I was talking with someone the other day that asked me why I chose to focus on small business SEO with my business.  Why not spend my time with bigger budgets more resources, rather than always playing from behind so to speak.  The reason is I got into this business to specifically fight for the little guy. I grew up in a tiny town and was surrounded by many small business owners over my lifetime.  I’ve always wanted to fight for the little guy. That is one reason. The other reason is the challenge of it all.  It is a lot easier to throw money at a problem like many large businesses do than to have to work smart and put together strategies that attack the most important aspects of the business with limited resources. Sure, that challenge can be stressful, but in the end, is also far more rewarding for the soul. It helps with that key factor of what motivates you to get up in the morning.  I would say over 15 years we have become one of the best in the industry at succeeding with less in competitive environments.  It isn’t always as flashy as some out there would try to make it look. At the end of the day, we help our client partners succeed better than anyone in the industry.

Limited SEO and PPC Budget

It is very rare that a prospect comes with a big budget. In fact, in the world of SEO, most small business owners are under the impression that it takes a lot less investment than it really should. Some companies come in and lowball to get the business, but then don’t really succeed for them. That leaves the business owner thinking that the cost is right but they just chose the wrong company. In most cases the cost and the company they chose were wrong. You get what you pay for. That being said, over 15 years of experience has taught us how to use a limited budget effectively and focus on improvement with the budget available.

SEO

Sometimes our honesty scares people away. I will always be upfront with people. SEO can take some time. Especially if you have never focused on it before and you are in a competitive space.  However, there are usually ways for you to sneak into the market space in the early going and successfully grow from there. It is just a matter of understanding what the drivers of the business are and exploring the market for potential openings.  This is why we customize plans for each client. The generic approaches work sometimes, but less and less often with time. There are literally hundreds of different SEO ranking factors that are even weighted differently depending on the search and the industry. We have to pick out what weaknesses to take advantage of and then build the pages or website to do that.

PPC

For PPC, large businesses or corporations can often just throw money at the ad campaign and then after several months of picking out what works, they can start to narrow down that focus. Small businesses are much more constrained by budget, so we have to use tools and intelligence to try to find the converting terms early and focus our limited budget on that. Small businesses often don’t have the resources for lots of A/B testing and new landing pages. They need to work with best practices and make sure to narrow the target to what will convert. We’ve helped with that for over 15  years as well. We have worked our way through all of the changes Google has made and adapted accordingly. We are here to keep you from making those very expensive accidents that we have to help people correct over and over.

If you are serious about digital marketing for your small business, make sure you work with someone that knows what they are doing. I would even ask how they approached two very different clients differently. Make sure they have the flexibility and can handle different markets and competitive landscapes. We have been doing this flexibly since before the iPhone existed, so we know how to adapt and move forward. Give us a call.