Most small businesses now realize the value of ranking high in the search engines to drive traffic to their website. And there are many SEO companies out there capitalizing on that. They can promise, and deliver, a good ranking. However, are they really providing value?

The issue comes down to what keywords are being targeted. If you ask to be ranked for ‘underwater basket weaving in Muck City Alabama’, any SEO specialist will make that happen easily. The words may match your industry and location, so ranking for those terms seems like a good idea. Unfortunately, the return on this investment is usually next to nothing.

What must be remembered is that there is no value in ranking just for ranking’s sake. The purpose of a high search engine ranking is to drive potential customers to your website. This means we must determine what terms your potential customers are using to find your services, and then work at ranking well for them.

We do not have to guess how people are searching. Google in particular has tools available to help determine what terms people use to search and how often they do so. Even with these tools, however, it still takes some time and creativity to find the best combinations. This keyword discovery phase is critical though to any successful SEO endeavor.

Once armed with some good keyword combinations, then the SEO specialist can help your small business get traffic from people that are actually looking for your services. If you work with our small business SEO program, the first step we take is performing that keyword research so that a solid strategy is in place. Whether you use our services or not though, make sure whoever is helping with your SEO can tell you how often the terms they are targeting are searched.