Last week Jason Wiser started a discussion in the Christians in Business G+ community about an article written by Himanshu Sharma titled, Here is why SEO is not for Small Business Owners. The gist of it is…

SEO is no longer just adding keywords in the title tag and getting links from cheap directories… SEO has become more complex than ever. Therefore it is no longer a question of whether or not you can do it yourself. You need outside help. Period. The question that you should be asking is whether you can really “afford” SEO with a small budget. The answer is “No”.

Himanshu justifies his conclusion by listing a whole bunch of strategies and tactics involved in SEO today including:

• Authorship
• Social Media
• Content development and marketing
• Local Search
• Co-Citations and co-occurrence
• SEO Tools
• Analytics
• Fixing/avoiding Google penalties.
• Reading blog posts 24/7 to keep up to date with the ever changing Search Engine Landscape.

The bottom line is that Himanshu concludes that SEO cannot be cost-effective for a small business, and therefore small businesses should focus on paid search ads such as Google AdWords which provide immediate results.

Himanshu is right in many respects.

• SEO has become more complex than ever
• SEO may involve all of the items listed above plus others he didn’t mention including keyword research, running ranking reports, monitoring search rankings
• It takes a lot of effort to keep up with the ever changing search engine landscape
• SEO takes months to get results while AdWords can provide immediate results

The problem with Himanshu’s conclusion…

… however, is that small businesses do not necessarily need to employ all the techniques he lists. Additionally, many small local businesses do not have a lot of competitors, and those competitors they do have often are not doing any SEO.

If you own a cupcake shop in Columbus, you’re a locksmith in Long Beach or a mobile auto detailer in Des Moines how many competitors do you have? 5? 15? It doesn’t take a whole lot of SEO mojo to make the first page of the search results. And with the right techniques and a moderate amount of work, a local small business site could be in the top 3 or even #1 within a few months.

The cost-effective SEO solution for small businesses

The challenge for most small business owners is they don’t have a good understanding of the complex strategies and tactics needed to do SEO well. And learning SEO, developing an SEO strategy, implementing it and then continue the ongoing work of monitoring and improving results is not most cost-effective use of their time.

But for the SEO professional who already understands SEO, has developed SEO strategies with proven results and has the tools and systems in place to do SEO efficiently, SEO for a small business does not have to cost a lot. For example, we at Ourchurch.Com offer a Local Business Search Marketing service for just $499 up front and $149 a month.

Can a small business afford $149/mo to be on the first page of Google?

When I compare that to the cost of other types of marketing and consider how many people are searching for products and services online, I can’t help but conclude a small business can’t afford not to be on the first page of Google.

And therefore…

SEO *IS* for Small Business Owners

You can read the full article, Here is why SEO is not for Small Business Owners, here if you like.

You’re thoughts?

Google can be your website’s best friend, sending you lots and lots of free gifts (visitors), but what happens when Google turns on you?  That’s exactly what happened to CampingComfortably.com.

Cathy Sorensen is a wonderful Christian woman who started Camping Comfortably because of her love for families and for God’s beautiful creation.  I asked Cathy what Camping Comfortably was all about and here’s what she said,

“Our mission is to provide quality camping and outdoor products at a reasonable price.  We feel that camping is the ideal way for families to spend good quality time and get away from the constant bombardment of TV, cell phones, computers, and get back to what God intended for us — the beauty and tranquility of His earth and the love that can flow through a family that spends time together.”

When I first met Cathy, CampingComfortably.com was doing pretty well in Google.  She had done a good bit of search engine optimization to her site and it was paying off, bringing a good amount of traffic.  But the website had gone as far as on-page optimization could take it.  Now she wanted to do some link building to increase the authority of her site so it could rank well for even more competitive keywords.

“Being on a tight budget for a small mom and pop company, we were looking for someone we could trust that would actually help us with the SEO and not put us in a bad position for the future.  Unfortunately, many of the SEO companies are out there just to temporarily raise your rankings and then pull back when you leave them.  After interviewing MANY Seo Companies, I decided that I needed to specifically look for a Christian company who had morals and ethics that I agreed with — that’s how I found OurChurch.Com.”

