Small Business SEO: Google My Business Or Pay For Performance SEO Pricing?

Small business SEO is the cornerstone of every small business marketing campaign. Organic traffic from Google can mean bank for your business. It can be a game changer.

Search engine optimization pays for itself. Think about traditional advertising — you pay for ad placement and hope to get results. If no new business rolls in, you’re back at square one.

The difference when it comes to small business SEO is that the investment you make continues to keep paying you back long afterwards. That’s the reality of ranking for a profitable keyword. When someone types in what they are looking for and finds you, what else can be better?

Used in tandem with on-page SEO, it’s a powerful strategy to add to your marketing arsenal.

Google My Business: Is It Good For SEO?

Google My Business is a free tool by Google aimed at helping small business owners manage their online presence easier. It combines Google Places and Google+ pages with Search and Maps to make updating your business information with Google a breeze.

Does it help your small business SEO campaign?

Sort of.

While it is important to optimize for your local market, Google My Business will not build links to your website or help you with on-page optimization. And those are the two areas to be concerned with the most.

What You Need To Know About SEO Services Pricing

Affordable SEO can fall into four different categories:

• By the hour
• By the project
• By retainer
• Pay for performance

SEO Services Pricing (Hourly):  

Hourly SEO pricing is typically the most expensive. This is usually reserved for SEO experts who work with an agency or are training a team or business owner over a set amount of hours. This is almost never a good option for small business owners because SEO takes time. A well optimized SEO campaign can still take around 3 – 6 months.

SEO Services Pricing (Project-based):

Project-based SEO pricing can be a good option for specific tasks. Say you need to train your in-house team or you want a consultant to lay out a strategy for you to tackle on your own. Projects typically fall into SEO audits, link building campaigns, or creating the actual strategy.

SEO Services Pricing (Monthly Retainer):

Monthly SEO packages are the norm. With this level of service clients are outsourcing strategy and execution. It’s very normal for monthly small business SEO services to require a contract of up to 6 months to a year.

SEO Services Pricing (Pay for Performance):

 Pay for performance SEO focuses on bringing results first.

 No money upfront. Here an SEO service provider will work to promote higher rankings for their client, and once that customer starts ranking for their keywords, they then would begin paying for the service.

Not too many companies offer this level of small business SEO service. Most SEO companies stay away from this pricing model because it makes them really live up to what they say. If a customer does not rank, they don’t pay. It’s for this reason that companies that offer pay for performance SEO truly must understand Google and how to rank websites because if they don’t, they don’t earn any money.

Which means they wouldn’t be in business for long.

Five Useful Tips to Help You Attract More Readers to Your Blog

By S. Marc

Five Useful Tips to Help You Attract More Readers to Your Blog

Optimizing the content of your blog is essential if you want to engage your readers and attract new ones. However not all bloggers know how to take advantage of the benefits of a blog, especially from an SEO perspective – in other words, making it as best as possible for search engine optimization so people actually find the content via Google, Bing, and Yahoo.  Here are five tips to help you publish content online that has more chance of being found, read, and shared.

Write on Interesting Topics That People Want to Read

It’s not good writing about the evolution of the micro-pig if nobody wants to read it. Take a look on Google for other blogs in your area of interest and see what subject they are covering.  You can then use the Google Adwords tool to search for keywords relating to a topic.  The tool will show you how many people are searching for your subject each month, including the competitiveness of the term.  This will give you a great start and an idea on what to publish.

Create a Catchy and Compelling Title

The first element that potential readers will see in the Google search results, is your article’s title.  For this reason it should be catchy and invite your readers to want to click through to find out more. Make it short and concise still, as titles like this will then appear when shared on Facebook and Twitter, letting even more potential readers see what your blog is about, before hopefully clicking.

Interact With Your Readers

It is very important to create a bond with your readers so they feel involved and will continue to come back to your blog. To do this, interact with them by asking questions at the end of your articles asking them what they think, or posing a question in the comment section.

Don’t Be Afraid to Ask for SEO Help

Most bloggers are not IT specialists.  There are many things that a blogger can do though in terms of optimising their website to make it rank better.  If your blog is starting to become popular and is making you money then it could be a good time to enlist the services of a search engine optimisation company (you can see an example of one in that link).  Good SEO companies will help you rank better by helping you to build relevant links back to the blog, looking at your website code, and other factors design to help your blog content be listed higher up in the rankings.

Share Your Content on Social Networks

If you haven’t already, make sure you sign up to the main social networks of Twitter, Facebook, and Google Plus and then link those accounts back to your blog.  When you publish a new blog post make sure you share it with your subscribers who may in turn share it again, thus increasing your blog visits.