As I mentioned in my mostly silly post there’s rather a fair size debate (or for some, link baiting exercise) going on around the SEM community regarding SEO. Some argue that it’s had its time, others that it’s in its infancy. I was thinking about this debate when I read an article by David Wallace on SearchRank about his experiences in front of a group of 20 small local businesses.
What shocked me a bit was when I polled the group as to who was currently doing any kind of search marketing. Two people out of the twenty raised their hands. The remaining either were not doing any search marketing of were completely unaware of its existence. We who are so embroiled in the industry often forget that there still remains a wide opportunity to reach businesses with the search marketing gospel, especially small businesses.
This really ties with the oft quoted Kelsey group statistic that “70% of small firms don’t have a website” (I believe it’s from 2005, so the number may have changed slightly now). If these companies don’t even have a website, then they’re not going to be doing any kind of search marketing, unless they use a ‘total solution’ package such as Leadstream or LocalLaunch. So why don’t they have websites, and have a search marketer working for them, pulling in all of this business that’s out there, especially if it’s so easy? Well, as Danny Sullivan rightly points out
Yes, you can invest time to learn these “simple” things. But if you know nothing about them, they can see like rocket science. Over the years, I’ve talked with plenty of people who weren’t even aware of the basic tip that every page should have a unique, descriptive title tag. They think “title” means the biggest text on the page, not the HTML title tag. Talk of HTML title tags — that IS rocket science to them.
To a lot of these people putting a website out there is a huge step, let alone doing it right and optimizing the site. I recently took a look at the website for a company I used to work for when I first came to this country. They’re a small, fairly conservative millwork company in a relatively small east coast city. The fact that they even have a website amazed me. Looking it over, I can see lots of things that they haven’t done, with the most amazing being that the only contact information on the website being their actual address, no email, no phone number. When I get some time I’m going to send them some suggestions to help them out. It won’t be rocket science for me, but it’ll probably look like that for them…
