Two weapons that can be used by a small business to combat an online superstore are time and product knowledge. Use these wisely and you can get great Google rankings (and traffic) that a chain store can’t even dream of.

In many small towns main street stores (appliance, hardware, grocery, home goods) have been replaced by the convenience and pricing of a big-box “superstore”. The first thing you hear from the small business owner is “they can’t give the service we can”. And yet people go to the big store to save money time and time again.

The online world is a bit different because people search the web on computers, tables, and their cell phones to get answers. If (as a small business owner) you can provide answers and expertise – you can get the business you’ve been missing out on, because the ‘convenience’ of the big store shopping experience is trumped by the consumers need for knowledge or to have a problem solved.

Small Business Google Ranking Secrets

Using “time” as a weapon, a small business owner should seed their website with content in images, blog posts, white papers, case studies, videos, and blog posts. Every time you have a few spare minutes (or have a free employee), put up more quality content through your website and / or social media.

The key to good google rankings, traffic, and increased leads and sales is quality content. When you solve a customer or client problem – blog about it. New product or service? Write about it. Completed projects? Post SEO images. New solutions or tip or trick? Do a video. It may seem like marketing 101, but the key to good rankings for a small business website is to keep improving, adding, maintaining, and revising it over time – and stay one step ahead of the big big superstores that can’t do the same.

To find out how JTPratt Media can help your small business website rankings, please visit our SEO Services page for more information.

The biggest difference in whether or not Google thinks that you’re doing something more than you should to get ranked (and whether or not you get a penalty) is how people do when they arrive at your website. One widely used stat is the (Google analytics) data for “bounce rate”. Bounce rate is a percentage number noting how many people left your website quickly (without finding what they were looking for). If your bounce rate is 90% – your rankings will change (for the worse) pretty quickly because Google will figure most people aren’t finding what they’re looking for when arriving at your website. On the other hand if your bounce rate is 50% Google might start sending your more traffic (because the rankings you have seem really relevant to visitors).

Local SEO and Low Hanging Fruit

If you offer products or services in a local market they keywords you use might be really easy to rank for – because the competition is so low. Especially if your bounce rate is really low (because it’s exactly what visitors were looking for).

Many small business owners have a small website with some very basic informational pages about what they do. Creating pages that use the keyword terms people would use in your market will help you rank for those terms (especially if your bounce rate is low or there is little or no competition).

For instance, while we provide SEO Services for clients all over the world, in our specific local market people might finding us by Googling terms like:

Michigan SEO help
Detroit SEO
Ann Arbor SEO services
Toledo SEO company

Some of those terms have mild competition, and by writing separate informational articles or blog posts about them with great original content – it would be fairly easy to rank on the first page of google for all 4 items. For most companies in smaller markets, this is the case for nearly any product or service, and in medium or large markets with a little bit of linkbuilding – just as obtainable.

For most businesses though – they “don’t know what they don’t know”, and these types of opportunities go unused day after day. Could your business use some help in the search engines? We can get you ranked and help convert that traffic to leads and sales – please visit our SEO Services page for more information.

In the modern world there are only 3 major search engines anybody cares about: Bing, Yahoo!, and Google.

Many (if not most) non-technical website owners have no idea that you should actually register a website with search engines (or why).

Why You Should Register Your Website with Search Engines

Each of the “big 3″ search engines has a “webmaster control panel” that you can use for all websites you own:

Yahoo Site Explorer
Bing Webmaster Tools
Google Webmaster Central

Since Yahoo! has been acquired by Microsoft, that search engine actually has search results that come from Bing – but even so Yahoo (still) has it’s own webmaster tools. Nobody is exactly sure how good they work, or how much longer they’ll be available – but we still (currently) use them.

With WordPress websites normally you would install a plugin that generated a XML Sitemap. This is different than the standard complete list of links sitemap you would see on a front end of a website. An XML sitemap isn’t a webpage at all, it’s a special file for search engine crawlers that’s used to indicate which files you want indexed and how often they’re updated. For non-WordPress websites there are also several online XML sitemap generators you can use.

Once you generate an XML sitemap, you then login to your webmaster tools at the 3 big search engines and “submit” it to them for indexing. You also have to verify that you actually own the website (with a meta tag or downloadable file). Once you do that the webmaster control panels can tell you if and when it’s been indexed, and Google has extensive reporting options on how your website gets indexed (and errors and issues).

To learn more about our SEO Services click here.

If you’re a business you want to sell your products and services. People primarily search for things online now, so your website is the first line of defense to “get found”. SEO or “search optimization” ensures that you actually come up in the keyword searches you need to to get as many of those leads and convert them into sales as you can.

