Small business owners are often hampered when it comes to building an online presence as they don’t have the time to devote to maintaining a web site nor the funds to undertake serious SEO programs. There are a number of things that a small business owner can do to build and maintain that online presence.

SEO has many different angles and whilst a small business owner may not be able to justify spending large sums of money on a consultant, there are aspects that they can undertake themselves.

Web design and content are the cornerstones for any website. If you can get these right then the rest will start to flow smoothly. Many of the SEO requirements can be done fairly quickly and fairly cheaply.

Building a blog presence is one way to start and has proved to be quite effective over the years. Paying for a professional web site is a must. If you cannot justify the cost then you cannot justify being online.

Once you have your blog or website, you need to consider content. You can approach this from several angles. You can produce the content yourself, you can could use friends or family to write your content, or you could employ a content writer.

Changing your content on a regular basis is important. The emphasis being on regular. If you update twice a week, then always update twice a week. If you are unable to produce content, employ someone else to do it for you. There are many cost effective services available and the major benefit is that you not only get good quality articles, they should also be keyword rich.

Small business has more to benefit than many of their larger rivals. Get the SEO right and work within your budget and over time, your traffic will increase and with it your sales.

Search Engine Optimization is dying, at least according to Greg Howlett, writing on Andy Beal’s Marketing Pilgrim site. I can agree with much of what he has written and some of his points are quite valid. Take the following:

Search engines are too smart and they have a different agenda. They do not want to reward crummy companies that play SEO games–they want to give the top listings to the best companies.

It is hard to argue with that point particularly if you are a web user who gets a little tired of the useless results when doing a search. The last part of that statement worries me a little, but I will return to that a little later. If you are an SEO consultant then naturally you want to see any site you work on get to that front page of SERP’s.

What I or Greg think is a crummy site, I am sure there others including the site owners who think otherwise. If I am hired as an Search Engine Optimization consultant, do I say ’sorry, your site is too crummy’. Perhaps trying to get the site owner to de-crumify the site may be in order.

Putting that issue aside, the following statement is the one that really concerns me.

If you are not in the top ten of your industry, you had better find a way to get there in a hurry if you want to be on the first page of Google.

Greg also added:

Yes, this means that the rich will get richer and the poor will starve for SEO traffic. If you are not in the first category, you had better find a way to get there quick. The middle class is about to disappear.

The reason this concerns me, and the reason for my title is very simple. Big companies that are in the top ten do not rely on search engines for their traffic. In fact if your lazy like me, I type my search phrase in to the URL bar. If my search is for something simple like Coke or Pepsi - it will take me straight to their site, do not pass Google, do not collect Yahoo!. This is true for most large companies that are well recognized. I don’t know how much effort Coke or Pepsi put into Search Engine Optimization? Very little I would suggest.

If the search engines are going ignore popular little sites and list the “top ten of your industry“, search engines will become redundant. I don’t need Google or Yahoo! or any of the others search engines to find these companies. Their URL’s are generally either known, or easy to find. To them, SEO can die, they don’t need it.

The ramifications will spread further. If my Search Engine Optimization efforts have little hope of making it to the front pages of Google, then I doubt I will be advertising there. Social media sites will become more popular as advertising venues. This will strike a mortal wound at the very heart of Google - their advertising revenue.

Search engines and Search Engine Optimization live in a symbiotic relationship - if one goes then the other will be severely affected. The future will see the role of an SEO consultant change, but then, over the last 10 years that role has gone through many changes. I can see the value of keywords disappearing as search engines rely more on being able to ‘read’ content and context.

If search engines do put an end to Search Engine Optimization by concentrating on the top ten in any business sector, they will have taken the first step in their own demise. Search engines do, and will, need to produce better search results, until they do, SEO will be a requirement for every web site owner looking for that prime spot in the SERP’s.

