SEO for Small Business

[BenAtherton]

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Hi all,

I was wondering if anyone has had experience with and can recommend a good SEO expert for small businesses.

I know that SEO requires a lot of work and there are many cheaper SEO companies out there who may or may not do such a good job, but for many small businesses, $1000+ each month is a huge chunk of their income.

I realise there are many FS members in this field but I would really like to hear what others have experienced.

cheers,

[Cesar]

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Your “Best Bet” Ben, is to run an Adwords campaign for a few months, around 3 months is a good indicator, to give a feel of ROI on the services and products your provide. It will give you an excellent understanding how customers look for your services.

[Tiggerito]

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Cesar, post: 209498 wrote:

Your “Best Bet” Ben, is to run an Adwords campaign for a few months, around 3 months is a good indicator, to give a feel of ROI on the services and products your provide. It will give you an excellent understanding how customers look for your services.

I’d argue against that as most AdWords campaigns I take over are poorly managed and throw away money on irrelevant terms. A way to think there is no ROI.

I’d look for an SEO that is transparent and teaches you as you go. So after a while you can manage things on your own.

[BenAtherton]

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Thanks guys,

we have had an audit done on our site which included a large list of search terms based on keywords we provided and the average monthly volume for each. Im assuming this came from the G Keyword tool.

Perhaps we should experiment with these in some Adwords campaigns and see what happens. But we would like to find someone we can work with in the long term and also refer clients to.

[Cesar]

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BenAtherton, post: 209525 wrote:

Thanks guys,

we have had an audit done on our site which included a large list of search terms based on keywords we provided and the average monthly volume for each. Im assuming this came from the G Keyword tool.

Perhaps we should experiment with these in some Adwords campaigns and see what happens. But we would like to find someone we can work with in the long term and also refer clients to.

Morning Ben,

As with any service, you have to use your “due diligence” in hiring a reputable Adwords manager. FS is a good place to start, as most of the service providers here, have a good standing within their industry. I should know, I’ve hired a few of them to do work for me.

Aidan is very knowledgable, and has a good reputation in Adwords management.

[cos71n]

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Hi Ben,

Depending on the business and their industry they may be able to get decent SEO work done for $500 + per month, particularly if there is a local focus on their campaign.

I’d be happy to discuss this further with you if you wanted, my details are below.

[Aidan]

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Hi Ben,

Happy to look over your needs to see if I can help, if you like please PM me or get in touch via the website in my sig. I provide SEO and PPC services to web design and marketing agencies in addition to working directly with some clients.

Cesar – many thanks for the kind referral, they are always appreciated.

[Tiggerito]

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BenAtherton, post: 209525 wrote:

Perhaps we should experiment with these in some Adwords campaigns and see what happens. But we would like to find someone we can work with in the long term and also refer clients to.

If you experiment be careful about using broad match terms. This is the one mistake I see amateurs do every time. They do a broad match on a simple term then start spending all their money on a high cost low converting term.

Either do exact match for all your terms or learn about how to research and add negative keywords to control broad match scope. And learn about modified broad match which can also help you control things.

[Anonymous]

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Hey Ben,

Are you looking for SEO help for your site or to recommend to your clients also?
We work with quite a few clients up on the sunny coast including the Council.
We are actually based in Melbourne but have had quite a few referrals come through from up your way.

Question:

Did you really have over 2000 domains linking to you around march last year?

See screenshot from ahrefs.

https://www.evernote.com/shard/s333/sh/fc109f21-e733-46a7-bac6-15884bb93cf3/a009de25414993d4fbd4695122fd3427

This number of referring domains is now down to about 70 (in the tools that I used). Also ALL these domains seem to be .com.au it’s great to have lots of links from relevant local sites but ALL .com.au feels a little unnatural (not a big deal though just saying).

I noticed that lots of your links are in the footer from clients sites which is also cool but it would be great to mix it up a bit.

One easy way to do this would be to submit to a bunch of “submit your design” sites. Nice and relevant to your niche and super easy to do. You would then have a bit more of a “natural” link profile. Having a few more contextual links within the body of a few relevant sites within your niche / related niches wouldn’t hurt either.

Also your anchor text phrases could use a bit of dilution / variation again it’s not looking too bad but could be improved by switching up the terms your using to link with a bit more where appropriate.

Screenshot of anchor text distribution

https://www.evernote.com/shard/s333/sh/72fd00af-09e2-4979-8df9-730855bb7ac0/cd6920aa7bca6031a1194d474c21989f

In terms of onsite SEO I haven’t really checked but I am happy to send you a crawl report of your site from screaming frog SEO spider which is an Awesome
way to see whats going on with meta titles, descritions, redirects (and 301 other potential SEO issues). The great thing about screaming frog reports is you can dump them into excel and start editing your meta titles descriptions etc and then import back to your site (depending on the cms your using etc).

Shoot me a PM of you like.

Duncan

[BenAtherton]

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Thanks Duncan,

we are in fact looking for someone to work on our site, the trouble is finding an SEO expert who isn’t in direct competition with us (like yourself) or will work unbiased nevertheless.

Your site was returning a 500/503 today by the way! 

We are also looking for someone to refer our clients to for SEO work.

We did have someone working on our site years ago with great results but they left the industry to pursue other interests. Since then every SEO we have worked with (even reputable ones) have returned next to 0 results meaning no ROI whatsoever. Some of the more dodgy ones are probably the reason for the unnatural 2000 backlinks.

