SEO for SMEs – Susan Hallam Interview

Google tends to favour larger sites belonging to larger companies with well-known brands.

Since more authority and trust is conferred on these sites which have greater scale and more backlinks, smaller and medium businesses (SMEs) have to work harder on their Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) to gain prominence in the natural listings of the search engines.

But smaller businesses often have the advantage of being more nimble and dynamic, so if they can take advantage of this flexibility, how can they compete through SEO?

To help answer this question, I asked Susan Hallam, a fellow-trainer and consultant whose clients include smaller businesses. My questions covered five key areas that SMEs should review for their SEO activities:

• SEO approaches SMEs can use to help them beat larger rivals in the search listings
• Tips on using the Google Local Business Center
• Implications of the recent Google "Vince" update
• Using directories for SEO
• Applying Google Analytics for SEO

Susan is Managing Director of Hallam Communications who offer specialist search engine optimisation and Internet marketing services.

1. Which SEO approaches can smaller businesses (SMEs) take to compete with larger businesses?

Small businesses SEO campaigns are often led by their owner/managers, which gives an SEO edge in terms of product or market knowledge, authority to make decisions, and speed of action.

A popular approach is to go for a niche set of key phrases.  Economy of scale means it can be valuable for a small business to dominate the search results for "the long tail," that is to say phrases with low volumes of searching, but also low volumes of competitors.  Being a big fish in a small pond can be economic for an SME, whereas there will not be sufficient return on investment for the larger companies to target those narrow niches.

Classic niches usually include product or market specifics, or geo-targeted phrases. But SME's should also be targeting niche phrases that show intention. Consider the relationship between the number of words in the search phrase and the intention to buy.  There may not be many people searching for "eco-friendly self catering cottage" but there's a good chance a booking will result from the search.  And even a few bookings is all an SME needs to make their efforts worthwhile.

Another SEO approach for SMEs is to use using the same tactics they use to outwit the big boys in the real world. Do you offer ongoing after sales support, free delivery, personal service, or offer tips and techniques?  There's likely to be a correlation with what your potential customers might be searching for that kind of content. If you look at high ranking sites, they will often have that value-added types of content, which by definition is usually keyword rich and acts as link bait for incoming links.

2. It seems many smaller businesses aren't aware of the Google Business Center which can be used to get a presence in the Google Maps listings often shown for local searches. How best should businesses use this to compete with local rivals?

It is a bit frustrating to see that businesses in the UK are not yet getting the full range of Google Local Business Centre (LBC) functionality being offered to our American cousins, such as detailed analytics data, but we can hope that will be made available to us soon.

And it is especially frustrating to see the amount of Map Spam - unscrupulous companies stuffing artificial results into Google Local.  This remains an area that Google has to improve on.

Start by studying your competitors' local listings.  In the "Web Pages" tab you will find a collection of web citations that Googlebot has discovered for that company, and it might be a strong indication of the standard sites where your company should be listed.  See also: http://www.davidmihm.com/blog/local-seo/uk-citations/comment-page-1/#comment-15437

Creating an effective LBC listing is just plain common sense:

• Make your company name as descriptive as possible, without spamming. Rather than naming my business just "Hallam", I can call it "Hallam Internet Marketing"
• You can include video as well as pictures to your listing, and this will drive more click throughs to your site.
• Ask your customers to complete reviews of your site, either directly into the Google Local listing, or via one of the trusted review sites . Your number of reviews appears in the search engine results, and is an important factor in making your business appear more trustworthy.
• Complete the your company listing form as thoroughly as possible and take advantage of the range of content you can add
• Choose your categories carefully, keeping in mind you can add several categories, and indeed you can create your own specific categories if appropriate.

3.      With the recent "Vince update" rolling out in the UK in June, it seems that Google Video and images are becoming more important. Do you have any examples of companies taking advantage of these forms of "universal search"?

Google does appear to be tinkering under the bonnet with the search results at the moment, with big fluctuations in the search results here in the UK.  Google isn't commenting, but we're seeing more non-UK sites appearing in the results, and higher rankings for big brand websites.

We're also seeing more Universal Search content appearing:  videos, images, news, reviews, or blog postings in addition to standard web pages.

I am very impressed by the high Google rankings for the videos on UK hypnotherapists JustBeWell's YouTube channel.  Searches for phrases like "how to stop blushing" rank JustBeWell's videos high in the search results as a result of their efforts optimising their YouTube channel for search.

If you search for "personal injury" you will find that many solicitors are using Blog postings to push their way into the organic results with keyword rich content.

And for any independent consultants reading this article, you might want to be optimising your photos so that your face appears in the Google search results, alongside any your website.

4.      How effective can directories be for SEO for smaller businesses?

As we discussed earlier, getting links from high quality local directories has huge value for SEO, as well as links from specialist directories, or links from your local Chamber of Commerce directory.

Some directory links have huge value, but can be problematic for small businesses to obtain.  Getting a DMOZ Open Directory listing can be nigh on impossible for some SME's, and getting listed in the Yahoo! Directory can be too expensive.

On the other hand, one thing is for certain:  there is little or no value in getting listed in the hundreds of "free for all directories" that are out there.  The link has no value in terms of SEO inbound linking, nor will the link bring visitors to your website.

Like any link, a directory entry will be valuable if it is:

• Relevant to your industry or geography
• Trustworthy, as measured by its Google Page Rank
• Moderated by humans who decide to allow your entry or not
• Visible to the search spiders
• Not on a page with dozens of other links

I would recommend taking a look at the SEOCompany's Top Rated Web Directories by Inbound Link Quality as well as their other listings of niche directories, blog directories, and deep linking directories.

5.      Finally, please could you give us some tips on using Google Analytics to improve results from SEO?

My pleasure.  Here are my five top tips for improving your SEO using Google Analytics data:

1.      Create a segment that excludes visitors who found you by searching for your company name.  Analytics allows you to create "segments" that help you to slice and dice through your data.  One segment to examine is search traffic that excludes visitors who already know and love you.  This might be phrases containing your company name and your URL.   This will give you a truer picture of how well your SEO is going.

2.      Customise your Dashboard.  Most SME's use Analytics straight out of the box, and aren't aware that you can customise the Dashboard to display what is most important to you.  Your SEO dashboard might include Keywords , All Traffic Sources, and segmenting your Search Traffic vs All Traffic

3.      Learn from and act on your Site Search data.  Google Analytics will report what people have searched for once they got to your website.  Visitors to your site are searching and telling you what they want. This is your cue to create key word rich landing pages targeted for the very phrases your customers are searching for. For SME's this is a no brainer.

4.      Know which pages are your entry points. Analytics will tell you which pages have acted as the landing page, or entry point, from the search results.  Any page could act as that first point of contact, and it might not be the page you expect. Take the opportunity to tweak that page for "first impressions" - and make sure it has the essential calls to action to convert visitors into paying customers.

5.      Impressions vs Clicks. What phrases are you ranking well for, whether you know it or not? This report shows you the phrases that triggers your site in the search results (impressions) and then lets you know the propensity of people to click on your site.  By the way, this isn't in Analytics, but rather the Search Query report in your Google Webmaster Tools account.

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