A little like the chicken and the egg, what should be your first priority, search engine optimization or web design? Most website owners grab a domain name, have their site built, load it with content, and then decide whether or not to use some search engine optimization strategies, or perhaps advertising such as PPC (see my previous post - Search Engine Optimization Or Pay Per Click (PPC).)

My feelings are fairly blunt when it comes to a question like this. Your website is nothing more than a blank template. You get the template designed, often for more than one page, and then fill it with content. Don’t get me wrong, this template is important but it needs to put into some perspective, particularly when you are considering search engine optimization requirements.

As search engine optimization professionals, the ideal scenario is to call us in as soon as you decide to develop an online presence. To get the very best results, your domain name, your host, the design of the sites template and the content that goes into that template all need to be optimized for search engines - from day one! A quick break down of each step will provide a better understanding.

Domain Name: your domain name needs to be as straightforward as possible. Whilst you may feel that a long name describes your business, it should be easily remembered. Other considerations include registering similar names to protect your current or future branding.

Host: yes, even your website host needs careful consideration. If you are going to use a shopping cart, can it be easily accessed and do they offer Site Security. The hosts ability to handle heavy traffic loads also needs consideration.

Web Page Design: perhaps I unfairly labeled it a template, perhaps the term ’shell’ would sit better. Whichever name you use, it needs to designed with search engine optimization requirements in mind. Most web page designers know little of Search Engine Optimization strategies.

Content: ensuring your content has correct use of keywords in page headings, content body and graphic tags is very important.

Employing a search engine optimization consultant from day one can ensure that your whole site is fully optimized and ready for your to start reaping the rewards of a well planned site.

Having set up a web site you may now be wondering what is best: buying search engine optimization help or starting a pay-per-click campaign? When you consider the pro’s and con’s of each you will find the answer comes easily.

Search Engine Optimization
For a new web site, even with a professional search engine optimization program, you are not going to rank at number one for quite sometime. However, you will never rank in the top 50 (pages) unless you do undertake some form of search engine optimization program.

Pay-Per-Click (PPC)
PPC campaigns will generate traffic to your website.The more traffic you generate, the more your site will be seen and the better the possibility for natural links to your site - a big bonus when it comes to search engine optimization. Obviously, if your site is a commercial site then PPC will bring extra traffic targeted to your keywords and hopefully ready to open their wallets.

From the above two short descriptors, you are probably already trying to organize your first PPC campaign. Just wait a moment and reread them, particularly the last sentence in he search engine optimization brief.

The choice is no choice, ie, both. You need to undertake both campaigns if you want your web site to succeed. Search engine optimization will provide long term benefits that will generate organic visitors from the search engines. These are ‘free’ visitors, that is, you have not had to pay to get them onto your site.

PPC will get the traffic coming in and hopefully the income. Overtime, if your search engine optimization programs are successful, you find yourself spending less on PPC and generating more in the way of free clicks. PPC can then be used for special promotions.

Many people who dive quickly into SEO forget the most important first steps. Such steps include
clarifying goals, understanding the basics of search engines and how they work and what SEO efforts are considered ethical and unethical and how it will hurt you if you do choose the wrong actions. The book goes into detail about the way one would develop a comprehensive SEO strategy and implement it properly using a 12 week process and while reaching the goals initially drawn out. It then goes into more detail about keyword research, keyword selection, link building and more.

The book includes case studies and opinions from expert SEOs like Patricia Fusco and Aaron Wall and is also positively reviewed from leading SEO sites and more. Search Engine Optimization: An Hour a Day is certainly worth the read for SEO newcomers and more familiar people alike!

If you have Adsense for Search options on your web site then you will be interested to know that Google have updated the search facility and it is now powered by Custom Search. As the name implies, you can customize many of the search features for your web site (or blog).

