I think one of the most significant problems small businesses have when it comes to growth is that they maintain a small business mindset. Now if you’re one of those that likes being “mom and pop,” then this article isn’t for you. On the other hand, if you’re a small business owner that has big dreams and big goals, there is no better time than now than to start getting out of the small business, mom and pop mindset, and start thinking like the business you want to grow into. And the first place to start is with your online marketing campaigns.

One of the great things about online marketing over the past decade is that it allowed small businesses to compete against the big guys on more of a level playing field than the offline world allows. Over the past few years, though, the playing field has been tilting like the Leaning Tower of Pisa. As more big corporations jump into online marketing and invest tens, hundreds, and even thousands of thousands of dollars each year, it becomes increasingly difficult for small businesses to gain headway.

That’s not to say there are no opportunities for small businesses to succeed online; quite the opposite, actually. All this means is that small businesses that don’t have the capital to invest need to be more creative in how they invest in online marketing.

It’s not how big you are, but how smart you can be with your money

It’s not always about achieving number one rankings. In fact, as a marketer, I’m getting more and more annoyed with small businesses who come and ask if I can get them #1 for their keyword. Is it possible? Sure. Is it possible with their budget? Not a chance. You won’t get far on $500/month up against companies that invest $10,000 per month.

But a small business does not have to invest $10,000 per month in order to do well online. And success is also relative. Most small businesses are not set up to handle the same kind of success as large businesses. You have to grow into that. But every small business owner investing in online marketing needs to keep their expectations in line with what can be done and what kind of success they can handle. Budget doesn’t always make or break success, but it does play a role in it. The key is to find the areas where your budget will see the most return.

Think big, move swiftly

As a small business owner, you’ll also need to determine how your own time is best spent. Is it beneficial for you to do most of the marketing work yourself, or to hire someone to do it for you? Personally, I like to pay people to do things so I have more time to run my business. But not everybody has that luxury. But part of thinking like a big business is being willing to not do everything yourself and put it in the hands of those who can really bring you success.

Sometimes the best thing a small business owner can do is to think like a big business. You won’t be able to do everything a big business does, but you can take lessons from what they do and determine how best to scale them to your situation. The one advantage a small business has over a large business is adaptability. Think big, move fast, and invest in areas where your larger competition is overspending and underperforming.

You don’t have to be a big business to win in the online marketing game. But you do need to get out of the mom and pop rut. Be willing to take risks, but do so wisely and well-informed. And like big businesses, be willing to fail a little here and there if it teaches you how to succeed bigger later. You don’t have to spend like a big business, but you won’t go far so long as you keep thinking like a small business.

Stoney deGeyter is CEO of Pole Position Marketing. The Small Is Beautiful column appears on Thursdays at Search Engine Land.

I’m not a blogger—I just play one on the Internet. There are a lot of professional bloggers out there. I’m not one of them. Like many small business owners that also happen to blog, I have to find ways to balance my time between the demands of running a business and pushing out information that helps me build up my online reputation.

Lately I’ve been feeling overwhelmed between business and blogging issues. I love to write, but blogging takes up a considerable portion of my day. I then have the added self-imposed pressure that I have to blog regularly. In talking with my wife about this, she looked at me and asked, “Do you really have to?” I immediately jumped into self-justification mode. “It puts me out there.” “It builds my credibility.” “It gives me a voice in my industry. “It leads to more contacts, leads and even speaking gigs. Of course I have to.”

But, well, I really don’t have to. Reality struck me later that evening. I’m not a professional blogger. I don’t make my living blogging, and there is no one demanding that I write a blog post every day. In fact, if something more important comes up, things such as family or urgent business matters, the blog needs to be the first thing to be pushed aside. The problem is that it’s often not.

Setting your blogging priorities

I know many small business owners feel the same way that I do. Somehow stuck between business obligations and feeling like blogging is one of the most important things we can do. And looking at the big picture, blogging is one of the important things that we do for our business, but it’s not the most important thing. And while we are looking at the big picture, a missed day here or week there certainly isn’t going to hurt.

