Ep16 – SEO for Small Business – Alternatives to Higher Priced Monthly Packages

Podcast – SEO Point

Transcription

John: Hey guys, welcome back to another episode of the Works Media Podcast, I’m your host, John Romaine and joining me is…

Byron: Byron Trzeciak.

John: This is Episode Number 16 and in today’s Podcast we’re talking about SEO for small business. How you going Byron?

Byron: Yeah, good thinks John, how are you man?

John: Good, enjoying the nice weather.

Byron: Yeah, it should be warming up for you, you’re sounding a little bit fresher since midway through the year; no colds or snuffles anymore.

John: Yeah, yeah. It’s not – I think we spoke about this in a previous Podcast but definitely – the weathers definitely changing for the better. For the listeners, I’m not sure if I’ve ever mentioned this but I only live about a two minute walk from the beach but instead of being at the beach today I’ve been rolling around under my old ’65 Falcon that I bought.

Byron: Yep, the baby.

John: Yeah, rolling around under that thing getting covered and grease and doing lots of swearing. So, that’s been my day today. What have you been up to?

Byron: You know just catching up with odds and ends. So, always things to tidy up and the weekend gives you an opportunity to do that. So I’ll try to get out and get a bit of sun on my back later on today.

John: Yeah. Working in this industry especially it’s like, oh God, I’m starting to turn into a vampire.

Byron: When the only tan you’ve got is of your LCD laptop screen then you’ve got some issues.

John: Yeah, yeah. Every now and then I walk outside and say, so this is what it’s like?

Byron: Wow, this is the outside world.

John: Yeah.

Byron: Yeah.

John: Well, as you know there was an interesting discussion that popped up this week on Flying Solo and it was talking about why small business own – why SEO is a struggle for small business owners and, you know, that was an interesting thread. There was all sorts of input coming in from the guy that started the thread along with small business owners themselves, people that work in the industry, us, and other service providers, Web developers and so forth so there’s a good – it was a good balanced discussion. It got a little bit colorful in places but they always seem to do…

Byron: Yeah, and I think the opinions were – there’s a few varied opinions but the guy that asked the question I thought he obviously had some experience and figured out what had worked best for him so, I mean, let’s talk about some of the options that small business have for SEO.

John: Well, I mean, before we jump into that I think we should probably talk about why it’s a – and you know, I’m not talking about throw away garbage, low quality SEO, I’m talking about SEO done properly.

Byron: Yeah.

John: Why that’s a struggle for small business owners and, I mean, we’ve spoken about this plenty of times in the past and, you know, it’s a frustration for both parties; service providers like us and small business owners that, you know, understand the importance of search engine optimization and being on – having a visible Web site and a Web site that converts and gets leads. There’s a frustration there for both of us because small business owners are faced with all sorts of issues with trust probably being one of the biggest ones but I think the biggest frustration for small business owners is cost because, you know, and again this comes back to a few things that we’ll mention in just a moment but small business owners are faced with, you know, do I go with this company for $99 a month or do I go with this company over here that charges $1000 a month and trying to make that distinction between the two services and, in fact, there’s some kind of touching back on my SEO fatigue article that I wrote where on the surface unless you have some sort of knowledge about what’s involved with SEO, on the surface you wouldn’t really know so…

Byron: Yeah, I mean, so do you want to just very quickly provide a bit of a breakdown on some of the activities that fall within the small business SEO process?

John: Yeah, well I think I might just refer back to some of the comments that I posted in that thread because I think – it’s a common question that a small business ask, what am I actually paying for? Why is this so expensive and essentially look, the bottom line really is you’re paying for labor. People actually sitting in there putting in the work and I gave some examples in that thread that I spoke about because I can’t remember who it was but they were saying look, a lot of this stuff can be automated. You can use software to do this and that, there’s no need to be paying someone, you know, $75 an hour or $150 an hour or whatever else. You can just punch in some metrics within a piece of software, put in the URL and then press a button and then bingo it’s done.