Google Hits Like a Penguin:
We analyzed the links pointing to the site and found that the site needed to get more links and that its link profile was a bit off-balance.  The vast majority of the links pointing the site had their target keywords, which appears unnatural to Google.  So, we started working to correct that.  Unfortunately, less than one month after we started working on the site, Google released their Penguin update…and it was devastating.

“Being hit by the Google Penguin update we lost over 50% of our Google traffic and had to lay off an employee who was with us over 3 years.”

Recovery:
It was a difficult trek, but we worked to clean up the suspicious links and continued to build natural links over the several months that followed by providing quality content.  Thankfully, it has been working.  We have recovered the rankings of most of their targeted keywords and CampingComfortably.com is now actually ranking in the top ten in Google for several more keywords than before the Penguin update.  This has been accompanied by real world results as sales have picked back up.

“Based on year over year sales prior to being hit with Penguin, we have finally recovered to nearly the level we were at before getting hit,” Cathy said.  ”We don’t have time to market the website properly ourselves, because we are too busy running the business.”

Kicking Them When They’re Down:
A few months after the Penguin update, changes at Google hit Camping Comfortably again.  This time it was changes to Google Shopping (formerly Google Product Search).

“The second thing that really hit the mom and pop businesses like ours was the Google Shopping that became a paid shopping site in September.  (Before this Google Product Search had been free.)  We were forced to go with Google Shopping PCP, because we could not afford to stay in business without it.  Watching your daily budget and putting proper PCP pricing in for each product is the key to Google Shopping.”

Thankfully, Cathy was able to navigate the changes in Google and keep Camping Comfortably in business.  By managing the link profile of their website, they have been able to fully recover from the Penguin update and gain some.  Using some savvy campaign management, they have also dealt with Google Shopping starting to charge.

It’s been a real blessing to be able to work with Cathy over this past year.  If you are a camping enthusiast, a hiker, or just need some tailgating equipment, I hope you’ll visit CampingComfortably.com.  And if you find your website suddenly losing traffic, consider the story of Camping Comfortably and know there is hope.  With some good SEO strategies, you can recover and grow even stronger than you ever were.

Share Your Thoughts:

• Has your website ever been hit by a Google update?  If so, how did you handle it?
• Do you think that Google has too powerful an affect on businesses?

Love is in the air… or at least Valentine’s Day on the calendar. To love another person is one of the sweetest blessings God gives us. Not far behind that is the blessing of having a website you love. At least that what our team of web geeks thinks.

Seriously though, one of the greatest gifts you can give the people of your church, school, ministry or business is a website that they are proud to share with their friends.

February is “Love Your Website” Month at OurChurch.Com. Our goal for the month is to help you take the design of your website to the next level. Perhaps that means making some minor changes to your site which you can do yourself or perhaps we can help create a brand new custom website. Perhaps you need some feedback and suggestions on how to improve your site. Or perhaps you’d like $50.

Keep reading for more on all these things!

1) Love Your Website Bundles – $50 Off!
Our Website Service Bundles are one of the best deals on the planet and a great way to take your love for your website to a whole new level. Bundles combine a web hosting package, ad-free option, domain registration, search registration and our Template Personalization Service, all at a huge discount. This month we’re giving an extra $50 off all bundles.

Now the disclaimers… This special offer is only available through Feb 28. It’s only available to those who do not currently have a bundle. And it’s not available online – you must call us at (727) 723-2454 to get the extra $50 off. Tell Debbie you want the “Love Your Website” Bundle Special!

2) Get an Awesome Custom-Designed Website You’ll Love!
If you and your organization are ready for an awesome website that is:

• Custom designed to look exactly the way you want it
• Has all the functionality to help you achieve your mission
• Is easy for you to update and add to yourself
• Can be updated by multiple administrators anywhere there’s an Internet connection

Check out some of the organizations we serve in our web design portfolio. Then request a free, no obligation phone consultation.

