For most small and medium size businesses (SMBs), the earth upon which they marketed their businesses no longer exists. Most people recycle their yellow books before they even get used, despite that yellow page sales guy promising you the moon. Newspapers readership is in decline. In the place of these comfortable advertising mediums is that funny thing called “Google”. With more than 1,000,000,000 – that’s one billion – searches for local products and services occurring each month on Google, Yahoo and MSN, getting online and getting there fast couldn’t be more important for the SMB. But then there’s that question of where to start. You don’t have a website. You try to ask your neighbor kid about getting a website and getting to the top of Google but he speaks alien language that either causes the eyes to glaze over or a sudden compulsion to start running to occur. The reality is that a little bit of knowledge about how the search engines work will go a long way to helping you understand that alien language and develop an appropriate strategy to reach your customers where they are looking for you – that is online.
The first thing to know when it comes to online marketing is how a results page for Google, Yahoo and MSN is laid out. You’ll see from the image to the right that Google’s search results page has been broken up into three distinct parts. It’s important to understand these three parts because how you are featured in each is very different.
The part labeled with a “1” is what is called the “local results”. These results typically feature a business’ address, phone number, reviews and a map that will provide directions to your location. These results typically appear when a user types in something with a city/location and a desired service such as “Boston ant control”. While there are some caveats, having your phone number and address appear near the top of the page is well worth the effort to get listed. It’s really easy, the cost is nominal – free in many instances – and you don’t need a website to get listed in the local results. You can get listed in the three major search engines by going to the following places:
- Google Local: http://www.google.com/local/add
- Yahoo Local: http://listings.local.yahoo.com/csubmit/index.php
- MSN Local: https://ssl.bing.com/listings/ListingCenter.aspx
You can also use a service such as InLocal or GetListed to manage your listings from a single location.
Now the part labeled with a “2” is what is referred to as the “natural listings”. The process of getting listed in this section of the search results is called “search engine optimization” or “SEO”. The individual results are frequently called “SERPs” or “Search Engine Results Pages”. Google and the other search engines generally work like giant democracies where a website will appear higher in a search result based upon the number of other sites that link to it (more is better) and the copy/text on the site. It typically takes between 3 to 6 months for a site to appear for a specific query. Be very wary of companies that promise you top listings within weeks because the reality is they have no control over how fast you are listed – only the search engines do.
While you need a website to appear in this section, it doesn’t need to be particularly fancy. At minimum, it should contain the basic information about you -- who you are, what you do and how you can be contacted. If you don’t have a website, you might consider some of the free/low-cost tools such as Yola and Weebly. These services are really easy to use and for a small fee will help you get a domain and host the site for you.
The last section, section 3, is where the search engines make their money. These are advertisements where every time someone clicks on that ad, the advertiser is billed. This is referred to as “pay per click advertising” or “PPC”. In 2008, Google made nearly $27 billion from these ads. PPC advertising is one of the fastest ways to get traffic to your website and get the phone ringing but also can be the most costly. The search engines are continually running auctions based upon how many times a certain keyword is searched for and how many advertisers are advertising for that keyword. The more traffic and advertisers there are, the higher up on a page an advertiser will appear. A great example of this is the difference in price between the keyword “mesothelioma” and “Boston ant control”. Bidding on mesothelioma will cost you around $23 per click – yes, per click— while “Boston ant control” will cost about $0.05 per click.
At the very least, every business should take a look at PPC advertising as a part of their advertising strategy. While the best visitors and most traffic will come from Google, it is worth having accounts at each of the three major search engines. Most of the search engines will give you a $50 credit when you deposit at least $5 into your account, which makes it easy to experiment a bit and decide whether or not managing your PPC advertising is for you. You can sign up for accounts at each by going to the following sites:
- Google: http://adwords.google.com
- Yahoo: http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com
- MSN.com: http://adcenter.microsoft.com
Advertising your business online doesn’t have to be overly complicated. Knowing some of the basics will at least enable you to navigate the decision on whether or not to do it yourself or hire an agency to do it for you. At the very least invest some time in becoming an educated consumer. Read and ask questions – you’ll find you and your wallet better off for it.
Lee Gientke is the Director of Partner Development for OrangeSoda, a Utah based company that helps small and medium size businesses with their online marketing.
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