Well, that’s not true. I mean, it is if you’re paying for absolute garbage SEO where you might just load up, I can’t even remember any of the names of those tools anymore, SEnuke or whatever they are but, yeah, that’s just not the case.

For any reputable agency they’ve got staff so you’re paying for them to be thumbs on seats. It costs money and the examples that I gave were – and this may not mean much to a lot of small business owners that might be listening in on this call but these are all really important parts of any SEO campaign in that they need to be done in order to sort of frame the work that needs to be done so, you know, reverse engineering, competing sites, link profiles, reverse engineering, content marketing strategies, reverse engineering your competitors keyword terms, looking at your competitors sites, structure, information architecture and layout and, of course, identifying any additional opportunities that may assist in accomplishing the overall campaign objectives.

Now, what I mean by reverse engineering is looking at, hey, okay, these are your five competitors that are beating you out at the moment in terms of they’re all up – this handful of sites or they’re first page for just about every term that you type in except you’re stuck back on Page 2 or 3. So it’s worthwhile looking at what they’re doing because it’s obviously working.

So that’s what I mean by…

Byron: Yeah so I mean, that basically falls into, would you say, auditing onsite optimization, content marketing, link building…

John: No, no. That’s all part of – that’s stuff that I just spoke about, it’s all part of research, okay, and then on top of that like I said in that thread, on top of that you’ve got content, audits, the on-page optimization. Yes, I did mention keyword research so I may have doubled up a bit there, meetings and reporting.

So all of this stuff takes time. And, again, like I said in the thread, this stuff doesn’t happen by accident or you don’t just wave a magic wand and then stuff happens so – and when you’re talking about reverse engineering I have some clients that come to me and say, oh, here’s a list of ten of my competitors. You might spend 45 minutes to an hour just looking at one site. So when you’ve got ten or more to look at that time adds up and then of course you’ve got keyword research, again, you know – anyone knows that once you sit in front of a computer time just goes by. So this is why most SEO agencies work on a monthly recurring fee because they understand that there’s a lot of work that needs to be done, it’s not cheap, let’s just say they’re working at $75 an hour, there’s only so much that you can get done within a certain period of time and even if they’re doing just ten hours a month, which is, let’s face it, you can burn ten hours real quick even just with link building, ten hours at $75 an hour, there’s $750.

Byron: Absolutely, I think when you just look at the research there that you mentioned and all of the different areas that you can research for competitors that to me already looks like one month at least of the amount of hours that can be sunk into that once and then once you add in all of the optimization and content marketing it adds up very quickly.

John: I mean, even just an audit, you can spend between eight to ten hours just doing an audit and I’m talking about doing an audit properly. I’m not talking about just taking, again, just taking the Web address and entering it into a piece of software and pressing a button and then sending someone a useless report that’s meaningless. I’m talking about doing it manually and doing it properly so that it’s done right.

Byron: Absolutely.

John: So ten hours you can spend ten hours just doing an audit so – and this is why I can’t speak on behalf of all agencies but you may not even start doing any sort of off-page until maybe the beginning of the third month or end of the second month because of all of this other stuff needs to be done in advance so that you know – you sort of scope out the project.

Byron: Absolutely, yeah. Right, well did you want to talk about what are some of the options or small businesses to keep within their budgets, I guess, keep within their goals?

John: Yeah, well small business owners are faced with, well let’s face it, most small business owners can’t afford $1000 a month, $1500, $2000 a month because they just don’t – there’s not enough monthly revenue within their business to support those sorts of costs and this is where a lot of small business owners go, gee, this is only $200 a month, this SEO, let’s give this a try, there’s not much to loose and there unfortunately the business owners are the ones that end up with penalized Web sites or just garbage SEO. So it always works out to be more expensive.

Yeah, okay. So what are some options for small business owners that can’t afford $1000 a month? I’ve put together a short list here that I’ll go through starting with if you don’t have the money then you’ll have to invest the time and they’ll be a little bit of money involved depending upon what sort of direction you head in but…

Byron: I think just before you go on John, I think that is a key point here with SEO small business clients is the time factor and a lot of clients, I know, will come to you and say, well we don’t have time to do a lot of this so, again, that’s where you’re paying for the man hours for somebody to do it on your behalf.