In the past “getting found” meant placing a an in the local paper, getting a radio or TV spot, or placing a standing yellow pages ad in the phone book. Advertising and marketing is what was necessary for your business to do well.

The really big difference between then and now is that (unlike the past) – you can’t buy search rankings. Google is very good at detecting websites that attempt to do that. SEO is small business marketing that might be even better explained as “small business networking” (online).

SEO for small businesses ensures that your website is optimized for keywords that matter to you (especially locally derivative ones), and that you have enough relevant content and links to support it.

Click here to find out more about our small business SEO Services.

An “SEO Linkwheel” is a process where you create a network of links outside your website, that points back to yours both directly and indirectly (in groups) as in the example image above. You might build up a half dozen external “hubs” outside your site with relevant content, and then begin building links for those hubs themselves (which indirectly point back to your site).

Most SEO companies build linkwheels for longer term projects and clients who want solid consistent rankings. SEO is an ongoing process and over time links “fall off” the same way as mentions in the traditional media or advertising would. Building your own “linkwheel” ensures some longer term stability for rankings that you can more directly maintain (and control).

If you’re interested in having an SEO linkwheel created as part of your online marketing please contact us through our SEO Services page.

You need some answers to the following questions:

How much online authority do you have?

How well is your website setup for SEO?

Are you using the right keywords?

Are you getting “backlinks”

Are you using social media properly?

Are you web pages getting indexed?

Are there things inhibiting your website from good rankings?

How do you get better rankings?

Exactly what do I need to do to get on the first page of Google?

Our SEO Audit services will answer all those questions and more. You can count on getting a report that will explain things in plain English, along with actionable items explaining the work that needs to be done to increase your online authority so you actually get the ROI from your website you’ve been wanting to get all along.

Please visit our SEO Services page for more information.

The topic in our shop that comes up is actual business usage of these websites. How many times have you visited a business Twitter or Facebook profile page only to find that it hasn’t been used in 6 months? Or has no followers or likes?

You can find Twitter and Facebook icons at checkout counters now “Find us on Facebook”, and sometimes it’s weird to think that you could find your favorite grocery store or cafe on Facebook. If you actually go there are find it’s not even used, you’ll just leave.

The thing that most businesses forget is the “social” part of social media management. If you don’t actually engage and interact with people, then it’s not useful – it’s useless. We we’re approached by a company to do social media management as part of their SEO services, we immediately ask how and why they’re going to use it. The last thing you want to do is get those accounts “because everyone has them”.

How and When to Use Social Media

Using social media in business is simple, if you’re actually going to connect with people. You have to actually give people a reason to interact. People don’t like things that are nameless and faceless, but if they can “connect” with something they like – that’s ok.

You shouldn’t use social media as a “sales page” listing products and prices, that’s not what it’s for. You could offer specials, contests, post images, videos, pictures, or events though. You can use social media to interact with people using products (the first 5 people to print this out and bring it in get a free coffee). You can encourage people to interact (like us for a chance at a $100 gift certificate).

Having a Twitter or Facebook account and wondering why you have no “likes” or “followers” is much like standing inside your business wondering why you have no customers. It’s basic sales and marketing 101, and if you don’t use it, then you lose opportunities.

How We Manage Social Media

Our social media management services determine the best ways to connect with your customers to gain exposure that turns into sales and leads (without annoying or offending people). Social media done right can be very useful – social media done wrong can make your business look bad.

Click here to learn more about our SEO Services including social media management.

We have clients that have had any or all of those organizations perform SEO services – with varying degrees of success. We are a Michigan based SEO company with international clients all over the world. If you’re looking for an SEO company we would be a great choice, but even if you’re not we can offer you some tips when search for a competent organization for search optimization work.

• Language: Make sure up front that there won’t be any language barrier issues. Don’t hire an outsourced company only to find out later on that English isn’t their first language.
• Timezone: If your hiring a company not local to you – you might want to make sure that they’re actually available during your standard business hours
• Expectations: Find out during the interview process for potential candidates for your SEO work exactly what they will be doing and how long it will take. Will you get regular status reports?
• Timeline: When will the work start? When will it end? What’s the duration of your contract?
• Work to be performed: What will they be doing? On-Site SEO, linkbuilding, social media, google ranking, analytics work? The more you know up front about the work to be performed, the more prepared you’ll be to review the work when the status reports arrive.

Choosing an SEO company is difficult for non-technical business owners, but not impossible. In many ways it’s the same as hiring someone for any other service to be performed, just use common sense and don’t hire a company with what seems to be unrealistic expectations. You can’t “buy rankings” in google or any other search engine – and if it seems to good to be true, it probably is!

JTPratt Media is a Michigan based SEO company with international small business and corporate clients across the globe. If you’re looking for an SEO services company, please visit our services page.