matt McGee's blog, Small Business Search Marketing.

Yahoo Answers: No Links for New Folks

June ‘09: Best Search/Marketing Posts

Matt McGee — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 02:44:11 +0000

Here’s my roundup of the best search/marketing posts I found and read during June. If you’re new to this blog, this is a monthly feature that began way back in 2007. You can find earlier “Best Of”s for each month in the archives: 2008 Best Posts and 2007 Best Posts. I never include my own posts in these end-of-month recaps.

This is a post from Matt McGee's blog, Small Business Search Marketing.

June ‘09: Best Search/Marketing Posts

Boston Restaurants (heart) Twitter

Matt McGee — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 03:31:51 +0000

Today’s Boston Globe has a story about the growing number of local restaurants using Twitter, including one that started tweeting several months before the restaurant opened … and had a full house when it finally did. A couple choice parts:

What can you do with 140 characters or less, the length of each tweet? A lot, restaurants are discovering – everything from posting daily specials to luring followers with offers of free appetizers to offering a glimpse of kitchen life. It’s all good for business.

and

One reason for Twitter’s popularity is that it’s both easy and inexpensive. There’s no need to hire someone to design a website. You just log on and start posting. “You could be a pizza guy at a greasy spoon sending text messages from a three-year-old cellphone,” Cohen said. “You don’t need technology to be spreading your message on Twitter. It’s very utilitarian.”

Even better than that are some of the quotes from the restaurant owners and staff. But you should read the full article to see those.

This is a post from Matt McGee's blog, Small Business Search Marketing.

Boston Restaurants (heart) Twitter

Two More Small Businesses Making Twitter Work

Creative Small Business Marketing, Episode 4

Matt McGee — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 12:39:36 +0000

How do you get a customer to trust you? How do you prove that not only can you do the job for her, but you’ve already done the job for others like her? And you’ve already done it dozens of times in her city/town/neighborhood? I think something like this answers those questions and more:

That screenshot is from a map that’s embedded on Avante Gardens’ web site, and each marker indicates a location where they’ve handled flowers for weddings and other special events. Click on any marker and you’ll get more information about the special event, as well as photos of Avante Gardens’ work.

To a potential customer, it makes a compelling statement: We’ve already done what you’re looking for. We have the experience. You can trust us.

This may seem familiar, in fact. Cathy Hillen-Rulloda of Avante Gardens says she was inspired by this post of mine from a few months ago, a post that showed how a Pennsylvania lawncare company was using Google Maps to show a portfolio of its work.

Whereas the lawncare company can get away with listing an address so prospects can drive by to see their lawncare work, Avante Gardens doesn’t have that luxury; custom floral arrangements usually aren’t permanent. So, they’ve done the next best thing by showing photos with each marker on their map.

Cathy — well done. Looks great. And hopefully it lends new ideas to other small businesses that can benefit from a strong, visual statement of work like this.

Advertisement: Improve your website rankings and traffic in just 15 mins/day! LotusJump will show you how to do your own professional-grade SEO. Find Out How Today!

This is a post from Matt McGee's blog, Small Business Search Marketing.

Creative Small Business Marketing, Episode 4

Small Business SEO: Costs, Expectations & Realities

Matt McGee — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 12:18:24 +0000

Janet Meiners wrote a good article Monday on Small Biz Trends: Practices of Top SEO Companies for Small Businesses. It’s designed to help small business owners understand the basic/minimum services that an SEO company/consultant should be providing.

But what about the cost of small business SEO? What should a small business expect to pay when hiring an SEO consultant?

In the comments on that Small Biz Trends article, a man named Jeff says this about the cost of SEO services:

“…many companies that offer SEO services charge an arm and a leg, usually monthly (anywhere from $300-$1000/monthly) and many don’t provide any kind of guarantee on results.”

There are a couple things in there that probably represent a fairly common view of SEO services for small businesses. I’m nowhere near the most expensive SEO consultant around, yet on phone calls with prospects, I’ve been asked: “Why do you charge so much?” There seems to be this idea that SEO shouldn’t cost much more than your satellite/cable TV bill.

Here are five points that I hope will help small business owners understand more about SEO, pricing, and services.

1.) The price you’ll pay for SEO depends on the consultant’s business model. My business model is to do consulting only; I don’t change my clients’ web sites. I analyze and provide specific recommendations, but it’s up to my client to implement my ideas or not. I generally charge an hourly rate for consulting, but I also have some pre-arranged services (like a Site Review) that have a fixed price. My clients pay for my time, my expertise, and my experience.

There are other SEO companies/consultants who charge differently. Some also serve as webmaster — not only recommending improvements, but also going in and changing your site. Some of these SEO consultants might even do performance-based contracts, where the small business owner pays a percentage of the revenue created by the SEO work. I could never do that because I can’t guarantee that my recommendations will be implemented. The point for small business owners is this: your SEO costs will depend in part on the type of consultant you hire.