These features include:(courtesy of Adsense blog)

• Site Search: you can choose to provide just site search so users can find all the information they’re looking for on your site.
• Improved indexing of your pages:AdSense for search will now index even more pages of your site, as long as we’re able to crawl them, so that your users will see more results from your site in your AdSense for search results.
• Vertical search:You can also allow your users to search across multiple sites - this could be a network of sites that you own or other related sites that you think your users might find useful.
• Tuning search results and ads with keywords: Search terms can have different meanings in different contexts, so you can now configure your search engine with relevant keywords.
• Selecting ad location: Do you want ads to appear at the top and bottom of your search results? Or along the right sidebar as well, just like on Google.com? Now you can make the call on where ads are placed.
• Quick and easy updates: Just as you use our ad management feature to quickly change the settings for your ad and referral units, you’ll be able to do the same for your search engine within your AdSense account.

This should provide a much better system and possibly a better return for publishers using Adsense for Search. Customization is certainly an improvement on the previous search options.

Amazon is challenging the lawfulness of New York State’s legislation that requires internet retailers to collect sales tax on purchases shipped to New York State residents.

Although Amazon does not have a physical presence in the state, New York is arguing that Amazon allows web publishers to receive commissions by promoting their items through their sites. By default this makes Amazon liable to collect taxes on its behalf for those affiliates who live in New York.

If Amazon lose their challenge there will be ramifications for many thousands of affiliate programs that are currently available. It would be interesting to see if New York State would extend this to every one of those affiliate programs, including those based outside of the United States.

Many of these affiliate owners will be hoping that Amazon wins this challenge. They are all caught in a catch 22 situation at present. Register to collect tax by the June 1 this year or face the prospect of having previous quarters audited. A damned if you do and damned if you don’t position.

This would raise a second interesting question. Can New York State tax officials audit the accounts of businesses registered and trading in another state, or for that matter, in another country? Certainly when it comes to international companies this tax has not been terribly well thought through.

In the mean time, every affiliate owner will be watching this case with a little unease. Hopefully it will be resolved quickly with a bit of common sense being applied. However, when it comes to litigation, speed is not an area where the law excels. When it comes to taxation, common sense never applies.

Search engines have for many years been the king of online marketing and have led to the rise of the search engine optimization and search engine marketing industries. Are they, however, starting to lose their appeal and their relevancy?

There is so much in the way of competition at present that it is becoming impossible to really find what you want. Many search engines struggle to produce lists that satisfy the searchers queries. You can often undertake a search and find there 50 or 100 million pages that relate to that search query. However when you look a little closer, some of those entries are one or two years old ( or older). Either that or the search results bare little relationship to the question, an experience that often frustrates users.

Search engines such as Google are constantly trying to perfect their search results so that the user finds what they want, first time - so far with only limited success. Social media on the other hand may represent a different story into the future. Individuals are already using these sites to check for any information on products that they are interested in.

Anecdotal evidence from people who have used the products carries a lot of weight. A search results through any of the search engines carries little weight as a recommendation. Considering the difficulty, actual or perceived, of finding what you are looking for through a search engine, it is not difficult to understand why people are turning to these social sites for answers.

Search engines may well lose their appeal in the longer term as social sites becomes the pseudo search engines of the future. Unless Google and all the other search engines can find a way of delivering valuable links to each search query, they will continue to lose appeal.

An upfront post from Andy Beard regarding comment spam raised an interesting question. Should you use comments as part of your link building strategies?

Andy has a tough policy on spam (or perceived spam) and if you get sin binned once, your most likely sin binned for ever. His policy is fair enough however if you are intelligent and subtle with your comments then you may well find blogs owners leaving your comments in place, thus providing you with a another tick in your link building campaign.

To gain the most out of any link building campaign through commenting, you need to follow certain unwritten rules, almost the opposite of Andy’s spam list. To get the best value, you need to select blogs or sites that are closely related to your products, services or keywords.

Comments need to add value to the content that you are commenting on. Value is the keyword here. Provide supporting evidence for the content, or argue against the content, either way leaving a sense of authority on the subject matter.

Finally, don’t keyword spam. If you are going to include a link within the comment, don’t use keywords that are irrelevant. The best approach is often to link your name. Possibly not as valuable as a keyword, but the comment is more likely to remain than if a keyword had been used.