As with anything else, putting blogging into perspective and prioritizing it properly is essential for any small business blogger. It’s OK to set time aside for blogging, but if that time gets interrupted by other, more urgent matters, go do what’s important. Your blog will still be there the next day, or week, or month. Missing a post here or there isn’t the end of the world.

Know when to say when

Another useful suggestion that can help during those times that you don’t have a lot of time to invest in blogging is to break up a long post into several shorter posts. You can either sit down and write it all at out once and then take several blogging days off as you post the pieces over time, or you can write each piece separately, allowing you to spend less time writing it all out in one sitting.

There have been a lot of times when I published a very long blog post and wished that I had broken it up into several posts over a few days. This would have given me more time to focus on more important business matters while not having an extended period of blogging silence. My readers, too, might appreciate the smaller quicker hits of information, as many of them are busy as well.

Changing your blogging patterns

Sometimes it’s not a matter of how often you blog but a matter of how much. I tend to get pretty wordy in my blog posts and there is nothing wrong with that. But sometimes I forget that not every blog post has to be a 1200 word article. Some posts can be shorter than others.

This is helpful to keep in mind when you’re stressed about not getting to your blog posts. Don’t worry about writing some lengthy prose; just throw up a few paragraphs. Give your readers something, even if it’s just a quick thought. You can always go back and revisit and expand upon it later. It’s really OK to do that. In fact, I recommend deliberately mixing things up a bit. One day force yourself to write no more than a paragraph. Another day write 300 words. Another, 600, and another 1200, if you can do it.

My point here is that short posts can often be just as good, if not better than long posts. Honestly, I know I don’t write enough short posts, but I do enjoy reading them! Quick bits of information can be fantastic to your readers who don’t always have time to invest in your longer, more thought-out pieces.

And speaking of keeping things short and sweet, I’ll make an effort right here and now to end this article. I’ll bet you didn’t even notice what didn’t get written, did you? I’m off to do the important things, like run a successful small business. I’ll leave the rest of the blogging to the professionals.

Stoney deGeyter is CEO of Pole Position Marketing. The Small Is Beautiful column appears on Thursdays at Search Engine Land.

Small businesses are often left in the dark when it comes to which SEO strategies really work and which don’t. Online there is an onslaught of information freely available online, much of it contradictory. Small business owners who attempt to perform SEO for themselves are often left wondering “What strategies are more important than others? Which are worthless? How do you tell the difference?”

Slogging through SEO forums, blogs and article sites can provide a great deal of good information, but it can also leave the small business owner confused on what—or what not—to do. Last week, in an effort to bring to light those things that any small business owner shouldn’t be concerned about, I started counting down the top 10 things that a small business should never have to worry about regarding their SEO campaigns.

Though some of these fall under the “Duh!” category to seasoned search marketers, this is not the case for many unseasoned small business owners who are either confused or still following advice from 1999. Here I continue counting down to some what many would consider to be even more obvious things that are simply irrelevant and/or not worth thinking to much about. As obvious as they may be to some of us, I hope that this list does speak to those who most need it.

And as a bonus, I’ll end with the number one most important thing you should worry about.

5) Worrying about shifting rankings or temporary losses

Search engine rankings change. That’s just a fact of life. New sites are always going online, old sites are disappearing, new information is added to the web, and new competition with fresh marketing dollars emerges. Add to that the fact that search engines are always tweaking and adjusting their algorithms and you’ve got a search engine ranking roller coaster.

And you know what? There’s not a whole lot you can do about that. Now that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t pay attention to any of your keyword rankings (though there are dozens of reasons why you shouldn’t). But if you’re compelled to monitor rankings, don’t consider minor shifts as being significant. They’re not. Heck, most of the time you shouldn’t even stress over major shifts. So often these are just temporary hiccups that soon correct themselves.

