Small business owners tend to think that search engine optimization – like most other forms of marketing – can be an uphill struggle against industry behemoths, and they’re right… up to a point. It’s certainly true that pouring all kinds of money and personnel into an SEO effort can give you a huge advantage.
But that doesn’t change the fact that smaller companies have a big advantage on Google, Yahoo, and Bing.
Why? The answer has everything to do with efficiency. Fortune 500 Companies, and even their medium-sized counterparts, have to cast a wide net. For them, a dozen extra sales – even really good ones – doesn’t make too much of a difference, and so they have to concentrate on the high-traffic, high-competition areas.
While there isn’t any reason smaller marketers can’t compete and win in those same keyword groups (that’s the beauty of online business), the truth is that the easiest sales (and the ones with the higher profit margins) are found elsewhere… in more specific, lower-volume keyword markets where a lot of the bigger retailers don’t bother showing up.
For an easy way to understand what I mean, imagine that you have a company that sells air conditioners. You could use “air conditioners” as your main keyphrase, or “Jacksonville energy efficient residential air conditioners.” Sure, the first one is likely to get more traffic, but which search term is more likely to find a buyer? And how much competition will there be?
Search engines give small businesses a huge advantage – if they compete in the right places.
(This is being republished from our original submission to Valacious Magazine in St. Augustine, Florida)