3) Web Development Videos
We want every Christian organization to have a website they love whether it’s provided by us or by some other means. One of the ways we’re doing that is by creating a series of videos to help “educate consumers” (that’s you) about the website development process. That way you know how to evaluate the options available to you. The first two videos have been published:

• 5 Things You Need to Know Before Hiring a Web Developer
• 6 Questions to Ask Before Hiring a Web Developer

Stay tuned for more videos about website platforms, prices, maintenance, how to discuss website needs with your board and more.

4) $50 to Share the Love
When you love someone you want the world to know about it. If you love your OurChurch.Com website, we want you to let the world know. And we want to give you $50 for doing it. There are two options.

A) Follow us on Twitter and then tweet: I love my @OurChurchDotCom website – http://YourWebsite.com (You must use @OurChurchDotCom in your tweet so we can see it and enter you in the drawing)

Or

Like our Facebook page and then post to Facebook: I love my @OurChurch.Com website – http://YourWebsite.com (If you type @OurChurch, Facebook should give you the option to select OurChurch.Com, making the “OurChurch.Com” a link to our FB page. You must do this so we see your post and enter you into the drawing. Here’s a quick video demo of how to do it.)

You may post to Facebook and Twitter once per day. Each post will count as an entry. On February 28, we’ll select one winner who will receive a $50 Visa gift card.

We love you!

Thanks to all of you who have given us the opportunity to help you achieve your mission online through our web hosting, web design and SEO services or by adding to the conversation here on our blog.  We love you! And we hope you love your website or are taking steps make your website more lovable this month.

In His Service,
Paul Steinbrueck
OurChurch.Com

Google has made a major change in their Google+ Local terms of service that will affect how you get reviews for your local organization.  Find about about this change and other changes in the search engines in the video below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohMhmiESVmM

Here’s a brief outline of the video:

1. Google is still dominating search (surprise!)
2. Google did another Panda update.  These happen regularly now and should be expected.
3. Google updated their Google+ Local terms of service.  They now expressly state owners and staff members should not post reviews for organizations and organizations should not have computer kiosks solely for the purpose of customers/members posting reviews.
4. Bing updated their images search to make it quicker and more attractive.
5. Bing updated the appearance of their Social Sidebar.
6. Bing now includes information about famous people and places in their Snapshot column.

If you prefer, you can read the January 2013 SEO Update here.

How is your site ranking in Google and Bing?

We are in the internet age. So, you need to stay strong in the search engines and use the internet to achieve your mission online. 

If you have a local organization, listings are very important.  When people search in Google Maps, Bing Maps, or Yahoo Local, local listings are what show up in the results.  If your organization doesn’t have a local listing, then you won’t show up.  If you do have one, but only have basic (or less) contact info, then people are less likely to contact you.  So, it’s important to make sure you have Google, Bing, and Yahoo listings and that they are fully setup.

Tip: Setup Listings in Google and Bing Maps.
Take a few minutes and do a search for your organization’s name, city and state in Google maps, Bing maps, and Yahoo local.  If your organization doesn’t show up, then go ahead and create a listing.  If your organization does show, click through to the listing and claim the listing.  Claimed listings tend to rank better and it will give you better control over the listing.

Add Information:
Once you’ve claimed your listing or while you are setting up a new listing, make sure you add as much information as possible.  Upload pictures and link videos.  And, most importantly, link to your website.

You can create your listings by following these links:

• http://www.google.com/places/
• http://www.bing.com/businessportal
• http://listings.local.yahoo.com/

It doesn’t take long to setup or claim a listing, but it could make a world of difference for your local organization.

