SEO is a fancy-schmancy term for utilizing “common sense words” that make your business website more attractive to uppity search engines like Google, Yahoo!, and Bing. SEO actually stands for “search engine optimization,” which makes that opening sentence make way more sense now, right? I guess we’re done here. Maybe not.
Ok, here’s an explanation that might clear everything up: search engine optimization is the process of refining your website so that search engines approve of it enough to recommend it to potential customers. Better? In other words, Google, Yahoo!, and Bing are your most important website critics, and when you please your top critics, they refer your website (business) to potential customers who get online and search for terms related to your business.
So, why does SEO matter for small businesses?
In essence, your website works as a “second storefront,” and search engines act as your biggest resource for referring your “store,” or website, to customers who need your services. For corporations, SEO is a BIG part of their marketing strategy. For one, it’s “free” marketing, in a sense, because SEO offers a way to “advertise” without paying advertising fees. However, in order for big corporations to utilize SEO to compete in global markets, they often have to hire whole teams to employ SEO strategies.
And that price tag is what scares small business owners from investing in SEO or even trying to learn SEO themselves. But small business owners, even very small business owners don’t need to be intimidated by search engine optimization. SEO ain’t nothing but a word game, and it’s easy to implement yourself once you understand how it works. If you have a little common sense and know a little sumpin-sumpin about your own small business, you can employ SEO on your small business website and be ranking in no time.
Ranking? Stop throwing in weird, smelly terms. Just answer the question, ‘What is SEO?!’
Stop getting your panties in a bunch. Ranking on search engines is not stinky nor is it a big deal to understand. It just means your business shows up in top results when someone searches for your services. You’ve seen it in action yourself. I promise, and contrary to how your mother raised you, ranking high is a good thing.
A dirty little story about why ranking high with SEO matters
I needed a handyman to unclog my toilet. It was in a bad way, and I had exhausted all my DIY toilet-unclogging knowledge. Knowing Bobby Dean had a plumbing service down the road, I grabbed my phone and started searching for his plumbing business on Google.
“Plumber in [my town]” resulted in the other guy 40 miles down the road.
“Plumber near me” gave me that guy again.
For the love, there were only two plumbers within an 80-mile radius. How hard could it be to find the other one, who was Bobby Dean, who lived right down the road from me? I could not think of the name of Bobby Dean’s plumbing business to save my soon-to-be-flooded bathroom floor.
So, as my toilet gurgled and brown water edged its way toward the top of the rim, I resorted to the family chain. I called Wanda, Bobby Dean’s aunt, to get Bobby Dean’s phone number, but she was out picking okra in the garden … most likely. I tried Bobby Dean’s cousin, his neighbor, and brother-in-law, but they were all at the River Creek Festival in the county over and wouldn’t answer their text messages. I’m not even sure they had service over there anyway. Ugh.
Curses on non-sensical SEO keywords
Desperately wanting to keep my business local, I sat down with Google once again and got serious. I tried everything I could think of to find him, including searches like “plumbers nearby,” “independent plumbers,” and “plumbers in my county,” and finally, after 30 minutes of searching with phrases I thought made sense, I poked in, “Bobby Dean Plumber Plumbing [my town] he who plumbs plumbing services plumber of all plumbers PLEASE,” and I found a single link to Bobby Dean’s website … on page 22 of my Google search results.
Oh yeah, “Bobby Dean’s Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap,” that’s the name of his plumbing business. Why couldn’t I think of that?
I grimaced and clicked on it anyway hoping to not find a pornographic ode to AC/DC, which thankfully was not there. Whew. But Bobby Dean’s one-page website with three pictures of a clogged toilet and an AOL email address was less than impressive. There wasn’t even a dang phone number! Aggghhhh, curse you, Bobby Dean!!!
One businesses’ bad SEO is another small business owner’s gain
My toilet gurgled something fierce about that time, so I just did the easiest thing and called that guy 40 miles down the road. Four hours later, after I’d mopped my flooded bathroom three times, I saw Bobby Dean creep by my house in his pickup truck reallll slow like, watching as his only competitor in four counties pulled into my driveway.
Bobby Dean waited until Sunday at church to bring it up in front of everyone, right as I was sinking my teeth into that last piece of Better Than Sex pie that I had to fight Darla tooth-and-nail to get and then scrape from the corner of the pan.
“So, I saw you had some plumbing problems the other day. Why didn’t you call me?” Bobby Dean asked, loud enough for the east side of the room to hear, of course.
“I tried,” I said, not caring that my mouth was completely full, and a mixture of chocolate pudding, cream cheese, and nutty crust was dangling from my bottom lip. “But I couldn’t find your phone number.”
“You should have checked my website.”
A notice that I’d accidentally spit a piece of chewed-up pie on the table in front of my plate, but I just let it ride and stared the owner of Bobby Dean’s Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap plumbing business dead in the eye, recalling my muddy bathroom floor.
“I couldn’t find it, either.”
Bobby Dean was perplexed. He’d lost a customer, and he didn’t get any pie. But what’s worse? He wasn’t even curious about why I couldn’t find his website.
The moral of this bad SEO story
I noticed the other plumbing guy from 40 miles away pulling into my neighbor’s drive a few days later.
Then, I saw Bobby Dean eyeballing my neighbor at church the next Sunday. Bobby Dean went for the pie this time, though, before grilling my neighbor about why he called the other guy to fix his plumbing.
“Why didn’t you just use my website?” Bobby Dean finally asked.
My neighbor already had pie by the time Bobby Dean got over to him.
“I couldn’t find it,” I heard my neighbor say.
Except he didn’t spit his pie on the table.
And I saw Bobby Dean put his think thinking cap on. He seemed to be a little more curious about why his website wasn’t working like it should.
I’ll talk to him next Sunday and tell him how a little bit of SEO can help.
And that, my friends, is why SEO and ranking on Google are important for your small business.
