You vs. Your Big Competitors: SEO Levels the Playing Field

Think you can’t compete online with your bigger competitors? Not true! You can compete in your local service area if you learn how to use SEO to your advantage.

First, it’s important that you accept this fact: Most people search for a local business, like yours, on the Internet. Your website is a critical marketing tool. Your prospective customers can’t find your website if you don’t have good search rankings. Your search ranking is where your site appears when someone searches on a keyword or phrase associated with your business. Simply put, if you’re on page 2 or beyond, few people will find you. If you’re on page 1, you’re in great shape.

You want page 1 rankings on Google (in terms of SEO, success on Google is what counts) and SEO is the only way to get there. Most local businesses want rankings in the communities where their prospective customers live and work. A highly specialized and experienced SEO firm will know how to find the right mix of targeted keywords to achieve great search rankings in those local communities.

Conversely, a small business that ships products to various locations requires a more nuanced SEO plan. An experienced SEO firm will advise you on the reality of competing on a larger scale and will help you find “long-tail” keywords (instead of “head terms”) to use in your website content and they’ll target those keywords for SEO.

Head terms – high search volume, highly competitive keywords consisting of one or two word (e.g., yoga, yoga class).
Long-tail keywords – lower search volume, less competitive keyword phrases that contain three or more words (e.g., yoga class Springfield, yoga studio east side)

True, there are far fewer searches on long-tail keywords. BUT, a recent industry study demonstrated that using long-tail keywords can help a website move up in the search rankings far more rapidly than head terms. And, long-tail keywords converted two and a half times more than head terms. Last month, Google announced that they would be doing more comprehensive indexing, making long-tail documents available in their index. That means that your website content that contains long-tail keywords is now more likely to rank for relevant queries.

The experienced SEO firm will help you understand how to use the long-tail keywords in your website content and they will target those keywords with your SEO campaign. Long-tail keywords may bring smaller traffic volume to your site but chances are, it will be the profitable kind of traffic!

SEO is an ongoing, complex, grueling process and is rarely successful as a do-it-yourself project. You have to know what you’re doing and that’s the biggest challenge of all. Make the investment in professional SEO services (an experienced and reputable SEO firm—check references!) and your website will be your most cost-effective means of getting new customers.

About the Author:

Chad Hill is the CEO of HubShout, a top-rated SEO firm and SEO reseller with offices in Falls Church, VA and Rochester NY. For more information about SEO and online marketing services, please contact HubShout at 1-866-556-5427 or info@hubshout.com.

Image from iStockphoto