What you should be concerned about, however, is overall trends. And again, trends in rankings are not the most important thing, but… if you do start seeing a month to month trend of your rankings dropping, that’s when you need to start looking at things more closely. But when it comes to rankings, don’t sweat the small stuff. Change happens. Get used to it.

4) Outperforming Wikipedia

Not. Gonna. Happen. Well, it’s not likely to happen, at least. The simple fact is that Google gives Wikipedia wicked amounts of ranking love. Search almost any topic that Wikipedia has an entry on and you’ll see that Google puts Wikipedia right there at or near the top.

Does that mean that your site could never outrank Wikipedia? Well, never say never. Just don’t expect it to happen. Don’t even think about trying to make it happen. You’ll just get yourself frustrated over something that you have absolutely no control over. Wikipedia ranks where it does because that’s where Google wants them. And until that changes, just move on and make your site as valuable resource as possible.

3) Fretting about DMOZ listings

Is DMOZ (the Open Directory Project) still relevant anymore? It’s been a long time since I’ve given DMOZ any kind of thought, so someone please correct me if I’m wrong. But I just don’t see that it has the pull that it once had just a few years ago.

Don’t get me wrong, I still think DMOZ is still worth the cost of submission (it’s free). It’s even worth the time spent making that submission, but in this case you just have to submit and forget. If your site gets added, kudos to you. If it doesn’t, well, thanks for playing and try again next year. In fact, that’s about as often as we revisit our DMOZ submissions. Since it doesn’t take much time you can’t go wrong trying, but any more time spent checking, rechecking, contacting editors, or re-submitting gives you a net loss on your ROI. This just ain’t the stuff that top-rankings-a-make.

2) Fussing over Alexa or Compete.com rankings

Yes, I do occasionally peek at our site rankings on Alexa. Why? Because it can provide a nice historical trend of the overall popularity of the site—but only among Alexa toolbar users, of course. And that’s the thing, Alexa is not an accurate ranking of a website’s popularity. It is merely a ranking of websites by Alexa users. So while it can provide some nice data to compare over a long period of time, it really doesn’t give you much of anything in terms of day to day importance. Do I get concerned when my Alexa ranking goes down? Not even a little.

What about Compete.com? Well, the very same principles apply. While it may have better stats and accuracy than Alexa, when it comes down to it, the information should be used for entertainment purposes only. Take it with a grain of salt, don’t live by it, and don’t let the rankings bother you. But do follow trends because that can tell you quite a bit.

1) Obsessing over your meta keywords

I know, I can just hear the sighs of all the people who are thinking, “Well, duh!” But a lot of small business owners, who only know what they read five years ago, still think that the keyword meta tag is a big deal. Sorry folks, it’s not. Commas or spaces? Doesn’t matter. Properly spelled words, or misspellings? Doesn’t matter. Keywords or related words?

Doesn’t matter.

Ok, so maybe, maybe, maybe it matters a tiny smidgen on Microsoft Live search. Or is it Yahoo? Oh heck, I don’t even remember any more because really, it just doesn’t matter. There is really nothing you can do with the keyword tag that’s going to give you any kind of relevance or ranking boost with the top search engines. Do some engines read it? Yes. Do they apply it to their algorithm? Doesn’t matter. Because even if they do, it simply doesn’t carry enough weight to make a difference. And hey, this is coming from an every-little-bit-helps kind of guy!

[Editor's Note: Our Meta Keywords Tag 101: How To "Legally" Hide Words On Your Pages For Search Engines goes in-depth about which search engines use the tag and how].

So, what should you do? I say, put some relevant words into your keyword meta tag and then don’t ever worry about it again. Ever.

There you have it, the top ten things that you should never have to worry about again. Do you feel better? Do you feel like a heavy burden has been lifted? You should. There are just so many other things that are far more deserving of your time, energy, and worry than these things ten items.

But before I go, I do want to provide you with one more bit of information…

The number one most important thing you should worry about

Conversions.

SEO isn’t about PageRank, links, or who says what is or isn’t important (and yes, I get the irony of what I just wrote). Heck, it’s not even about rankings. Pure and simple, it’s about getting conversions, whatever that is for you. Everything else in SEO is just a means to that end.

