Our company is a limousine business and we are searching for the right search optimisation company to point us in the right direction. We are a new start up business so we don’t even rate on Google etc. Could you please help...?’ (Good To Google?)

Answer...

Recently, a lot of my clients have been focussing more and more on their web presence and the opportunities social media tools offer as part of their marketing mix so I know exactly where you’re coming from with this question.

Where To Start?

To be honest, I still find the whole website/SEO thing a bit of a ‘black art’ but, I think that’s got a lot to do with the fact that is still a quite a new concept to most business people and everyone’s stumbling around thinking they should do something but are not sure where to start looking or who to trust. The fact that ‘web nerds’ sometimes speak a different language to most of us just serves to make it all the more confusing.

Like any business challenge the answer for me, and for my clients, lies in information. The more you learn about something, the less imposing and confusing it becomes. You don’t need to become an expert but you do need to educate yourself.

Finding A Good SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) Partner

Same as if you were investigating any new product for your business or say a new media supplier, most business owners ask for references, other businesses they can ring to find out first hand how the product/service and its supplier performs. SEO is no different.

Talk to other business owners you know and use Google to investigate local SEO businesses in and around your area... read what’s on their websites, look for testimonials to what they’ve done for others and ask about their successes in ‘like’ industries if they have any.

Activity Builds Traffic

This is something I found out for FREE. Working with a couple of clients recently on their web presence we’ve found that the more they ‘post’ or ‘blog’ the better they fair in Google searches. Both of these clients went for blog based websites and maintain the basics themselves because then they have a much more hands on control of fresh content AND they keep the costs down. After all, who understands you business better than you?!

I’ve also found that as I’ve got busier with clients, I’ve blogged less on my own site and Google has dropped me down the search rankings a bit... sad yes, but reflective of my current ‘online inactivity’ I guess and the same as any other mainstream marketing activity... if you’re not out there in that space, you are harder to find!

What’s On Offer?

Most good SEO companies will take a look at your site for free and come back to you with some options as to where it could be improved, ‘search engine optimised’ so to speak and what you’ll need to invest to potentially achieve various levels of success.

If they’re not happy to do that for free, I’d look elsewhere because you want to work with someone who cares enough about your business to at least take a look straight up before they ask you for money.

What Can You Do?

In my view the best thing you can do is look at your website as potentially one of your most important marketing tools and learn more about it to understand how you might be able to make it perform better.

Using social media tools like Twitter and Facebook actively in conjunction with your website might sound like a waste of time to the uninitiated but these too may well have a place in your marketing mix and ... let’s not forget here that they are FREE to use so, why not check them out too!

Lastly, I recommend you get yourself an education in all things online (especially if you know/think your business could improve through a better online presence) Basically... research the terminology, investigate suppliers, ask LOTS of questions, learn more about the process and start taking some small steps to make changes you can monitor.

Keep in mind though that online marketing is just like any other form of advertising and will likely require a fair amount of trial and error before you get the right mix so, be prepared for the journey and have some fun along the way!

Let me know how you go... good luck!

Aaron