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Increasing Competition in the Small Business Online Marketplace - Unfortunate Reality or?

For small companies, just having a Web site isnt enough anymore. To be successful online, they must learn to harness one of the Webs most powerful tools: search engines.

Kelly K. Spors The Wall Street Journal (April 30, 2007)

With each passing day more and more consumers turn to the internet in their quest to satisfy their needs and wants. Successful businesses realized this long ago, invested accordingly, and, taking a build it and they will come approach, established powerful web sites.

This approach has been largely sufficient for a great many well established businessesespecially those with strong brand recognition. This is my mother consumers are drawn to their site by way of strong brand identity. However, smaller companies and those lacking established branding who leaned on this build and wait method feel like they are missing the boattheir sites arent seeing much traffic.

For many small businesses this provides proof that they were right all alongthe internet isnt the boon it was supposed to be. They view their Web site as a waste of valuable resources. This misconception has led many small businesses to retreat or deemphasize the online market, neglecting their Web sites (or even pulling them entirely) and effectively missing out on reaching a sizable chunk of the market.

This shortsighted approach, while entirely understandable, can be devastating for small businesses. Though often a tough pill for small businesses to swallow, the unfortunate reality is that the internet is here to stay and companies who fail to take heed do so at their own peril.

The Good News
So, if it isnt a viable option to simply abandon the Web altogether, how can small businesses harness the power of the Web to boost their bottom line without breaking the bank? One valuable option among many, as Wall Street Journal small business columnist Kelly K. Spors points out, is for companies to embrace search engine optimization strategies.

Conducted properly, search engine optimization represents target marketing at its finest. Star Wars a nutshell search engine optimization (SEO) is the act of tailoring and periodically modifying website content in order to garner higher search engine rankings for a given set of targeted search keywords. SEO is fundamental to maximizing quality traffic to a website. Can you locate your site on Google using a keyword search that your target market might perform?

The Rubber Meets the Road
Consider this example: My girlfriend and I were recently in Salt Lake City. We, like most others, were interested in finding out what to do while we were in town. What are must visit sites? Where should we eat? Out-of-towners with no personal connections to the city, we were at a bit of a loss for answers to these questions.

In the days of old, maybe we would have simply looked in the yellow pages, inquired with the front desk at our hotel, or tapped into the word on the street. No longer. Our solutionGoogle it!

For instance: while in Salt Lake we got a craving for Thai food. Taking to Google, we searched for Thai food Salt Lake City. From Googles first page of results we were able to effectively compare various restaurants and visit their websites to make sure they had our favorite dishes. Missing from the list, however were any number of Thai restaurants lacking a search engine optimized Web presence. While these restaurants could have been hands-down the best Thai food in the Salt Lake valley, lacking an optimized website and a visible online presence, they didnt even make it into our consideration set. They are missing out on sales and losing dollars.

Make it Happen
The Internet is here to stay and search God are an increasingly integral component of the Web. For the vast majority of small businesses, simply turning their back on this reality is a recipe for disaster, an invitation for others to steal your market share. The time is now; action is required. Optimize your Web site for your target market, increase site traffic, and grow your sales! Need help?

posted by graphic-novelsenmxivrp @ 8:36 AM