Many small businesses think they can’t do SEO, or can’t afford someone to do it for them. Here’s a truth: Once you’ve got your on-page SEO done properly (which is all the stuff WITHIN your website, that really your web company should have done for you when they built your site), and you’ve done a few basic things (registered with local directories, got Google to index you), it’s time for off-page SEO. And nowadays, that’s where you can really do loads of things yourself to get traffic to your site.
First, do the numbers
Say you’re a real estate company and you need leads. You have decided that for 100 visitors to your site, you get 2 conversions (i.e. people enquiring/filling in a form). You’ve done this by looking at your Google Analytics stats, to see how many people fill in your form against visitors (You’ve not got Google Analytics? It’s free! Get it added to your site now. It tells you where people come from, in what numbers, what they do on your site, etc.)
Trouble is, you’ve only had 200 visitors in the last month. That’s 4 enquiries. You’d rather have 40. That means you need 2000 visits a month. Where are you going to get the other 1800 from?
The good and the bad of professional SEO
Now I’m not going to tell you that professional SEO companies can’t get you that traffic – they can. They will SEO every property on your site, recommend changes to this, that and the other, buy links from other sites and directories, and generally spend a lot of your cash.
You’ll get the traffic. You may even get more leads. But you know what? You won’t get the 40 you were expecting from your newly found 2000 visitors. Why? Because the SEO company is not – whatever they tell you – truly in touch with your customers: what they do, where they go on the web, who they are etc. So they won’t ge ttraffic that’s as TARGETED as you might like.
You know your customers better than anyone! And it’s up to you to go and find them… The best bit is, you simply need to use your common sense and work at it. Here are just three ideas. when you get a feel for what you’re doing, you’ll realise that all of this is just an extension of normal marketing and normal networking:
- Join as many forums as you can where your customers hang out. Don’t know where they hang out? Ask them! Don’t hard sell – just offer your expert advice, and where applicable, a link to your website. (You can put your website in the forum signature, so they can find you if they want without any need for a “hard sell”.)
- Find a popular blog that covers what you sell, and add comments to the blog posts where you have something constructive to give. Show your expertise (again, without any hard sell – although there’s nothing wrong with adding your website or a link to a page on it where applicable) and respect the conversation
- Join and participate in Facebook Groups in your area – type relevant topics into the Facebook search bar, and browse the groups that appear – join and participate in any that are relevant and popular, offering useful material that maybe the other members don’t have, thanks to your professional position.
See a link in all the above? It’s giving, not taking. Give advice, support, encouragement and information, and people will come to you when they want what you’re selling.
Pennies make pounds
You may say “Should I really be engaging with one or two people in this way when I need 1000s of new visitors?”, but it’s my experience that win an evangelist and you win many of their friends too.
Soon, if you’re diligent about your “outreach” programme online and you are also patient, the snowball will start and you’ll have 1000s of genuine visitors, who fill in that form of yours far more often than two times in 100. And no big SEO company fees.
By Phil Morse