There are a lot of organizations that don’t do SEO (Search Engine Optimization).  They have a lot of good reasons for that choice.  So, I thought I’d put together the top 10 reasons why you really shouldn’t do SEO:

10. If your business grows, you might have to hire some new people and that can really be a hassle.

9. If people like your organization enough, they’ll keep searching for you…even to page 1348.

8. You already are getting enough visitors to your website.  100 visitors a month is a lot, right?

7. Your business is already making enough money.  Anyway, if you made more, you’d just have to pay more taxes.

6. SEO, SEM, PR, SERP…Ahh!  There are just too many acronyms.  IKR? AAMOF IHA 2. IMHO, PCMCIA, 4COL! AWHFY?

5. Nobody really uses search engines.  It’s just a fad.  The Yellow Pages, that’s what people use.

4. Your classes are full and you don’t want to bother with one of those annoying “waiting lists”.

3. You like having a small church.  You don’t need outsiders.

2. You’re a Christian organization.  God will simply cause people to contact you like He provided manna for the Israelites.  You don’t have to work at it.

1. Someone else will help those people.

So, if any of these apply to you, stay away from SEO!  If they don’t, give me a call.

• If you have a website and you aren’t getting much traffic, online marketing can bring you that traffic you desire.
• If you want to sell more widgets, online marketing can bring you customers.
• If you want more people visiting your church, online marketing can bring them to your door.
• If you want more students, online marketing can fill your classroom.
• If you want to reach more people for Christ…yep, marketing can help their, too

It’s Not Just Marketing.  It’s Reaching Your Goals.
Hi, my name is Kurt Steinbrueck and I am the Director of Marketing Services with OurChurch.Com.  Marketing is not just my job, it’s something I value; not because I really like marketing, but because I like seeing Christian organizations achieve their goals to the glory of God and I like being a part of that.

You see, marketing isn’t about campaigns and slogans and what not, it’s about achieving goals.  I not only think marketing can help you to reach your goals, I’ve seen it happen.

OurChurch.Com’s most effective marketing is our presence in the search engines, and that didn’t just happen.  We’ve had to develop strategies to improve search engine rankings.  I meet people visiting my church who found us online.  My wife’s Christian school has grown every year, even in this down economy, and their online marketing has helped them to achieve that.

I’m sharing this with you because I want you know that I truly believe that good online marketing can help organizations reach their goals.  I don’t just help others with their marketing, I put these strategies into practice at the places that are most important to me and have seen them work.

October is Marketing Month!
All during the month of October we will be focusing on online marketing here at OurChurch.Com.  I will be writing articles about online marketing techniques, posting easy tips to help you get your online marketing underway, and highlighting just a few of the many organizations with whom I have had the privileged of working with to help them towards their mission.  We’ll be doing some social shares as well.  And, who knows, maybe there will be a surprise or two during the month.

Search Marketing Services:
I know that paragraph heading makes it seem like this is going to be a sales pitch, and it is…but it’s also not.  You see, marketing isn’t really an expense.  It’s an investment; one that should bring you more in return than you put into it.

Think about it.  Taco Bell doesn’t spend millions of dollars every year getting a chiwawa to talk to you because they like dogs.  They do it because by spending millions of dollars marketing, they get back tens of millions of dollars in sales.  The same should be true of your marketing, though maybe not in the millions…or maybe it is …  It’s not just true for businesses either.  It’s true for schools, ministries, and even churches.

I’ll be sharing a lot of online marketing information over this coming month and have written a lot previous on this blog, the Christian SEO Guys blog, and the Church Marketing Online blog.  All this information can help you to better market your organization.  But I also know that for many marketing isn’t their thing or they just don’t have time.  If you know you need to be marketing, but your really don’t want to do it yourself…or if it’s something that’s been sitting on your “to do” list since January, we’d be happy to help.  Whether you have a church, school, ministry, or business…whether you want to reach people nationally, or in your local area…we can help.

Please take look at our marketing services at http://marketing.ourchurch.com/ and request a free consultation today.  If you don’t see the type of service you are looking for, please let us know.  We can customize a service to meet your specific needs.

Give Me Feedback:
So, please keep an eye out for the post throughout this month.  If you have any questions or subjects you’d like me to address, please leave a comment and let me know.

• Leave a comment below and let me know what you would like to discuss this month.

God bless!