Here is the thing that you need to ask yourself before worrying about any one thing or another… Does this affect my ability to get conversions?

I’m not talking traffic here, I’m talking conversions. People actually buying your product or service, signing up for information, filling out a contact form, or emailing or calling you on the phone. Focusing on the conversions is where the money’s at. In fact, the better your conversion rate, the less traffic you have to rely on. And relying on less is always a good thing in an online world when things can change overnight.

SEO is much like the Serenity Prayer. “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference.” If you’re going to worry, worry only about the things that you know you can do something about, and those things which will actually make a difference. Anything else is just a waste.

Stoney deGeyter is CEO of Pole Position Marketing. The Small Is Beautiful column appears on Thursdays at Search Engine Land.

I often feel sorry for small businesses. I do. Too often they don’t have the funds, time, or resources to investigate things as thoroughly as they should. Unlike larger businesses with deep pockets, small business can’t hire first-rate, high-end SEOs to do all the right things for them. All too often they have to rely on the free advice on blogs, forums, and social networking sites—and then do all the worrying themselves. If they are in a slightly better position, they might be able to pawn off some of that worry to an SEO which they have not fully vetted, and who may end up taking their campaign in the wrong direction. But that leaves them with entirely new things to worry about.

Spending nights worrying about an SEO campaign can eat up a lot of energy that the small business would be better off applying to other areas. But with so much information out there, it’s hard to know what’s what. The SEO industry tends to thrive on extremes. We create lists of things that absolutely mustbe done and lists of things that absolutely must not be done. But far too often, within either of those lists are things that simply don’t matter at all. To provide a bit of middle ground to all the extremes, here are things that you simply do not need to spend more than a half a second fretting over:

10) Focusing on number one rankings

Are we still obsessed with getting #1 rankings? Number one rankings aren’t all they are made out to be. This is especially true when dealing with broad, non-targeted phrases. Listen, top search engine placement is great, but there is so much more to obsess over. How about focusing on site conversions and usability? How about branding? How about improving your web site and services so you actually deserve that #1 position?

The thing we hear most often from small businesses is that being on top is the only way to drive traffic. That is so not true anymore, especially within the context of social media. There are so many more ways to drive traffic to a web site. Yes, search engines are one of those ways, but they are not the only way. And yes, the exposure you get from a top ranking is great and all, but the fact is that unless you truly deserve to be there (and this can be determined by as much of what happens offline as on), you’re just not going to be able to displace a competitor that has been firmly established in that position, especially on competitive phrases.

So, no need to worry about that #1 ranking. Just get your site optimized and work on delivering targeted traffic to a high-converting web site. Focus on that and someday the #1 ranking may follow.

9) Obsessing over PageRank

You gotta love an industry that tells people they should ignore page rank but suddenly obsesses over it when Google does a number with their little green bar on high profile sites. But we all need to know why these things happen, right? Fair enough. It is important to know why certain things are happening so you can make sure you’re not doing anything to violate the search engine guidelines. But after that, it’s time to just let it go.

The fact is, tool bar PageRank isn’t much of an accurate measure of anything. It’s fine to consider in context, but really, does it matter if your site goes up or down a PR level? Is it worth the effort to move your site from a PR3 to a PR6? In a word: no.

PageRank is simply an effect, not a cause. Focusing on PageRank is useless. However, if you focus on creating a valuable site that others think is worth linking to and shopping at, then you’ll see your little green bar grow bit by bit. People don’t convert or not convert based on PageRank. They do based on the quality of the site.

And while we’re at it, let’s talk about “leaking” PageRank. Listen, of all things to worry about, PageRank leakage isn’t one of them. If you want to link out to sites that you feel are valuable to your visitors, then do it. If you’re linking for the sake of linking, then don’t. It’s a simple as that.