Most website owners (or bloggers) look at two areas before deleting or accepting the comment. The first is the spam factor - most spam comments can be picked up fairly quickly. The second area is the value of the comment. Get past these two areas and your linking building strategy has become successful.

Link building through the comments area is a logical place to gain good links. The comments section is a public forum with the site owner as moderator. Provide value and the moderator will appreciate your participation. Create spam and your comments may be forever sin binned. Link building through comments is easy, provides a quick link back to your site, and provides you with a great opportunity to leave your opinions.

Do it right and you will develop an authority within that community. Do it wrong and you may find your reputation tarnished. The benefits of a link building campaign using comments is smart and time effective and can help your search engine optimization efforts.

Search engine optimization can be a laborious job at the best of times yet through social media interaction you can get others to do some of the work for you.

Depending on the size of your site and the amount of time you have, you can view social marketing as an interesting side line, or as more hard work. I prefer to view it as a social break from the tedium of search engine optimization work. Travel the social sites, read the various content that others have left (garner a view ideas while you are at it), interact with others of similar interest and all the while promoting myself and my business - with subtlety of course.

Question: what do the search engine spiders want to see that will boost your rankings? Answer: Search engines want to see good quality editorial style links that point to your site or pages. By socializing through the various social media sites you can receive these valuable links, giving you an edge on your less social competition and completing one aspect of your search engine optimization program.

We all know that inbound one way quality links will give our websites a boost in the SERP rankings. You can earn these links while socializing and at the same time slowly marketing your name, brand or products. Search engine optimization isn’t all that boring after all - I can meet interesting people and get the link building job done at the same time.

Can you undertake a search engine optimization program and a branding campaign at the same time? The answer is yes, of course you can. The follow up question: “Should You?”, is probably more important.

It is an important question as it can determine the direction of your search engine optimization program and your social marketing efforts. To answer the question, you need to ask yourself the following questions:

1. Can you afford to wait until you have developed your brand?
2. Can you realistically develop a brand?
3. Is there strong brand competition?
4. Do you need to develop a brand?

The last question is probably the most important. If you are re-selling products then perhaps the main focus should be on the products themselves along with any existing brands. Likewise, if there are already a lot of branded products on the market, there may not be room for another one. Undertaking a search engine optimization program in such a crowded field could be difficult.

Brands can be developed on line and the rewards can be excellent. Research is now showing that most internet users are now using a brand name with the dot come before trying a search term. If you have that brand name then you will be getting a lot of direct traffic. However, that being the case, do you need to run a search engine optimization strategy on your brand name?

Whilst search engine optimization and branding do go together, the reality is that often there is no need. Branding is perhaps better left to social marketing campaigns whilst your search engine optimization program left to target products to attract organic searches. People will find brands quickly, finding products takes a little more work - that is what your Search Engine Optimization efforts should be targeting - helping the user to find your pages.

While on the subject of Microsoft, Live Search has undergone a revamp with several new features added that enable users too both research and find deals on products.

The above screen shot shows the results of a typical search. These results include both negative and positive feedback that has been left. I am sure there is a search engine marketing and search engine optimization opportunity there. It would certainly pay to keep on eye on the results for any negative trends before they do too much damage to your reputation.

The highlights, as published by Live Search include:

• One stop to research product details and find good prices You see an image and description for each product, reviews from other users, prices to help you find good deals, and spec sheets for many products.
• Feature-based refinements See which products are reviewed positively or negatively for the features that interest you. View product features such as screen size, battery life, ease of use, and portability.
• Sorting Sort product results by user ratings, expert ratings, and price.
• Filtering Filter product results by specific brands, categories, and price ranges.
• Richer product details Read expert reviews and a spec sheet describing the product.

At present this feature is only available for US based searches. There is no indication yet for an international release.

