Local Search Engine Optimization in the Real World

Findability for local small business websites

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We are what you would probably call on the upper end of budget small business web design companies in our area. Most of our sites are under $10,000, and although we have a few national websites and several regional sites, most of our business is local, in the eastern/central Virginia area. We’ve been around for eight years, are on Google’s first page in two markets, have well over 100 websites and 80 active clients, and generally know what we’re doing.

Lately clients have been forwarding SEO solicitations they have received to us, promising untold riches of hits, Google stardom and other inducements, all at the cost of between $29 and $49 per month. So I thought I should look into this, and see what a local business (that doesn’t sell products online) needs from Google and search engines in general. Here is what I have found:

1. Most local businesses should only be concerned with local hits. It’s obvious that a local business in Virginia shouldn’t care about getting hits from Oklahoma, but it’s even more specific than that. If you have a small landscaping business, you need two things from your website; good site content so you can direct potential customers there to see your work, and enough SEO to attract “walk in” website visitors in your immediate area.
2. You need LOCALIZED search engine optimization! A publisher client of ours in Hampton, VA got a solicitation telling him that his site was only on the fifth page of Google for his area, and needed SEO work. Since we had just finished an SEO campaign job for him, we researched that claim, since if it were true it meant that we’d done a poor job. I found out that the solicitation had Googled  “Hampton publishing”, and with that search term, he was indeed on Google’s fifth page. What the soliciting company didn’t know (since it wasn’t a local company) was that in this region, people Google “Hampton Roads”, not “Hampton”.  So I Googled “Hampton Roads publishing”, and as I suspected (and fervently hoped), the client was indeed on the FIRST page of Google.
3. Small businesses don’t need page hits as much as they need content hits; hits mean nothing if site visitors look at your Home page for 30 seconds and then leave. A local business needs to have visitors get something of value from their website, such as a menu for restaurants, portfolio examples from a photographer or weekly specials from a retailer.
4. Individual page hits aren’t important. We spent a lot of time developing an online slideshow for a performing arts school featuring their alumni accomplishments. Every month I check their Google Analytics account and find that the slideshow page did not get ONE SINGLE VISIT. While that does bug me, I find solace in the fact that the site gets huge traffic to their Programs and Admissions Policy pages. So think about it, aren’t those the exact pages that potential students SHOULD be looking at? Of course they are, so don’t concern yourself worrying about the fact that no one is looking at your About Us page.
5. What is YOUR locality? Let’s say that you’re a retail business in a field where there are many of the same type of retailers in the region. How far should you cast your net for site visitors? Simple. Think about how far YOU would drive to visit a retailer, when there might be many similar retailers closer to where you live. If you own a small hardware store people simply aren’t going to drive past twenty other hardware stores to buy from you. So you need a relatively small SEO net. Specialize your SEO for your area. Use search terms for individual neighborhoods instead of just your city. Promoting your website on your regular promo and in the local “neighborhood shopper” magazines might be much more effective than a big SEO effort.

The bottom line is that you should be concerned only about hits from people that might actually BUY something from you. When we started out we did a lot of what were then called “vanity” websites. They were basically saying, “Look at us, we have a cool website!”  But now we are at the point where having a website is not only essential to be taken seriously, most small businesses can actually use their website to increase their sales. This wasn’t always the case (depending on the type of business) even two years ago. But it is the case now.

So to sum up, you may indeed need an extensive SEO effort. But for many businesses, getting your hands dirty with local marketing might get your website a lot more quality hits than paying $49 a month to some guy 1000 miles away. Because I’d rather see a client get 300 hits a month from people in the area who WANT to see your products than 1000 hits a month from people living three states away.

Douglas Dye
President/Projects
Richmond Media

Google Yourself!

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We charge up to thousands of dollars to give websites the tools they need to get good rankings, but many of those things can be accomplished by a business owner with a little time to work on it. Since business websites are more important as time goes on, if you don’t want to pay for your hits, here are some things you can do yourself to improve your Google rankings.

Googling yourself is the easiest and probably the best way for a “layman” to make a difference in his web stats. I’ll use Besnier Financial as an example. They are an existing, real client of ours that has not had the time to do this, so you will see how it can be done. The company President, Dick Besnier, was a wrestling coach at William & Mary, so he has a bit of a head start as far as the internet goes, but you will see that without some work, that head start is wasted as far as his company is concerned.

So here we go. Google “Besnier Financial” without the quotation marks (the results will be different). First on my list (your results may be a little different) is Dick Besnier – LinkedIn, which is great, LinkedIn is a free business directory, and he already has a listing. When you follow the link though, you’ll notice that his company’s WEB ADDRESS is not listed in his profile. Dick should (since he’s already registered) contact LinkedIn and submit his company web address. LinkedIn is at the top of his business’ Google search, so you can see how a link to the website might help.

