Mediaboss Marketing

Insiders find every aspect of search engine optimization (SEO) fascinating. But the real world doesnt. An SEO professional may live and die by every algo update and latest social signal split-test, but please know that the non-SEO world couldnt care less.

Take, for example, a carpet cleaner, a dentist, a veterinarian, roofer, plumber, mover, even doctors, lawyers... you get the idea. They are busy running their businesses. Over the years a divergence has developed between the SEM blogs and the realities of small business marketing. A course correction is needed.

Lets first be clear, small business needs online marketing. In fact, many of these businesses need online marketing far more than their larger corporate brothers. The big guys can swing fat SEO budgets around as they explore different social media outlets and experiment with social engagement as an alternative customer service strategy.

The small business profile is not nearly as pretty, particularly in this economy. Often hampered by small margins, super tight budgets and a general lack of respect from vendors who give them their lesser-trained account managers, many small business owners are living on a frustrating edge.

A small business owner who has been around for a while is often especially unhappy with the migration to online marketing. The rules used to be simple. You set up shop, bought your yellow pages ad, and then had a modest budget for other media outlets such as radio, newsprint, fliers, coupons and perhaps local television.

While youd expect great enthusiasm for the new online economy, you often hear frustration and bitterness. Why is small business so mistrustful of online marketing? And what is so special about SEO that has them particularly distrustful?

Last years big Panda updates were the obvious big SEO news. It was, as algorithm updates go, a major change that impacted 12 percent of Googles search results. And SEO shop phones across the country rang off the hook from small business owners who were scrambling to figure out what it all meant for their traffic.

Trained empiricists will be fascinated by the scientific reviews of Panda. But this is inaccessible to small business owners who really ask questions such as,Hey, does Panda mean that Google is finally going to get me for that guy I hired last year to spin articles and post them to 2,000 article sites?

Was Panda really about thin content as everybody claimed? You can find all sorts of human and machine spun content still warm and cozy in Googles database today, leading many to believe Panda was really more about duplicate content (still) than anything else.

But back on point, the small business world isn't interested in debates. They want the yellow pages, conceptually anyway. And SEO is about as far from that as possible because the rules keep changing.

Read the rest here:
5 Reasons Why Small Business Owners Distrust SEO