We are at the point now where we don’t even want to pay a dime until we can see proper results and a decent ROI.

Ideally I would like to find someone who would be willing to put some time into our site to prove themselves first. Then we can look at a monthly plan and or a barter arrangement whereby we promote their services on our website and refer all of our web clients to them exclusively.

I do know a fair bit about SEO but just don’t have the time for it.

In summary, we have been burned to many times so we are being VERY scrupulous from now on!

I appreciate everyone’s help and advice!

Cheers,

[BenAtherton]

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I would add that we dont expect free SEO. I wouldnt want to work for nothing and wouldnt expect anyone else to. After spending 1000s in the past though we are just very weary.

We do want to develop a long lasting relationship with the right person/people.

[Tiggerito]

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BenAtherton, post: 209581 wrote:

Ideally I would like to find someone who would be willing to put some time into our site to prove themselves first. Then we can look at a monthly plan and or a barter arrangement whereby we promote their services on our website and refer all of our web clients to them exclusively.

I don’t think any GOOD SEO will work for free, or for clams. When I started and knew nothing I would, but not now.

[MichaelDigital]

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Cesar, post: 209498 wrote:

Your “Best Bet” Ben, is to run an Adwords campaign for a few months, around 3 months is a good indicator, to give a feel of ROI on the services and products your provide. It will give you an excellent understanding how customers look for your services.

Why the hell would you spend vast sums on Adwords – you are much better off using Facebook advertising – the demographic & market range is enormous, the technology is breathtaking for targeting precisely who sees your message (I am talking newsfeed ads, not right hand side) Geographic targeting, re-targeting. It just makes sense to use Facebook over Google right now-way cheaper and better all round.
The problem with small businesses is that a lot of the owners have a limited understanding of what is going on currently online. There is a huge misconception about ‘SEO’ – and this is the reason they are being hoodwinked by so many SEO agencies who continue to use outdated and plain wrong methods – and charge like pirates into the bargain!
A little calm research would reveal that local SEO is pretty easy – you need to get your business citations home and dry via Google+, get on the map and into the “7 pack” – syndicate your biz citations on numerous local online directories, get your websites cleaned up and optimized, run a tight blog that is regularly updated with useful high value offerings. Produce short information videos that can also be optimized to appear for context searches (video in searches is very impressive) Build your business Facebook page and link it to your website-post to it regularly and create some genuine rapport with people, take advantage of the opportunity to actually speak with people on your Facebook biz page-stop talking AT people-don’t convince-engage! There are a whole raft of steps, methods and techniques the small biz operator can take that would have significant long term benefits – trouble is people are listening to the wrong message, and refuse to be open minded – educate yourself about the current state of affairs online, research widely. How many small biz owners know about YouTube & video ‘SEO’? How many small biz owners are up with the Facebook advertising platform and what it can do? Master these two platforms and you will have more business than you know what to do with.

[JohnW]

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Hi Ben,
I confidently recommend Aidan and Tiggerito.

I’ve observed their SEO comments and posts on FS for several years now and based on these I’d heartily endorse them.

Have you checked out their stats for the history of posts made on FS? If you know SEO, you should find these tell you a lot about their knowledge and attitudes.

Sorry for omitting the others who have posted above. I’m just not familiar with your work.
Regs,
JohnW

[Tiggerito]

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thorn, post: 210106 wrote:

Why the hell would you spend vast sums on Adwords – you are much better off using Facebook advertising – the demographic & market range is enormous, the technology is breathtaking for targeting precisely who sees your message (I am talking newsfeed ads, not right hand side) Geographic targeting, re-targeting. It just makes sense to use Facebook over Google right now-way cheaper and better all round.
The problem with small businesses is that a lot of the owners have a limited understanding of what is going on currently online. There is a huge misconception about ‘SEO’ – and this is the reason they are being hoodwinked by so many SEO agencies who continue to use outdated and plain wrong methods – and charge like pirates into the bargain!
A little calm research would reveal that local SEO is pretty easy – you need to get your business citations home and dry via Google+, get on the map and into the “7 pack” – syndicate your biz citations on numerous local online directories, get your websites cleaned up and optimized, run a tight blog that is regularly updated with useful high value offerings. Produce short information videos that can also be optimized to appear for context searches (video in searches is very impressive) Build your business Facebook page and link it to your website-post to it regularly and create some genuine rapport with people, take advantage of the opportunity to actually speak with people on your Facebook biz page-stop talking AT people-don’t convince-engage! There are a whole raft of steps, methods and techniques the small biz operator can take that would have significant long term benefits – trouble is people are listening to the wrong message, and refuse to be open minded – educate yourself about the current state of affairs online, research widely. How many small biz owners know about YouTube & video ‘SEO’? How many small biz owners are up with the Facebook advertising platform and what it can do? Master these two platforms and you will have more business than you know what to do with.

And after all that you can run your business

Most SMBs don’t have the time or inclination to do their own advertising, SEO and social media, citation building. Heck, it’s a hard job for me to get them to do the odd post on Facebook or write the one bit of copy I asked for.

Your tips on Local SEO are good. Again though, it takes time that most business owners don’t have. And from experience, when they do have a go they often get things wrong.

I think one should never make assumptions about what is best for a specific business. Facebook ads may work brilliant for one business but never generate a lead for another. Same with AdWords. No harm in testing both, but make sure you understand enough about them so you don’t just throw your money away. Again, I’ve taken over home-made (and professional) ad accounts that are just giving Google money.

p.s. Thanks JohnW for the endorsement

[Author]

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