8) Worrying about who is linking to you

This one isn’t a complete throwaway, because you should pay attention to your incoming links. But for the most part, there isn’t a whole lot you can do about who does or doesn’t link to you outside of implementing a reciprocal link campaign. And for the most part, who’s linking to you is not going to hurt you. But there are some exceptions, so again, do keep an eye on these things from time to time but don’t obsess over them.

If you find sites linking to you that you don’t want to be associated with, the best you can do is to politely ask them to remove the link. If they are a spammer, chances are you’ll never get a response. But sometimes you might, and you might even succeed at getting a link you don’t like removed. But it’s rare that that happens. And search engines understand this and act accordingly.

7) Worrying about what anybody else says (including me)

SEO opinions are like elbows—everybody has at least two, and each is on the opposite side of the issue! (I refrained from using the analogy about everybody’s opinions stinking. You’re welcome.) Seriously, you can’t spend your time worrying about what SEO experts say and who contradicts them. Or about who’s right and who’s wrong. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t read any information on the various sites frequented by the SEO community. I’m just saying take it all with a grain of salt. If you find someone that you tend to agree with based on your own experience, then go ahead and put a bit more stock into what that person says. But don’t take it as gospel truth and always be open to different schools of thought.

Remember, experience is the best teacher. And I mean your experience, not only someone else’s. You can only gain knowledge from others, but you can never know what actually works or doesn’t work until you go out and do it for yourself.

6) Obsessing over Microsoft/Yahoo/Ask rankings

Before you get your panties in a bunch over this one, let me put it into context. Each engine has different algorithms and therefore each will rank a page differently for the same keywords. Is it smart to work on getting your site ranked on MSN, Yahoo, and Ask? Sure, absolutely. But never at the expense of your Google rankings. Never. While different algorithms are employed, they all tend to run off the same basic premise: a good site will rank well, regardless of the algorithm used to evaluate it.

Don’t think that you need to optimize a page for each search engine. It doesn’t work that way. Just do good optimization and all engines will rate you accordingly. Now, you should be concerned about making sure each engine finds your web site and that it is relevant for your key search phrases. But don’t make drastic changes to your pages because Ask or Microsoft has you at page 2 while Google has you at the top of page 1. Not unless you absolutely know those changes won’t cause a drop in your Google rankings. If you’re uncertain, or if you make those changes and see Ask move up and Google move down, by all means change it back. It’s just not worth it.

I’ll finish up next week (you can thank me with lavish praise and links.) We’ll keep going down the list until we hit the number one thing that a small business should absolutely never be worried about. Ever. Stay tuned.

Stoney deGeyter is CEO of Pole Position Marketing. The Small Is Beautiful column appears on Thursdays at Search Engine Land.

People often associate brands with money. And lots of it. Generally, if you try to run a branding campaign such as you see from big companies like Target, you certainly will have to fork over a big chunk of change. But we small business owners don’t have that kind of money. And from my examples in last week’s installment of this column, you might conclude that full-scale SEO or PPC is the only way to brand yourself online. But that’s just not true. As you will see, some SEO will come into play, but cheap and easy SEO will get you started on the path to brand recognition in search results.

Determine what you want to brand

Is it your company name, your products, your services, or even your personal name or online handle that is worth branding? If you’re a blogger, your name is definitely important. So is your blog name. If you’re a business, then your business name will be important, as might be your products if they are exclusively yours. The point is, you first need to determine what you have that needs to be branded. Now you have your starting place.

Do a little SEO

SEO is a great way to brand your products online. But this isn’t necessarily keyword-targeted SEO, the kind that tends to cost a fortune if you’re in a competitive industry. More to the point, we’re simply SEOing your business name. You want first and foremost for someone to find you when they search for your name. We also want to make sure that when someone sees your business name for any related search for which you can get ranked.

The easiest way to do this kind of branding is to edit your title tags to include your brand name. If it’s your company name, then put your company name first and foremost in your title tag. If you’re branding own name, put that there. The goal here is to make sure people see your company name, or whatever it is you’re branding, whenever your site comes up in the search result. Just as important, this will help ensure that when someone does a search for your branded name, you show up in the results. Sure, that’s not getting you branded with the industry related keywords, but nonetheless it can be effective. When people search, and continue to see your company name time after time, they’ll start to remember that.

