Can small business really compete with the fat cats with out a big budget?
-
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..?
-
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.
-
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
-
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..."
-
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?
-
You might find this recent blog post helpful: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/why-you-shouldnt-ignore-longtail-clients
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Reviews not pulling through to Google My Business page
OK, a local SEO question! We are working with a plumbing company. A search for (Google UK) shows the knowledge panel with 20+ reviews. This is good! However, if you search for "plumbers norwich" and look at the map, thecompany is on the third page and has no reviews. I've logged into Google My Business, and it says the profile is not up to date and only 70% complete with no reviews. This is odd, as there was a fully complete profile recently. Any ideas on how best to reconcile the two? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ad-Rank1 -
Location appearing on search result. how can this be achieved?
I'm pretty sure this site is not doing any SEO but i think what made them no. 1 is the location. I already tried adding a google publisher tag to my site that points to my google page which contains my address but i still can't have the location appear.. here's a screenshot of the search result that i want to achieve: https://www.dropbox.com/s/tbdv3121rrs6zp5/Screen Shot 2013-04-15 at 9.39.30 AM.png Screen%20Shot%202013-04-15%20at%209.39.30%20AM.png
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | optimind0 -
Can there be to many 301 redirects
Is it possible to have to many 301 redirects. I am currently looking at 156 of them. Does this create any quality issues with regard to site performance or any other issues. Thank you for your consideration!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | APICDA0 -
How To Internationalize - Big Question
Hi all, Here is a big question. We have a long-established good content website with a .co.uk domain. The site is UK focussed. However, we are planning a new feature which will be UK and worldwide. So do we: 1. Keep it all on our .co.uk ? 2. Put the non-UK parts on a .com domain ? We don't have any content as such for a separate domain, and are not planning any. But, we are not sure if for example US users would be unimpressed with a UK domain. We could fudge it with "co.uk/us" etc. (Notice how we have not mentioned Google. Fed-up chasing big G the whole time. We just want to concentrate on our users and the service we provide to them. But G remains the elephant crapping in the corner of the room.) Also, we are asking this question before we let our developers and designers get to work. Basically we value Moz community opinions over and above theirs. Realise this is a big question, but you have big brains. Please chip in.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | dexm100 -
Okay can someone straighten out SEO for me
If my keyword is dog training and I wanted to make 5 posts on a blog, do I target all the posts with the keyword of dog training or what?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 6786486312640 -
Is traffic and content really important for an e-commerce site???
Hi All, I'm maintaining an e-commerce website and I've encountered some related keywords that I know will not convert to sales but are related to the subject and might help becoming an "authority". I'll give an example... If a car dealership wrote an amazing article about cleaning a car.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeytzNet
Obviously it is related but the chances of someone looking to clean his car will go ahead and buy one now are quite low. Also, he will probably bounce out of this page after reading the piece. To conclude, Would such an article do GOOD (helping to become an authority and having more visitors) or BAD (low conversion rate and high bounce rate)? Thanks0 -
Can obfuscated Javascript be used for too many links on a page?
Hi mozzers Just looking for opinions/answers on if it is ever appropriate to use obfuscated Javascript on links when a page has many links but they need to be there for usability? It seems grey/black hat to me as it shows users something different to Google (alarm bells are sounding already!) BUT if the page has many links it's losing juice which could be saved....... Any thoughts appreciated, thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TrevorJones0 -
How can we minimize the SEO impact during a major platform migration?
We are preparing for a major platform migration with an ecommerce client. The website is in the range of 7000 pages. During this migration, all URLs will change due to differences in the platform and improvements to the site structure. Unfortunately, they run on a Microsoft server, so doing 301 redirects also tends to be a painful process. What can we do to minimize the initial dent this puts in the website traffic? We are prepared to submit XML sitemaps to Google and Bing as soon as the new site is live. writing 301 redirects for all pages which have inbound links (this is tough to automate due to the URL structures). In the long run, we expect the new platform, URL structure, and site architecture to be a huge improvement for our organic rankings. The client and we are worried about the transition period though! Any tips or advice to help us through it? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | outofboundsdigital0