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.