If you do have the time and you are willing to sink in the hours into your SEO campaign then there’s obviously alternative options but it really depends on the SEO or the business owner in whether they want to be doing SEO or they want to be doing, running, their business, which are two very different things.

John: Or running their business, yeah. Yeah, that’s where the disconnect lies and I think the biggest problem in this space is perception about, you know, what am I actually paying for, what are they doing or small business owners that might go to a weekend barbeque and they meet up with Joe Blogs who runs a – he’s a butcher or something and he says, ah look, you know, Barry don’t worry about it mate, you don’t need to go and spend $1000 a month on SEO, SEO is really easy. So you get a lot of that happening as well where small business owners are being influenced by external forces with the suggestion that SEO is really easy and it’s not time consuming and it can be done for $2.00 an hour which is just not – it’s completely false.

So there’s all sorts of problems going on in this space but let’s talk about what small business owners can do that already understand the importance of tapping into search engine traffic but they may not have the budget to invest towards $2000 a month SEO campaigns with agencies.

And these more or less all fall under some form of SEO training so the first one I’ve got down is consider buying a home study course. There are plenty of home study courses available. I think you just need to be really mindful of where you’re buying it from because there’s probably a lot of crappy ones out there in and amongst some good ones but, you know, a simple beginner’s home study course might be an alternative. You might pay anywhere between say $100 to maybe $300, $400 maybe up to $500 and what I mean by a home study course is something that comes out in lumpy mail so you’ll get worksheets, checklists, a DVD or something that you can work through at your own pace at home.

Byron: Absolutely, yep.

John: The next one I put down was consider going to workshops. This is a space that I’m kind of interested in perhaps considering next year, I know we’ve both spoken about this, just in a way to sort of help small business owners that would like to consider doing their own online marketing to sort of lower the expenses and get a bit more control and understanding about what’s actually involved.

Look it doesn’t – it’s not too hard to do a search within Google and have a look in and around your local area to see what’s going on in terms of SEO workshops, training events and so forth. I’ll give a couple of pieces of advice here; try and avoid any free events. If you get a flyer in the mail or something and it’s advertise, ah, SEO workshop, free! Those events…

Byron: There’s got to be a catch.

John: The people that run those events, there’s always a catch. People that run those events, you know, they’re paying, normally always paying, for the venue so they’ve got to make money from bums on seats. So chances are you’ll go, you won’t learn a great deal but they’ll try and swipe your credit card at some point and get you in on some $5000 course.

So just be very wary of those, you know, again, have a look around see what’s going on in your local area but for a decent workshop where you actually get hands on, it’s not all theory. Something like that you might be looking at maybe anywhere between $750 and up.

Byron: Sorry John, the difference there between SEO training is that you’re probably working at home with your own time going through some material in the workshop. There could be somebody like yourself there that can provide some individualized help as long as – as well as a cost structure over a day or two day kind of period.

John: Yeah, well the home study course is sort of you’re on your own. You’ve got the material to reference and work from but if at any point you get stuck you kind of well, you’re stuck as opposed to a workshop or a live event where it might be yourself and several other small business owners all crammed into a room and you’ve got the laptops out and you’ve got someone giving you examples up the front, this is how you go about finding out what keyword terms your competitors rank for and how you could potentially tap into some of that and blah, blah, blah and of course, you know, have someone wondering around to be able to help out and answer questions so, yeah, workshops are going to be more expensive than a home study course but these are all options.

Another one that I’ve got noted down here that’s similar to a home study course but a little bit different are online training courses. Online training courses are more or less like membership sites where you might pay a monthly fee or maybe just a one-time there might be a one-time fee involved and there might be a little bit of support as well through say a forum, a paid forum or there might be just regular email support something like that. But typically an online training course is content that’s delivered through video, you might have downloadable PDF’s and workshop manuals and so forth so that’s definitely another option and those ones are usually probably the cheapest, I think, out of everything that I’ve got listed down.

