A smaller number of very smart people have developed similar, but specialized, SEO expertise in support of small businesses seeking to be found by consumers who increasingly search the web, and not the print yellow pages, for local products and services.
In summary, there is a subtle, but significant, difference between SEO for bigger businesses and Local-SEO for smaller businesses. In an attempt to explain the differences, I’ve come up with an analogy that I hope most people can relate to.
Imagine the following:
- The world is one huge yard which is owned by an individual named Mr. Google.
- The yard is covered in leaves and Mr. Google is motivated to collect every single one of them.
- Big leaves represent big business — small leaves represent small business.
- Big, heavy-weight leaves are well behaved, perched perfectly in the grass, patiently awaiting Mr. Google’s rake.
- Tiny, light-weight leaves are poorly behaved, fickle, unorganized, fluttering in the breeze not quite sure where to go.
- Mr. Google lets out a big sigh and wishes the small leaves behaved like the big ones.
Raking Leaves
The point is that getting small businesses to comply with Mr. Google’s wishes is a very difficult task. There are too many of them. Here one moment, gone the next. While some have purpose and focus, most are distracted and inconsistent.
In my opinion, it’s one of the major reasons why local-SEO for SMBs is so much harder than traditional SEO for medium and large businesses. It’s also why a huge commercial opportunity remains wide open to help millions of SMBs get discovered in local search in a manner that is immune to their inherently fickle, distracted and “leaf-like” behavior.
Also, don’t underestimate that the rake was designed for big leaves, not small leaves. For small leaves, a different tool, built for a different purpose, with different biases, works much better. A vacuum, for instance, works much better for small leaves.
I’m a small leaf. Small leaves are what the web is all about. Mr Google (and the under-gardeners) need to understand why small leaves are the way forward. ;o)
True but don’t forget that in the most lucrative areas (gambling and finance and the adult sector) there is so much money to be made that the big leaves sometimes behave very badly indeed and do all kinds of crazy stuff that little leaves would never have the resources to engage in…there are examples of this, erm, littered across the web…eg insurance companies buying domains, spamming them to the top to get a surge of sales, then starting again once that site’s been binned..
Will makes a very good point about the behavior of big leaves in certain areas — but i still think it fits within the analogy. In other words, big leaves understand that it’s better to be raked by Google than go it alone — and they will do whatever is necessary to make into Mr. Google’s bag.
Excellent analogy…HUGE opportunity!
Is the point being made that convincing small businesses that SEO is in their long-term interests is difficult to do or that actually obtaining organic placement for local businesses is difficult?
Small business owners (and all website owners, for that matter) need to build their websites according to search-friendly principles. A good SEO service will make such a recommendation, but it would be great if this detail was already in place – I haven’t even mentioned keyphrases or links yet.
Next, they need to understand how their customers might use a search engine. A new business owner, say, a tax accountant, might assume that customers looking for this service will type “tax accountant” into Google.
This is what they might ask their SEO to optimise as their primary keyphrase. While some users might type this in their first G search, they’ll realise they need a local, bricks-and-mortar business and it would be better to add a suburb or city to the search term.
The typical new SME doesn’t have the SEO budget to rank for a generic, non-geographical phrase. True story: I once had a call from a small cheese manufacturer with a 5-page website who wanted to rank #1 globally for “cheese”.
Education about search behavious is the key.
100% agree that education is a critical component of helping SMBs (small leaves) get better at local search.
Unfortunately, it’s difficult (impossible) to educate 15 million SMBs — most of whom are incredibly busy/distracted people.
The key in my opinion is to create platform services that deliver “built in” SEO value which is immune to SMB indifference or ignorance.
Undoubtedly, such services will fall short of what a professional SEO expert could deliver — but there is a ton of “long tail” and local search value that can be created by simply capturing “small leaf” content in clever and efficient ways.
This is a very good analogue, at you got it spot on here mate.
Is your post endorsing Vertical search?
Thanks for the comment. Vertical search is a part of my thinking here — but i prefer to think more in terms of long tail search. Tiny bits of data at the very edge of the world’s information regardless of the vertical.