The second result is his company’s website itself. This is because his web address (besnierfinancial.com) includes the search term. Even if you have to have your webmaster get a new web address, having that address be a common search term for your industry can be CRITICAL.  Even better than having your business name in the address would be to have important search terms for your industry included. Remember, people who know your business can find your website. You want people who do NOT know your business to find it with a search engine.

The Google links under that are for va.serviceslisted.com (another free business directory), the Better Business Bureau, HotFrog (another free business directory) and Cortera.com (another free business directory). Of these, HotFrog and the Better Business Bureau do list his website.

So to review, when you Google Besnier Financial (not counting their own site), three of the first five links do not even take you to their website! Think about that for a minute. That is a complete, utter waste of resources.

How do you contact these business directories? Dick Besnier already has an account with LinkedIn (unlike many business directories, LinkedIn’s listings come from the people listed there), so he just accesses his account and adds his company’s web address to his listing.

On the va.serviceslisted.com page, there is no obvious place to change the listing to include the company web address, so you’d have to use the “Contact Us’ link at the bottom of the page, thank them for the listing, and request that they add the web address.

The Cortera.com listing shoes an “Edit Company Profile” link, so you can go through that process. Sometimes when you do that, the company will try to sell you a paid listing, which may or may not be a good investment. Remember, at this point you aren’t looking for the business listing to do anything for you except point Google toward your website as a link. Google LOVES links to your site from other industry related websites.

There are literally HUNDREDS of free business directories out there. Go Go find them!

OK, that’s your first lesson/assignment. Another thing you can do yourself might be to check the online phone books you advertise in, often your website won’t be listed, which is easy to fix. Remember, you need quality links back to your own website, preferably from business related sites or really high traffic sites.

It takes a little work, but it’s work that YOU can do yourself.

WHY IS SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION (SEO) IMPORTANT?

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SEO is important because there is no use having a business website if no on goes there. Web companies that sell template or Flash websites are usually lacking in SEO implementation. Most competitors in our price range do not have the expertise to get good Google ranking for their websites.

WHAT HELPS GOOGLE “SEE” A WEBSITE?

There are several things that Google loves to see, and a few things that will help get a good Google listing regardless of a website’s flaws.

1. PAGE CONTENT – Google looks at the actual text on the web page to find keywords to list the site appropriately. You can’t use too many keywords, or too few, you have to know how to use the right amount per text. Also, there are header tags (programming) that can highlight important text, so Google sees it as more important than other text on the page.
2. PAGE TITLE – This is the text on the top of the browser window. Google places great importance in the title tag. Have you ever seen a title tag that is so long that it literally runs off the top of the browser window? Our own Richmond Media pages do that. That is to get a lot of important words there for Google to see. How can you know if a website is badly designed for SEO? One easy way is when you see a title that says, “Welcome to (company name)”. First, what is there that Google can use? People usually search Google for services and products, they rarely Google the actual name of your business. Second, there are over 80 million websites with the word, “Welcome” in the title. How can THAT help your website?
3. BACKWARD LINKS – Backward links are links from other sites leading back to your site. This signifies to Google that your site is “important”. To see the backward links for Richmond Media, click here. For other sites, replace richmondmedia in the address bar with the other site’s name. One reason that we put “website designed and maintained by richmond media” at the bottom of all our websites is because we list those websites on our own site, creating backward links for both them and us. Also, Google judges the importance of backwards links by relevance to your site’s key words. So the “link farms” from the nineties do not do any good any more.
4. URLs – Google likes it when the actual URL (.com) address of the website contains important info. So buying “hamptonlampsales.com” is going to be much more effective than buying “ronslampsales.com”, because the name itself will attract Google hits.
5. RESOURCE WEBSITES – Rather than just highlighting your product or service, if you can become known as a place for people to get information about the field you are in, Google will list your site higher. This is obviously more useful for a medical practice than for a restaurant, but many types of clients (including retail clients) can post industry info that can draw site visitors.
6. LONGEVITY – One indisputable fact is that the longer a website is online, the better the Google ranking it will get, so even a badly designed website can get a decent ranking eventually. If you see a bad website that does well on Google, this is probably why.
7. MORE – I don’t want to write a book here, so other important things for a good Google listing are XML sitemap submission, blogs linking back to the website, addition to free business directories (LinkedIN, Plaxo, etc.) creating a relevant Wikipedia page (for relevant clients) and more.

WHAT’S WRONG WITH FLASH WEBSITES?

With a Flash website, all text is embedded into Flash media itself. Google relies heavily on the text in a website, and cannot see the text imbedded in a Flash website. Many Flash site designers try to use metakeywords, an old programming tag that Google doesn’t even use anymore. Aside from a good page title, there’s not much that a Flash site can do to get a good Google ranking.

In addition, Flash websites are very difficult to update and edit. Most potential clients to not know this, point it out to them. Tell clients that Flash sites are useful for bands and other entertainment website, but NOT for business websites.