Microsoft have finally decided that continuing to woo Yahoo! was not worth the effort and have now called off the wedding. One of the keys to the withdrawal of their $33 per share offer was not the extra $5 billion required, rather it is Yahoo!’s actions in starting to waltz with Google - currently the king of search engines.

Whilst Microsoft are not afraid of litigation, one of the key problems they would have had to deal with would have been the close relationship that Yahoo! currently has with Google. Two points from the Steve Ballmer (Microsoft CEO) letter to Yahoo!’s Jerry Yang (Yahoo! CEO) clearly states their concerns:

In addition, it would raise a host of regulatory and legal problems that no acquirer, including Microsoft, would want to inherit. Among other things, this would consolidate market share with the already-dominant paid search provider in a manner that would reduce competition and choice in the marketplace.

This would also effectively enable Google to set the prices for key search terms on both their and your search platforms and, in the process, raise prices charged to advertisers on Yahoo. In addition to whatever resulting legal problems, this seems unwise from a business perspective unless in fact one simply wishes to use this as a vehicle to exit the paid search business in favor of Google.

In fact, apart from the first couple of paragraphs, Ballmer hardly mentioned the dollar aspect. The question everyone will now ask is whether or not this is the end of the matter? Only Ballmer will know what is going on in his mind.

Acquiring Yahoo! had some strategic significance to Microsoft so it is quite likely Ballmer will sit back now and watch the Yahoo! Google watlz - a little like a wolf and chicken dancing - will they continue to dance, separate and find new partners, or does the wolf become the proverbial black widow and dine on the Yahoo! search engines left overs.

If Yahoo!’s alliance with Google sours a little and the price of Yahoo’s share drop significantly, you can bet that Microsoft will be back trying to improve their wooing skills. It is unusual for Microsoft as they have a reputation for shotgun weddings - perhaps next time.

If you use Google Analytics you will be able to identify those bounce pages and rethink your search engine optimization strategies for those pages.

A bounce page is a page that a visitor arrives on and for whatever reasons, immediately leaves. Using Google analytics you can identify these pages quickly. To find which pages bounce, go to your Google Analytics area and The Google Analytics Landing Pages report (Content Section).

You can find more information through the Google Web Site Optimizer blog. To quote from the blog:

That’s why it’s so important to find, and fix, high-traffic landing pages that lose a high percentage of visitors. Look at the “Top Landing Pages” report within the Content section of Google Analytics. Pages that have both a high Bounce Rate (the percentage of visits that resulted in the visitor immediately leaving the site) and large number of Entrances need to be redesigned.

It can often be a simple matter of redefining your keywords. The Google blog provded an example where a searcher was looking for a ‘faucet’. When clicking on the number one result he landed on a page full of sinks - no faucets. So they left (bounced) straight away. This is effectively a waste of keyword use. If the search was through a paid Adsense link, it would have been a waste of money.

Checking on your bounce pages can help you refine your search engine optimization strategies to get the best results for your site.

With reports that over 90% of adults use the internet to research a product prior to purchasing, fine tuning your search engine optimization program to include product based keywords could be vital.

It is all going to start with your content. Your search engine optimization program may be the best in the business but if you are not providing the content they want, they wont come back; no matter where you are placed on the results pages.

The ordinary man (and woman) in the street are becoming internet savvy at a remarkable speed. When searching online, they are more likely to try a brand or product dot com before even looking at the search bar. If you have that brand or product dot com domain you are in business. If not, you are going to have to work hard on your search engine optimization strategies to secure your place within the search results pages.

Provide the content they are looking for with some smart on page self promotion and chances are you will also secure the sale. As potential customers become smarter in their use of the internet, your search engine optimization strategies need to keep pace. You are not only trying to second guess the search terms of those customers, you are also trying to keep a few steps ahead of your competitors. Just remember, they are trying to do the same thing to you.

Not only are your competitors trying to outdo you, they are growing in number with small businesses developing an online presence at fast rate. Whilst social marketing has become important, search engine results will still dominate; as such your search engine optimization programs need to be spot on.