You also need to pay attention to alternate spellings of whatever it is you’re branding. Someone might incorrectly search for your name, leave out or add a word, and so on. This is where SEO can be a bit more difficult and may require some creativity, as you don’t want to put your business name in your title tag incorrectly.

What you can do is look for opportunities to optimize for some of these variations. For example, I don’t just try to rank well for Pole Position Marketing, but I try for Pole Marketing or Position Marketing. It’s easy to leave out a word in a search and if I get my site to come up for these relatively non-difficult phrases, then I’ve increased my chances of being found. Alternatively, I can also try to come up in the results for a search for Pole Position, but that one will require a bit more creativity. And perhaps a few more dollars!

Buy cheap ads

Another thing you can do to brand yourself is to buy lots and lots of cheap ads through Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc. You can do this for your name, products or even specific keyword searches. When going this route you’re not competing for top spot, or even for a lot of clicks. Instead, what you’re looking to appear on a search result page where you’ll be seen for as little money as possible. Don’t compete. Find keywords that have low click cost or more expensive keywords where you can rank further down the page. Again, the point here is just simply to get eyeballs to fall on your ad—and your brand name—not necessarily to get the searcher to click on your ad (though that would be a bonus).

This is also a great way to get visibility for incorrect or alternative spellings of your brand. If the variations are really offbeat then it will cost you next to nothing to put your ad up, even if it gets clicked. Another good option here is to just put ads up on tons and tons of low search volume keywords. These will get very little traffic, but gives you yet another opportunity to get your name in front of searchers’ eyeballs. Lots of little exposures can equal few big exposures.

I’m fully convinced that there isn’t a company in the world, regardless of size, that shouldn’t be working on branding itself in some way or another. Branding for your web site or company name is usually the easiest thing to do as most web sites inherently come to the top of the results for those types of searches. But taking it a bit further, expanding your reach can be significantly rewarding, even allowing you to be a little brand in a big commercial pond.

Stoney deGeyter is CEO of Pole Position Marketing. The Small Is Beautiful column appears on Thursdays at Search Engine Land.

More and more I’m discovering the necessity of helping our customers brand themselves in the search sphere. In the past, we often felt that some clients just didn’t need to be branded in the search results. Maybe because they were smaller clients or didn’t have a nationally recognized name. But then how do companies become nationally recognized names? You got it. Branding.

Branding isn’t just for big companies any more. With the internet and search, it’s become easier and cheaper to for companies to brand their names in front of their target audience. It’s true that good branding efforts will always cost you some time, energy and even a little bit of money, but it’s not out of reach of small businesses with little extra cash on hand for what is traditionally considered a non-sales generating marketing strategy.

The benefits of branding your web site

A solid branding strategy is important for any small business and should be a part of its online marketing efforts. So let’s talk first about some of the benefits of branding your website. If you’re like most small businesses you’re more concerned about selling products or services than you are in establishing a name for yourself. Why go through the effort? Simply put, branding helps sales.

Let’s look at this in the smallest of cases. Say you create name recognition for your company with a single person. That’s right, one person knows your company and you’ve convinced them to trust you and the products or services you sell. Big deal, right? Well, it is.

This one person will choose to buy from you rather than your competitor. Your ability to brand your name, and make it synonymous with your quality, has just earned you a sale. But one sale? Big deal!

Well, yeah, it is. Because that one person may tell one other person. The trust you earned by one has just multiplied into two. You just got another sale. Another big deal? OK, by now you’re getting it. Branding is a big deal.

Let’s look at this from anther angle. What is the effect of branding on an unknown audience? The most effective branding is not in the number of people you reach, but in the number of times you’re able to reach any single person with your brand.

Let’s say you want to buy an Easy Button. (Yes, I have one!) Assume that want one but you don’t know who sells them or where to go to get one. Where do you turn? Your favorite search engine of course.