HOW CAN YOU TELL IF A WEBSITE IS FLASH?

We design sites with Flash elements, not actual Flash websites. This allows us to use motion in a site, but still utilize a good SEO strategy. To see if a site is an actual Flash website, right click over some text on the page. If you get a window with options like, “Reload” and “Bookmark this page”, the site is not a Flash site. If you get options like, “Zoom In”, “Quality” or “About Adobe Flash Player”, you are looking at a Flash website.

WHAT’S WRONG WITH TEMPLATE WEBSITES?

Template websites are usually very professional looking, and are sold much cheaper than the sites we design. We have gotten a lot of business from clients who bought a template website, but became discouraged because the website didn’t perform as well as it looked. A web company buys a template, and then they add the client’s text and pictures to it. This saves a lot of development time for the web design company, but template sites’ Google rankings are generally horrible. Also, many Flash websites are also templates.

If someone says they got a great deal on a good looking website, chances are that it’s a template or a Flash website. Even though our sites cost more, the skill required to build a good Google ranking makes them a better deal.  In addition, most web design companies who use templates are not skilled at things like email marketing and other helpful skills.

Internet Marketing – Link Strategies

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So you have a website. Who goes to it? How do potential customers find you online?

For example, if you own a restaurant, Google “Williamsburg VA restaurants” (this will eliminate the Brooklyn, NY neighborhood called Williamsburg). Look at the listings on the first page. There are almost no actual restaurants there, there are mainly restaurant “guides”. Are you listed in those? How do you GET listed? Do you know?

In times like these, when you need your website to attract the maximum amount of traffic, we are adding affordable Internet Marketing to our services.

We know Google, we’ve been doing search engine optimization for years. We know how to get your site listed with the services that pay Google for placement. We can get you seen by more people for a bargain price, whether you’re a client of ours or not.

WHO CAN USE THIS SERVICE?
Anyone who needs to be more visible on the internet. Even if you built your own site and you like it, you can use professional help to do the linking that you don’t know how to do to get your site noticed.

Anyone with a website designed by another company. We’re not out to sell you a website, we’re looking to make the website you have more easier for people to find.

WHO DOESN’T NEED THIS SERVICE?
If you have a website primarily designed as a “business card” to direct potential clients to a portfolio of your work, you may not need this service.

The real estate market is pretty well inundated at this point. An internet marketing service like this might not be of any help to you.

But if you want your site to be seen by a larger group of people, give us a call at 757-532-7176, or email us at Nick@richmondmedia.com

Doug Dye,
President/Projects
Richmond Media

Website Strategies For Recession

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When the economy started going south in the spring, we were a little concerned about getting new clients. Surprisingly, we had the best summer we’d ever seen. Why? I’d been telling everyone I could that websites are advertising, and one of the cheapest forms of advertising at that. I guess I was right…

But what about now? Why should a business buy a website, or update an existing website right now? How can Richmond Media better serve our clients? What have we learned over the past six years, and how does it apply to the current economy? I’ll try to answer these questions below.

1. Why should a business buy a website, or update an existing website right now? Even with the economy in a slide, websites are still the cheapest form of advertising. A small business needs to use all of the tools at its disposal to stay competitive, and your website will be there long after your newspaper ad hits the recycling bin. The key is to build a smart website. Examine your business, and think about how your website can work for you. What are your business hours? What happens when a potential customer calls when you’re closed for the day? Your website is a 24/7 receptionist. If you’re a restaurant, people will want to see your menu. If you’re a contractor, people will want to see your references and examples of your work. If you’re a retail business, people will want to see your products, and they may still be at work when you close for the day. Customers will want to contact you when your phone isn’t being answered.
2. How can Richmond Media better serve our clients? We have taken several steps to help our clients during lean economic times. We’ve lowered prices somewhat. We’ve decided to offer more economical online stores, rather than the more expensive, customizable ones we had in the past. Most importantly though, we’ve encouraged our clients to think about what their website can add to their business. That means no more “Look at me, I’ve got a website!” vanity sites. It means that we’re concentrating on how a website can help your business in a direct and measurable way.
3. What have we learned over the past six years, and how does it apply to the current economy? This is the easiest of all to answer. We’ve built well over a hundred websites, in addition to interactive presentations, online training, broadband video and educational catalogs. When money’s tight, experience matters. We follow the advertising trends, and keep up with changes in web design standards. We know which trends to ignore, we know when to advise a client to use their website as a business card and when to go all out for Google hits. We know when to be bold and when to follow the pack, because business strategy matters. I often tell clients that there are no pioneers in business web design, and it’s one of the most important things I’ve learned in a decade of commercial web design. The big difference is that I have learned when a business should be a pioneer, and when they should not.

So those are my thoughts on web strategies in these economic times. Are we the cheapest web design company out there? Not even close. Are we the best value for your advertising dollar? I will suggest that yes, we are.

Doug Dye,
President/Projects
Richmond Media

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