Kurt Steinbrueck, our Director of Search Marketing, has faceted another gem to the Christian SEO Guys blog.  In a post published yesterday he reveals some great tips to improving search rankings in Google’s local listings which are also incorporated into Google Maps.

The tips are based on research done by Bizable, which showed having reviews, pictures and videos posted on an organization’s Google Places page had a positive impact on that organization’s rankings on Google Maps and the local listings that are displayed when a person searches Google.com

For more details see the full post: Study Reveals Positive Reviews Boost Google Map Rankings

How is your church, school or local business doing in Google’s local results?  Do the results of this research motivate you to take any action to improve your rankings?

Your local organization is just one of many out there.  We all want to show up well in Google and Bing, but unfortunately, there is only one #1 ranking and only ten rankings on the first page of results.  So, what decides if your church, school, or business is ranked #1 or #51 and can you do anything to improve your rankings?  (I’ll give you a hint…you can )

There are four big factors that determine how well your local organization ranks in the local search results like Google Maps.

1. You Listing’s Content.  Your organization’s name, the description you include in your listing, and the categories you choose play a significant role in your rankings.  Try to use your city name and any descriptive words you want associated with your organization (I.E. “family church”, “Christian school”, “craft supplies”)
2. Your Location.  I know you can’t really do anything about this, but how close your organization is physically located to what the search engines consider the center of town has a big impact on your rankings.  If your location isn’t in the city your want to target, that makes it even more difficult to rank well.  There are, however, things you can do to overcome this as we’ll talk about in a minute.
3. Positive Reviews.  Ratings and reviews, both on the search listings and other local listing sites can have a significant impact on your rankings.  The more the better.  This is one of the ways you can overcome not being located in your city’s town hall building.  You can read more about the importance of positive reviews in my previous post, Church Marketing Round Table Follow Up Tip – Church Reviews.
4. Local Citations.  The more citations your organization has around the web, especially from quality, authoritative websites, the better.  Having many citations can have a big impact on your rankings.  This is very important for churches, schools, and businesses in large cities and this is what I want to talk about today.

What Are Local Citations?
Local citations (sometimes called Google citations) are simply listings of your organization with its name, address, and phone number.  The listing can appear pretty much anywhere to qualify as a citation and does have to include a link to your website, though it can and it’s better if it does.  The important thing is that your church, school, or business is cited (referenced) and the citation includes your address and phone number.

Why Are Local Citations Important?
There are 2 reasons Local citations are important to the search engines.

1. Local citations send a signal that your organization is real and has a real location.  Many local citations also indicates that your organization is well known and important.  When the major search engines started their local search options, organizations quickly realized that showing up in those local search results would bring more traffic. So, organizations started creating listings, even if they didn’t actually have a real local presence.  This is essentially spam and wasn’t good for the search results.  The search engines realized that if an organization is referred to on other sites with their local contact info, they could use that to confirm whether an organization is real and thus whether they really deserve to show up in the local search results.
2. Local citations can indicate an organization’s popularity and importance.  If a local organization is referred to frequently on many websites, then the search engines see that as an indication that many people know about them and consider them worth noting.  This causes the search engines to think that the organization is popular and important and thus worthy of a high search ranking.  In this way, citations help improve local search results in a similar way that links help websites to rank better in the general search rankings.

Who Needs Local Citations?

• Any local organization that isn’t ranked #1 for their target keywords in their city
• Any local organization that is in a large city with lots of similar organizations
• Any local organization that wants to improve their rankings for searches in the towns near their town

How Do You Get Local Citations?
You can get local citations in a variety of ways.  The most common methods of getting citations are setting listings in local listing sites and doing things that are news worthy.  By doing something news worthy, a organization can have stories written about them in newspapers (most of which have online versions now) and blogs.  If you are contacted by someone wanting to write a story about your organization or you find a story online about your organization, ask them to include your contact information with your organization’s name.  Other than that, you can go out and get local citations by setting up listings in local review sites, church locators, school directories, business review sites, and directories.

Hopefully, this is enough to get you out there getting local citations.  If you’re still unsure or you don’t really have the time do this, we can help with that, too with our local citations service.

