One advantage small businesses have is that they know their business very well.  You would hope that this is the case if you’re the owner of a business/website or both. With that information a blog can easily be created, maintained, and most importantly shared through your social media network.

The disadvantages of conducting your own search engine optimization is that it straps you of time; it simply prevents small businesses from focusing on their clients or customers.  The hours some online Marketing Specialists spend on blogging, link building, and social media can be mind-boggling. An average of eight to ten hours on five days a week.  (Some SEO addicts spend their weekends working on optimizing sites, LOL.) They can be compared to children and young teens who spend the same amount of time on video games.  In a perfect world a full-blown Internet Marketing firm has a department for each of the Internet Marketing divisions.

Small Business Online Marketing Departments

• Content Writer Department
• Link Building Department
• Graphic Design Department
• Social Media Department
• Internet Marketing Department
• Keyword Research Department
• Web Design Department

All of these departments play an important part in optimization a website.  SEO Moz suggests having a 3-tiered structure:  The Content Writer, The Link Builder, and the SEO Commander.  The fact of the matter is that no one can handle all of these by themselves.  They will need someone, somewhere along the way to have an effective marketing plan.

Delegating the duties between the different departments saves time and makes the marketing efforts effective.

 Once you have your team in place, a SEO Chief (Commander, Head Honcho, or whatever you wish to call them) has to give the team direction.  The Internet is like one of the seven seas, it is so easy to get lost in and have no direction.  Just flowing with the waves won’t get you to your destination.

 The Google Penguin update had most website owners running around trying to figure out what was wrong with their websites.  Page rankings were falling like flies causing a massive panic depending on the level of Black Hat SEO tactics they were using.  Even the websites in the top industries were getting slapped by the Penguin updates that took place in late in April.  The difference was that the companies with large budgets or SEO department could make the adjustments expeditiously. It only took a matter of an hour or so to figure out the solution and then take action.  (Messages were given through Google Webmaster.)  They had the manpower and team in place to make the proper adjustments.

What Small Businesses Can Do To Improve Their SEO

 The good news is that small businesses can restrategize their SEO efforts.  Do your selves a favor and please stop over stuffing your keywords on every page of your website.  If you read it out loud then you will be able to see how unnatural the writing sounds.  Excessive footer links are a no-no, as well.   Optimize each page with one or two keyword phrases and make the content around the keywords related to them.  For every time your keyword is used, there should be, roughly, two hundred words around it.

 Two Things to keep In Mind For The Future Of Your SEO:

1. Natural Link Building.
2. Quality Content.

 The back links should be in variations.   They should be used with your top keywords or you run into the mistake of having all of the anchor text links looking identical.  Remember that the links are supposed to let people and the search engines know what the website/webpage are about.  We are here to help if you have any questions regarding your SEO.

Every site has its own history. (I like comparing the web to nature because it just makes better sense to me.) Just like you and I, we have “reputation” in our natural environments, what we do reflects others opinions about who we are. When one person is consistently achieving results for something, they become trusted for their talents. In a pack of wolves, there is always a dominant wolf, AKA the wolf pack leader. The leader builds a “reputation” for dominating. All the others follow the leader, simply because of its “reputation”.   In this example, the leader has authoritative qualities. Sound familiar?

The web is no different from nature…

Search engine optimizers are new age sheepherders and here’s the Wiki:

“Shepherding is one of the oldest occupations, beginning some 6,000 years ago in Asia Minor. Sheep were kept for their milk, meat and especially their wool. Over the next millennia, sheep and shepherding spread throughout Eurasia.

Some sheep were integrated in the family farm along with other animals such as chickens and pigs. To maintain a large flock, however, the sheep must be able to move from pasture to pasture; this required the development of an occupation separate from that of the farmer. The duty of shepherds was to keep their flock intact and protect it from wolves and other predators. The shepherd was also to supervise the migration of the flock and ensured they made it to market areas in time for shearing. In ancient times shepherds also commonly milked their sheep, and made cheese from this milk; only some shepherds still do this today.”

And the analogy…

Our demographic are sheep.

 “To maintain a large flock, however, the sheep must be able to move from pasture to pasture” to guide a prospect into a sale we must be able to move the prospect from a resourceful piece of content to another resourceful piece of content.

“The duty of shepherds was to keep their flock intact and protect it from wolves and other predators” I’m not calling all web browsers sheep. A sheepherder’s job is no different then an Internet Marketers. In this business, we look for a demographic to link to. However, we must also protect our investment from the wrong demographic (bad quality or invaluable linking). Timing is also an important factor for some demographics, via social networks, and blogging.  Just like the duty of a shepherd: “The shepherd was also to supervise the migration of the flock and ensured they made it to market areas in time for shearing”. When something relevant to your demographic gets mentioned or is trending on a social network, blog, or forum an opportunity for linking opens. If you get to the post too late, you will not be able to benefit as much from the demographic as you would of if you were involved at the peak of the conversation.

More about Sheep’s! Yeah Really!

“In many societies shepherds were an important part of the economy. Unlike farmers, shepherds were often wage earners, being paid to watch the sheep of others.” SEO’s are hired to watch out for and create links for others. We are in charge of the demographic (sheep).

Here is the juicy part.

“Shepherds would normally work in groups either looking after one large flock, or each bringing their own and merging their responsibilities. They would live in small cabins, often shared with their sheep and would buy food from local communities. Less often shepherds lived in covered wagons that travelled with their flocks.”

SEO’s should work in groups. We may have sites that relate, and we can help each other create useful content for these sites. We are handling businesses demographics by herding their sheep. So, why not work in groups?