You might be able to get into like a paid monthly membership for like $100 a month or something. Again, you’ve got to be really careful about the quality and what you’re actually learning.

Okay, the next one down, SEO communities and mastermind groups. Any type of networking where you can attend events where there are other people that share a common interest. I used to go to a monthly mastermind group in Sydney once a month and, you know, just sitting down at a local pub we’d have dinner and whatever else and just chatting with like-minded people and just trying to learn as much from others and share, you know, knowledge or information. That’s another option for small business owners. Those ones are going to be a little bit tricky to find but definitely one to consider.

Byron: Yeah.

John: Okay, so the last one is one that I’m a huge fan of and this is online business coaching or finding yourself a mentor, so mentorship. Small business owners instead of going out and investing or being in a position where they can’t really afford $1500 or $2000 a month towards a paid service consider $500 or $750 a month, excuse me, towards an online business coach or a mentor.

Byron: What kind of things would be involved in a service like that John?

John: Well, that’s something that I have done a lot of in the past and essentially I’ll just say to the client like, you know, we jump on a call, make sure that we’re going to be a good fit. I try and get an idea of exactly what they’re wanting to achieve and make sure that I can help them and essentially with the stuff that I’ve done it’s just been, you know, usually about an hour and a half or two hour call once a week and I’ll jump on a Skype call with a client and I’ll guide them through the whole process or this is what needs to happen first.

And basically mentoring is a little bit different. It’s like, okay, I’ll provide you with instructions, right, it’s more or less I’ll tell you what needs to be done and then it’s up to you to implement.

That – depending upon, of course, who you work through because I know mentors can be very, very expensive, I know some guys that charge 2.5 thousand an hour but there are mentors around that are probably a lot cheaper than that just make sure that before you get in touch with a mentor that you have – you’re very clear about your goals and objectives, you get some referrals if possible. Are they well known in the – think about things like are they well known in the industry and just have a bunch of set questions put aside that you’d like to put forth before you make that investment.

Byron: Absolutely.

John: So there’s a whole bunch of – I mean what have we got there, five different things that small business owners…

Byron: I guess with each of these options too it’s important for the business owner to understand the type of person they are. Are you a technical hands on do you have a lot of time, are you prepared to sink in a little bit of your own extra research to gain further understanding and, again, it depends on which option you’ve picked but I kind of sometimes look at it as if I want to go out and learn how to draw for example I could go and buy an online course and I might pick up a few different things but I’m not going to be a marvel comic book artist, for example, at the end of that course. Do you know what I mean?

And I think that’s the important difference when – if you’re looking to do any of it yourself or get some form of mentoring, there is always when you’re learning something new that learning curve before you really hit the deck running and start to fully understand what you’re doing as well.

John: Yeah, that’s right and I mean, yeah, look, I’ve had plenty of coaching clients, especially, that have said, ah shit John, our – man, I didn’t – this is so much work! I had no idea how much work was involved.

And, you know, there’s a lot of it that’s really tedious, it’s, again, you know, I spoke about this in one of our previous Podcasts, it’s not sexy! It’s a lot of hard work. Things like outreach, getting in touch with other Web site owners and emailing and preparing content and on page optimization and link building and keyword research. This stuff is not sexy and these – this is something that business owners really need to be mindful of before they say I’ll do it myself because it’s so common for business owners to take on that sort of approach. It can’t be too hard I’ll do this myself. Be prepared because there’s a lot of work that needs to be done and it’s going to take a long time.

I mean, it takes a long time in and of itself when you know what to do but having to learn the process as well as do the work, I mean, that’s something else.

Byron: I guess things always change as well with – anything with technology is changing constantly too so I mean I know you and I John, you tend to be reading all the time in technology-based industries just to keep yourself up to scratch with changes that are occurring or I know there’s a lot of support groups that we’re part of that talk about the changes that are happening with search engines and we try to keep ourselves up-to-date so, yeah, you can’t really stand on your feet, flat on your feet, for too long.

John: No and it’s really important that we stay up-to-date with what’s going on because we’re responsible for our clients and we can’t go about giving out bad advice or incorrect advice.