2.) The price you’ll pay for SEO services sometimes depends on geography. If you hire a local consultant, a small business in Seattle is probably going to pay more for SEO consulting than a small business in Walla Walla. This isn’t universally true, but it is generally true that many services are more costly in larger cities. The Seattle market can support a higher cost for SEO consulting, just as it supports a higher cost for web design services, attorney fees, and many other types of services. This should color your expectations when looking for an SEO consultant.

3.) I generally wouldn’t trust an SEO company that only charges $300/month. $300 is closer to the hourly rate, not the monthly rate, for a good SEO consultant. An SEO that’s only charging $300/month probably isn’t doing much for you, doesn’t understand the true value of his/her time, and may have a very basic, limited definition of what SEO is. My approach to SEO projects is summed up in the SEO Success Pyramid. I can’t imagine a way to offer those strategies and tactics — five levels worth, 15 different blocks — for only $300/month.

Are there small businesses who can’t afford $300/hour? Of course. If that’s you, then you’ll have to spend time learning the basics of SEO yourself. There are a lot of great blogs and web sites where SEO knowledge is shared freely, not to mention several SEO e-books that cost less than $100 and offer terrific information. I sell one that costs $25 so that small biz owners who can’t afford my services can still learn to do SEO themselves.

4.) Focus on ROI, not costs. Much more important than the cost of SEO is the return. $1,000 per month may seem like a lot, but what if you get $5,000/month in increased revenues? Seems like a good deal to me. SEO, like any marketing, is about ROI. If you spend X and get back 3X or 5X or 10X, the actual amount that X is really doesn’t matter. Let’s use real estate as an example:

For Sally Smith, each client transaction means about $5,000 income, on average. Sally hires an SEO consultant to fix up her web site and make sure she’s listed on all the right local search engines. She also learns how to blog, how to use social media to make connections with local people, and more. This takes about six months and costs Sally $15,000.

Over the next year, Sally starts to get a lot more leads. Out-of-town real estate agents are also finding her online and sending referrals. Here are three scenarios:

* If Sally starts doing one more transaction every two months, that’s six more transactions per year and an additional $30,000.
* If she starts doing one more transaction every month, that’s an extra $60,000 per year.
* If she does two additional transactions per month, that’s $120,000 more income.

All that from a $15,000 investment over six months. That $2,500 per month seemed like a lot, but it was money well spent.

A few years ago, before I was a solo consultant, we had a medium-sized retail client that sold products nationally. Their SEO campaign was close to $22,000 for six months of work. They later told us that revenue from natural search traffic had gone up more than $120,000 in the months immediately after we started the campaign. I don’t mention this to brag. I mention it to point out that what you spend on SEO is not nearly as important as what you earn from it.

5.) No SEO can guarantee results.

The search engines could drastically change their ranking algorithms tomorrow. The new visitors that you get from SEO might decide they don’t like your product or service. Your competitor could be spending even more on SEO and online marketing than you, and might be buying links or doing other things that search engines don’t like. Your webmaster or IT department might implement the SEO recommendations incorrectly, etc., etc. The point is: SEO doesn’t exist in a vacuum. There are a number of factors outside of your control that will determine the success of an SEO campaign.

When I work with a client, I don’t make guarantees, but I do say, “If you take my advice and correctly implement my recommendations, you will get more traffic from natural search than you’re getting now, and you should increase revenues from natural search, too.” That’s about as close to a guarantee as I can give. (Note: As I explained above, there are SEO companies who operate as more than consultants; they take over your web site and make the changes themselves, thereby giving them more confidence in guaranteeing certain results.)

Final Thoughts

When considering SEO and what it should cost, please keep this in mind:

You have to invest either time or money.
You usually get what you pay for; if you invest only a little time or a little money, you can expect little success.
There are no shortcuts to true, long-lasting SEO success.
Nothing matters more than ROI.
If you spend your money wisely on SEO, it should bring back returns that are substantially higher than the costs.

My goal with this post is to shine a brighter light on what small businesses can and should expect where SEO campaign pricing is concerned. I hope I’ve succeeded, but the comments are open for any questions, constructive criticism, or other feedback.

(top photo courtesy AMagill via Creative Commons)

This is a post from Matt McGee's blog, Small Business Search Marketing.

Small Business SEO: Costs, Expectations & Realities

No related posts.

Small Business Search Marketing

Transcript: Twitter Chat on SEM

Yahoo Answers: No Links for New Folks

June ‘09: Best Search/Marketing Posts

Small Business

Local Search

SEO

PPC

Links & Link Building

Social Media

Blogs & Blogging

Rants

Boston Restaurants (heart) Twitter

Creative Small Business Marketing, Episode 4

Small Business SEO: Costs, Expectations & Realities

Final Thoughts