Achieving success by working in groups.

As SEO’s we should all follow good practices and help each other grow.  Once we build good reputation by educating the web, we earn rankings. SEO’s have a hand full of sites they can exchange links with. However, reciprocating is not acceptable and many SEO’s don’t follow good practices. Conclusion, if SEO’s only network relevant sites without reciprocation, the users will be happy, and so will the search engines. Content is not key in SEO. Relevant content from authoritative sources is!

No more sheep talk I promise.

The good, The Bad and The Unknown!

From when a site is built, to the time it is completed and ranking, link exchanging is ongoing. When comparing sites, look at how many links all the sites on the first page have. Then look at the quality of these links. The sites that were rewarded did not have a 4^th of the amount of links that some of the first page rankers had. However, the latest update cleared the path for success.

With Google’s latest Penguin update, we have been rewarded from long-term link building campaigns.

When link building, every site you place a link to will affect the business’s “reputation” in the users eyes, followed by the search engines spy’s.

The Good –

Linking Sites relevant to your niche that helps users find more information is all you need. When linking sites, create unique text to link the sites. Link Anchoring “Click her to learn more about [exact keyword]” using diversity, the link should describe the destination. The good educate the web!

Social Sites can build traffic by entertaining users or by helping them learn more. Use social networks to find your demographics needs and earn links. Once your sites have value, you have value. Our search engine results are based on our “Reputation”. The good educate the web!

The Bad –

Linking Sites from every direction without care. Linking to sites that don’t relate to the users needs won’t carry any value. If the user doesn’t benefit, neither do the search engine results. Link anchoring the same [exact keyword] surrounded by irrelevant text will not help your rankings, in order for authoritative link juice to pass through there must be relevancy. Can you imagine what spam sounds like when you read it out loud? How does that affect a business’s reputation?   If you get a link from a site with a PR3 that is not one bit relevant to the niche. It will not pass as much link juice as a relevant site with a PR3. The bad pollute the web!

Social Sites with spam are just plain annoying! If no one is clicking, no one is buying.  Placing a link on a thread that is not relevant to you niche is like putting a billboard on the bottom of the ocean. In my opinion, if your not there to help, you are there to pollute. The bad pollute the web!

The Unknown – (blogs and forums)

Linking Sites in the gray area can be useful in some cases, if it can help a user find value. Anchoring [exact keyword] signatures on every blog post and forum post looks like an attempt to manipulate the search engine. However, anchoring with diversity in relevant places does help. Whenever linking a site in the gray area, use caution. The gray area can do one of two things… Help your results, or hurt them… You have two options. Option 1: Educate the web! Option 2: Pollute the web!

Social Sites in my opinion don’t have a gray area. It’s black and white!

The more connections an SEO builds the more link requests get presented for different sites. The hard part is telling a site with a Page Rank 5 that is not relevant to you is:

My Friend You Will Become?

Larry Page, Google CEO, speaking at Zeitgeist 2012.

White hat search marketers read and follow Google Guidelines. What should they tell clients whose competitors use black hat techniques (such as using doorway...

The Penguin update sent a strong message that not knowing SEO basics is going to be dangerous in the future. You have to have the basics down or you could be at risk.

Google Updates | Absolute Placement Today Blog

Starting up your own consulting agency can be quite a difficult process and often times the most challenging step to your endeavour will be finding new customers or clients.

 We mentioned a few weeks back, “Introduction To Pinterest ” how Pinterest’s popularity skyrocketed and has become the second most popular social media site.   Out of nowhere, Pinterest’s beat Myspace and LinkedIn in one swoop.  The fascination with people taking pictures and creating videos with their smartphones is phenomenal!  The geniuses of the world figured that Facebook could not be the only venue for people to express themselves.  Google just bought Intstagram for one billion greenbacks.  There hasn’t been a buzz like this since when Google bought Youtube for $1.65 Billion making them the leader of online video.

Funny Pictures Are Increasing Web Traffic To Small Businesses

 While Facebook and Instagram go head to head in boxing matches over the picture crave market, small businesses owners are reaping the benefits.  A small business owner needs to be on top of their game or they will lose out on free web traffic.  Whenever you upload a new picture unto your website place it on Pinterest or Instagram as well.  Here’s an idea- place the image on all the sites that you possibly can.  If you’re lucky, you will be fortunate to place a link back to your website.

 We get excited when we are able to place back links to our site and so should you.  Make the pictures and videos interesting.  Make them funny as heck.  Surf the web and you’ll see there are plenty examples.  For instance, we pinned on our Pinterest account a picture of a young boy and his grandpa using a metal dictator to search for links.  The picture itself may not be super funny but the caption in the picture is hilarious!  This is also labeled as a “Meme.”  Yahoo! being one of the smartest search engines on the planet jumped on the opportunity to create a way for people to create their own meme without fancy software’s such as Photoshop.  Go to Meme.Yahoo.com with your Yahoo account.  It is very easy to set up an account if you don’t already have one.

 (Check it out the article here: Link Hunting)

 Notice how the joke is related to our SEO Services.  You should do the same with your business pictures and share them social network accounts.  We are sure that you’ll be able to find pictures on the Internet or create your own with Photoshop.  You’ll notice with your Google Analytics that there is an increased traffic from new web visitors.

 Other Great Video and Picture Sites are:

• Vimeo
• Stumble Upon
• Meme.Yahoo
• Flicker
• Tumblr

 Now, what are you waiting for, start uploading awesome pictures and videos today!  Any questions or comments, we will be more than happy to answer them.