A week ago last Tuesday, I had the pleasure of speaking on a panel with Dani and Mike from BigforkWeb, Arnold from CrestonTech and John from Snowdog.
We were the technically oriented (ie: computer geeky) speakers for Montana West Economic Development‘s E2 (Entrepreneur-to-Entrepreneur) session for April. These are monthly sessions organized for small business owners, startups (and anyone else who wishes) by Montana West’s Kim Morisaki (to learn about the rest of this year’s sessions, you can reach her at kim at dobusinessinmontana.com).
This month’s topic was Search Engine Optimization 101 for small businesses. You might hear us say “SEO” when we talk with each other about this subject. That’s because we geeky types just love our three letter acronyms (TLAs). See, we even have an acronym for that.
What is SEO?
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization.
What it means is the effort you put forth to make your site appear as high as possible when someone goes to Google, Yahoo, MSN (etc) to search for something they want.
It *can* be a very technical topic and you can get very deeply involved, if not downright lost in it. You can study every SEO e-book on the net, buy a bunch of online courses and other resources and become an expert for what gets you to page one.
If that investment of time works for your schedule (or for a member of your staff), there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that – and in fact, there’s plenty to gain. Many businesses do just that because in their business every additional visitor makes a measurable difference in their bottom line.
What’s involved in SEO?
It starts with knowing what words people use when they search for what you do or sell. Once you know that, it’s about making your site’s content as relevant to what you do (and to those searches) as possible.
It also involves some technical html stuff that I can’t cover here. There are plenty of resources for that if you wish to study the subject. One good place to start is SEOBook.com.
So now what? If we can’t turn this column into a geek-fest, what do we do? We talk about…
Common Sense SEO
I prefer to explain SEO from a “man on the street” perspective.
We still need to get to the core of what SEO is and why it’s worthwhile to spend some time on it.
As you might expect, Google’s goal is to be the only search engine you want to use. They figure to do that by providing the best possible search results to you.
If they do their job perfectly, you’ll never have to hit the back button after doing a search.
Why? Because you found exactly what you were looking for.
If they provide search results that are so relevant to your search, you never want to use another tool for searching the net. If they repeatedly provide that, the rest is simple.
It means they get more visitors. It means more people will see their clients’ ads. It means that they will get more ads, which means they can show more relevant ads to more people.
And of course, all of that means more advertising revenue for them.
Be Relevant
If you are interested in vintage Corvettes and you see a link on the search results page that says “Vintage Corvettes”, you won’t be a happy camper if you get there and find info about Ford Mustangs.
The same situation goes for people who are searching for what you do.
Mislead them and they’ll never be back.
Try to trick the search engines and they’ll figure it out and penalize you for it.
A Warning
You’ll find tools out there that can fake things and work around Google guidelines until they figure it out. You’ll find people who will guarantee a #1 Google ranking for your market for $500 (or $5000).
Stay away from this stuff.
Bottom line: Spend your time on repeatedly producing the best, most relevant content for your customers and prospects. The investment has longer-lasting results and you’ll never have to worry about getting into trouble with Google.
PS: Some links for your tech people: http://www.google.com/webmasters/ and some rules to heed: http://google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35769
Want to learn more about Mark or ask him to write about a business, operations or marketing problem? See Mark’s site or contact him via email at mriffey at flatheadbeacon.com.