Why Small Businesses Need SEO!

[japancool]

To be fair to Justin I'd have to agree that the onpage SEO on the site in your sig IS pretty poor. If it's turning over 50k p/m now, then I'd imagine that it could be generating much, much more revenue if you sorted out the structure, optimised it all properly, and then carried out some off page work. You're leaving a ton of money on the table at the moment

Note: I'm assuming that figures you quoted were from search engine traffic and not some other marketing stream?

You could always offer to do it for him for free, and take a commission based on an increase in sales attributable to improved SEO.

 

[Ian J]

I'm curious Bill, I think you are the only person that's posted on this thread with an actual example of a business which is working without online marketing.

A buddy of mine set himself up as a building and electrical contractor on a small scale three years ago. His website is awful and amateurish and when I told him that his website was rubbish he said that he would have a look at it when he had some spare time. That was two years ago and he still hasn't found time to look at it as they are too busy working

 

[ZeroDouble]

You could always offer to do it for him for free, and take a commission based on an increase in sales attributable to improved SEO.

I don't really get your point, but thanks for the business advice...

I think I'll stick to working on my own projects though, as I don't sell SEO services. I was actually just trying to help the guy out by offering an impartial opinion, but hey ho...

 

[japancool]

I don't really get your point, but thanks for the business advice...

I think I'll stick to working on my own projects though, as I don't sell SEO services. I was actually just trying to help the guy out by offering an impartial opinion, but hey ho...

Well fair enough.

My point is that, where SEO companies are confident that their services will result in higher sales, then offering services on a commission basis should be a viable business model - IF they're as sure as they make out.

 

[justinaldridge]

I don't get your point either. Bill's example is the only real example that's been posted here. Would love others to comment on their own businesses and the fact that they don't do SEO/PPC/Online Marketing, etc.

 

[japancool]

My point is that all of the SEO companies out there are touting the benefits of SEO, and saying that clients are throwing away money by not doing it, that they could increase their sales and whatnot. If that's the case, and the SEO providers are absolutely confident that their services will deliver a benefit, why not offer the service on a commission basis, based on increased sales?

So the customer only pays if the promised benefits are delivered. It's a model that works in many service sectors.

 

[fisicx]

IWould love others to comment on their own businesses and the fact that they don't do SEO/PPC/Online Marketing, etc.

I don't. Unless you consider offering help and advice being marketing. I get most of my work through referrals.

 

[Alessandro Paletta]

Hi Justin
the site in my sig is a second site that we launched just last year (end of July to be precise) There has been no SEO carried out apart from the SEO plugin, but it's December turnover was over £50k. Our other site is built on Magento and was the subject of all the SEO. This turns over £100k+ pcm but it has been around since 2007. All in all not a bad turnover for sites that aren't in a significant position in the search results to generate a good level of traffic

Those figures are fantastic... but imagine what it could be if your website and SEO were up to scratch? Could double those figures

 

[fisicx]

But your thread is: Why Small Businesses Need SEO

Bill's example shows you don't need SEO although I will agree it may be useful.

 

[ZeroDouble]

Well fair enough.

My point is that, where SEO companies are confident that their services will result in higher sales, then offering services on a commission basis should be a viable business model - IF they're as sure as they make out.

Getting the rankings wouldn't be a problem if you allocated the necessary resources and obviously knew what you were doing, so I'm not sure that that aspect would be an issue. Unless of course you were trying to rank a niche that was beyond your skill level, but then you wouldn't take the job on in the first place anyway.

I'm sure that some probably do make that kind of arrangement with their clients, but IMO it's a flawed model. The reason being that too many things would be out of the SEOs control, things that would potentially dictate how much they got paid for their time. The SEO would have no control over how their client runs their business, especially their sales funnel, so a lot of money could be lost (or not earned) from that aspect. Or as a more extreme example, they could go out of business before the SEO work was complete and leave the SEO high and dry.

The other reason, is that it's not really worth an SEOs time to do all that work up front without financial gain. I mean, decent off page SEO that will give long lasting results is (very) time consuming, as is restructuring a site, optimising all the pages correctly, sorting out the internal linking, and all the other onpage stuff. Obviously you can outsource some of it, but IMO for most tasks the more you do that, the more the quality tends to slip anyway. There's also the financial outlay to consider, and I can't see anyone good at SEO taking on all that risk when they could just work elsewhere and get paid for it (or just do it all on their own).

That said, it could probably work as some kind of partnership agreement or joint venture, if you like, but I think that expecting an SEO to finance the growth of your business just because you've had some bad experiences in the past is probably a bit of a stretch to say the least.

On another note, I actually agree that many small businesses are wasting their time / money using SEO as a way to market themselves, as most will struggle to get a return from it, unless of course they buy cheap services, which will inevitably lead to failure at some point (and more conversations like these).

Don't get me wrong though, I'm not defending SEOs / SEO agencies, as I've had my fair share of bad experiences in the past as well. Just really playing devil's advocate...

 

[justinaldridge]

I don't. Unless you consider offering help and advice being marketing. I get most of my work through referrals.

Ever since I started working for myself I have only ever generated all my business online. I have over 700 websites. What's wrong with wanting to understand how others generate business without using the internet?

It certainly adds to the theme of the thread. Not sure of the need to accuse me of just pushing my services...which I never do.

 

[fisicx]

I didn't. I just answered the question you posed.

 

[Chris Ashdown]

Justin

I just visited your site and checked mine against your FREE instant SEO report for your website and tried Four different key words and got exactly the same report, which makes me think your report engine is a fake and it just brings up the same poor data results rather than actually doing a search

This is hardly the sign of a professional company

 

[justinaldridge]

Justin

I just visited your site and checked mine against your FREE instant SEO report for your website and tried Four different key words and got exactly the same report, which makes me think your report engine is a fake and it just brings up the same poor data results rather than actually doing a search

This is hardly the sign of a professional company

Thanks Chris but it's hardly a fake if it produced a report. I'll take a look at the reports requested and see what it produced and get back to you.

Thanks.

 

[Chris Ashdown]

What else is it then it ask's for your web site and then replies with what looks like a pre made answer report telling you how bad your site is in the most basic terms, I don't believe its actually a report from my site just some marketing bumf pretending to be a true report

I would welcome others to check the results themselves

 

[justinaldridge]

@Chris Ashdown you are right, it's not working. We changed servers and DNS over the weekend and the form communicates with Analytics SEO to produce the report and it looks like it has stopped working for some reason.

We've got our developer on it. I'll let you know when it's fixed.

Thanks for the heads up!

 

[StevePoster]

"Why small businesses needs SEO"

With respect for those small businesses without websites and also doesn't need an SEO but for referrals and other offline marketing will do success for their business. However, these small businesses still needs different medium to reach their target audience just like online marketing by the use of websites or blog sites to expand the influence of your business for the users.

 

[Mike Wilford]

Agree.

But SEO is getting more expensive, time consuming and slow return. Lot of small businesses prefer social which is much easier to manage for them (less techie).

Yes because on the surface people can "do social" but for many businesses search is the main driver of leads. - especially if you are B2B!