Byron: Right, absolutely. We need to stay on top of that.

John: You know, there’s really – there’s so much to think about it’s not just a case of I’ll do it myself and I’ll save lots of money because chances are you might save some money but you’re going to waste, well not waste, but it’s going to chew up a lot of your time and most business owners that I speak to are flat out as it is. You know, you speak to an electrician, oh mate, I’ve got six calls tomorrow, I’ve got to drop my van off, my van needs servicing, my tools need replacing, I’ve got six staff running around. What? I’ve got to think about doing keyword research and writing content and optimizing… It’s…

Byron: Just in content alone like if you’re doing a blog post a week for example in whatever way shape or form, we’ve talked about content countless times before but I mean, a lot of people aren’t writers, a lot of people aren’t comfortable with a lot of different areas of content marketing and content creation so just that alone can – there’s a steep learning curve so…

John: And this is why I’m such a big fan of Podcasting because a business owner can get on and should be able to talk about his business or what’s happening in his marketplace because he’s the expert. You know, if a real estate agent has been selling real estate in a certain area for 45 years he should be able to talk under water about what’s going on.

If a mechanic has been running a workshop and he’s been there for 26 years, again, he should be able to talk under water. And banging out content just as we do within this weekly Podcast, it’s not hard, and it’s powerful and it’s quick so… But, you know, there’s a real disconnect, I get that. I understand there’s a real disconnect at the moment between SEO for small business as opposed to SEO for big business because when you’re putting in 20 hours, you know, at $75.00 an hour or upwards then that adds up and that’s fine for big business but for small business it’s just not sustainable.

So, yeah, there’s a real gap in the marketplace for small business owners.

Byron: And the market surveys say that an SEO agency or expert charges between $75.00 to $250.00, sometimes even more, depends on reputation I guess as well but when you say you’re paying for man hours that’s basically where kind of the break downs coming and, yeah, people just need to realize that you either do it yourself and you’ve got to understand your own hourly rate as well. I mean, I think that’s a big part of business owners, understanding what their time is worth versus what someone else’s times worth and just finding a happy means that works and is going to meet the goals.

John: Yeah. It’s a question that small business owners need to ask themselves. Is this the right decision? If I try and take this on myself do I have the time, can I afford this in terms of time, not so much money, but time because there’s a lot of work involved and it can chew up a lot of your time and it – most business owners have got their business to run let alone think about everything else as well especially marketing.

Byron: Absolutely.

John: But hopefully those suggestions that I put forth give business owners, small business owners in particular, something to…

Byron: Yeah, and as mentioned John, like that’s obviously something that you put a little bit of thought into so if any listeners out there are interested obviously maybe come and have a chat to you about, I guess, what kind of services would meet the requirements of their business as well. Or it’s good to have a chat and see what people…

John: Yeah, well who knows.

Byron: …people require.

John: Yeah, who knows, next year I might start doing workshops.

Byron: Yep.

John: We’ll see what happens but I’d like to be able to sort of do something more in that space perhaps and help people that would like to learn a bit more about SEO without having to spend, you know, $25,000 or something.

Byron: Yeah, absolutely.

John: But there’s a lot to think about.

Byron: All right, well thanks again for your time John, we’re bordering on the 30 minute mark, that’s it.

John: The 30 minute threshold. I need to apologize for listeners too…

Byron: I did hear that bird…

John: Did you hear that bird? Ah God! I’m going out the back with a…

Byron: If it’s not the bird on your side it’s the leaf blower on my side so yeah…

John: Yeah.

Byron: We were having a chuckle about this offline John about how it’s sometimes interesting to hear the sounds in somebody else’s home and you kind of picture and imagine where they are so, yeah, it’s just…

John: Yeah, I don’t know where that bird was but I swear it did not shut up for…

Byron: Listeners either love it or hate it.

John: It might be back for the next Podcast.

Byron: No worries, thanks John.

John: All right dude, let’s get out of here.

Byron: I’ll speak to you again in the next Podcast.

John: All right man.

Byron: Thanks mate, bye.

John: See you Byron.

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