Can small business really compete with the fat cats with out a big budget?

[ReSEOlve]

Hello all Moz fans

I want to focus on and start getting clients locally for small to medium businesses and my ethos and vision is to help them compete with the big guys in there niche can this really be done with there small budget and if so how would you go about approaching it..?

[EGOL]

I have not had clients  for a long time... but if you want to get them in a small community build a small local website that achieves top rankings for some of the queries where you might obtain clients. Then you have something to point at when you call on them.

If you go see the autoglass guy, show him that you already have top rankings for "smalltown autoglass" and offer to give him an ad there.... rent him the page.... or help his website get ranked in the local map listings (if they appear for your community).  In a small community a site that focuses on small service or retail business is still a viable way to do this.  When you build that site and get it ranked you will get the experience and relationships needed to help your clients to success.

I would not offer to sell my services unless I already had some experience getting websites ranked in similar SERPs.

[ReSEOlve]

is smalltown auto glass one of your clients sites;) i agree i think the best option is focusing on the businesses that have a higher value of sale  like dentist s and car smuchants and huilder and plumbers and cosmetics and lawyers at least if you get 1 sale it can pay for your work, but stay away from the restaurants and coffee shops and clothes stores and hairdressers would  you agree? i don't have any clients at present and thinking of going door to door to local business have you tried this?  just a quick hello if they are busy and dropping of a professional looking flyer? thanks for the comment

[EGOL]

It's really easy for a person who knows a little about the web to get small business owners excited about tossing up a website and hauling in buckets of money on a tiny budget.  Lots of the business owners think that all you need to do to make money from a website is toss something up and have somebody who knows the secrets about tweaking the code.

That might be possible for some local businesses like "smalltown auto glass" where potential competition is naive and limited to your immediate community...

However, if your potential small town client wants to expand his business by 50% selling in gift basket, digital camera, jewelry, coffee or many other niches which are highly competitive the story will be very different.   Here  competition is a "battle of resources" where impressive content libraries or enormous existing brand equity  is needed - but does not guarantee success.

In that situation it is possible that the SEO will know exactly what to do to score high rankings but be far short of  the resources needed to do it.

Even in the PPC niche, the small merchant may not have the wholesale price advantage, the shipping volume advantage, the conversion optimized website and PPC skills needed to compete with the big guns.  It is awfully easy to lose a lot of money trying to win at PPC.

IMO the place where there is still hope for the small business on the web is niches like....

"smalltown auto glass" where potential competition is naive and limited to your immediate community..."

[ReSEOlve]

thank you so it is possible;) It would bring me great joy to do this for my local area and just focus on the companies in my area regarding high street stores would you stay away from them?

[CMC-SD]

You might find this recent blog post helpful: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/why-you-shouldnt-ignore-longtail-clients