Are you having trouble ranking well in the local search results?

Do you have any questions about local citations?

What local citation sites do you think are the most important?

Every business has a target market.  For some businesses they want to reach the entire world, but for others, they are only (at least for now) targeting a local area.  Depending on what your target market is, you will need to do different things to properly optimize for the search engines and get the most traffic from your targeted audience.

All Traffic Is NOT Equal
If all you look at are the raw traffic figures to your site, you missing something.  Different visitors have different value.  For example, if a local restaurant in Chicago manages to attract traffic from Boise, those visitors are much less likely to become customers than visitors that are from Chicago.  So, when you optimize your company website, you want to make sure that you target the audience that is going to best help your company reach its goals.

3 Keys to Success for National SEO:
If you have a product or service that you are offering to the entire nation, here are some thing you should do to best optimize for that target audience:

1. Make sure your site is designed in a way that the search engines can read it and know what it’s about.

This means either having a site based in html (this could be php, asp, html, etc) or having an html version available.  Search engines can’t read Flash.  So, if you want a flash site, be sure to either have an html version available or use the “Alternative content” feature many flash development tools have.  This way the search engines have a way to see the content…and so to people who don’t use flash, like many mobile users.

1. Perform on-page SEO.  This could be a whole book, but suffice to say that you want to include the keywords you want to rank well for on your pages, especially in the title tags for your pages.  That said, don’t overdo it and try to make it natural.
2. Build links, especially keyword-rich links.  Again, this could be a whole book, but…try to get as many websites to link to your site as you can, especially established, authoritative websites in your industry.  I’d encourage you to give people a reason to link to you by offering lots of valuable/interesting content.  You can also do other proactive things like article writing, guest blogging, and getting directory listings.  I’d also warn you to avoid linking scams, link farms, and purchasing links.  When getting links, try to get the some of the links to have text that includes the keywords you are targeting.

If you can do these three things, you will be able to rank well for relevant keywords.  Also, remember that SEO is an ongoing process that builds upon itself.  So, keep at it and stay focused and it will pay off over time.

3 Additional Keys for Local SEO Success:
For local companies, the above national SEO techniques are important to do, however, you’ll find that you probably won’t have to do as much link building because you have much less competition.  Also, be sure to target your SEO on keywords that include your target location.  You don’t need to rank well for computer repair, you need to rank well for computer repair in your city.  There are also 3 additional things that you need to do to target your local audience.

1. Setup listings.  The major search engines all have local search options, be it Google Places, Yahoo Maps, etc.  It’s important to setup listings in these local search options.  There are also other important local listings sites where you should setup listings, like Yelp, City Search, Insider Pages, Mojo Pages, and JudysBook as well as Internet Yellow Page sites like Yellow Pages and Superpages.  These are some of the major players in local listings where you should definitely setup a listing, but don’t limit yourself to just these sites.  The more places your company is listed, the more places people have to find your company and that’s a good thing.
2. Get positive reviews.  Positive reviews are both helpful for getting people to decide to visit your business and helpful for improving local search results.  So, try to get as many of your satisfied customers to post reviews around the web.
3. Get local citations.  A local citation is simply a mention of your company on another website that includes your contact info (address and usually phone number).  It’s great if you can get a link with a citation, but not necessary.  Simply the mentioning of your company on other sites, including news articles, listing sites, city commerce listings, etc. tells the search engines you are a real, legitimate business and can improve your rankings.

People are making billions of searches every day.  The sooner you start working on these optimization techniques the further ahead you will be and the more traffic your website will get.  Of course, this is not a full discussion of how to do all these SEO techniques, but rather an outline of the things you can be doing to get ahead.  There are lots of resources online available to help you to learn more about optimizing your website, including several articles on the Christian SEO Guys blog.  We are also happy to help by answering any questions you have or helping to perform these SEO services if you wish.  The important thing is to start doing it!

Have you been performing SEO for your company?

What SEO techniques have you found to be most effective for your company?