Do a search for easy button and you see a list of results from sites such as Staples, TechEBlog, Amazon and even Wikipedia. But one company stands out in all those results: Staples. I now correlate the easy button with Staples.

As my easy button would say, “that was easy.” Perhaps a bit too easy, though.

Let’s take another example. This time, search for DVD. In this search I see results for Netflix, Amazon, DVD Empire, Deep Discount DVD, Barnes and Noble and others. Note that I’m not just looking at natural results, but paid results also.

Of course, DVD is a broad query so I narrow it to DVD movies. Huh! Some of these results look familiar. Again I see Amazon, Netflix, DVD Empire along with some new results such as CD Universe, and Columbia House.

If I don’t like full price DVDs, I search cheap DVDs. Here again I see DVD Empire, Deep Discount DVD, Amazon, Columbia House.

Do you see what happened there? In three searches stood out due to their brand recognition. Each search produced different results, but some sites receive broader branding power because they came up in more than just one of my searches. Now, without even searching, I have a mental idea of where I can go to buy DVDs: Amazon, Columbia House, DVD Empire and Deep Discount, because they showed up the most in each of my searches. Next time I want a DVD, I might just go directly to one of those sites without even searching.

The branding strategies employed by small business will be similar to what we saw here. But you don’t have to go after highly competitive keyword phrases to get similar branding power. In my follow up next week, I’ll provide details on how small businesses can brand themselves for little or no money.

Stoney deGeyter is CEO of Pole Position Marketing. The Small Is Beautiful column appears on Thursdays at Search Engine Land.

Ever see one of those movies that show some super-secret government agency with plush high-tech interior offices that belie the exterior location? You know the ones I’m talking about. The secret spy base in headquartered in a rundown part of town in a dilapidated building that nobody but a squatter would give a second look. But as the camera moves inside we are shown a state-of-the art facility worthy of a Manhattan high-rise office in the 22nd century. Sometimes SEO is just like that—but the opposite, actually, with companies obsessing over superficial metrics like top ten listings. And the biggest culprits of this obsession tend to be small business owners with websites!

Businesses spend a lot of money on the SEO “exterior” (search engine rankings) while ignoring the “interior” (a content-rich, usable website) altogether. Can you image driving through a new part of town, with freshly painted lines on the newly laid asphalt, young budding plants along the sidewalks and newly stuccoed office buildings that look to be full of leather bound books smelling of rich mahogany? Now imagine walking into one of those businesses to instead see torn up carpet, water-stained ceilings, crumbling sheet rock on the walls, and someone doing their business in the corner. The inside doesn’t exactly give you the good feelings that you had before going in. Focusing on rankings while ignoring the usability of the website is a fantastic way to embed the image I provided above into every one of your visitor’s minds.

Small businesses are often on a much tighter budget then their big corporate counterparts. And when you’re on a budget, you really want to spend your money in the most beneficial areas. Unfortunately, money is most often spent on what is perceivedto be the most beneficial areas. While SEO is beneficial in gaining exposure and driving traffic to the front door, it is not always the most beneficial place to spend the small business marketing budget. What’s on the inside matters just as much

I recently had to spend more than my fair share of time at dentists’ offices. Between getting my wisdom teeth pulled, a root canal, and a cap, I visited a number of local dentist offices in the area. In the process I was able to see a stark contrast between them.

While most of the offices I visited were roomy and full of nice furniture, one stood out as a genuinely scary experience, especially for someone who suffers from mild claustrophobia. While this office didn’t have fully enclosed (mostly just partitioned areas), it was cramped for space. The receptionist’s desk was two and a half feet wide and piled high with about a years worth of “stuff that can wait.” While I was in one of the procedure rooms I could see right into some of the other procedure rooms where people were being worked on. As I laid back in the chair to get some X-rays, the nurse was literally having to duck around overhanging equipment while stepping over small office trash cans. I had never been so scared in my life!

While a small business may spend money to be in a good location in a nice part of town in a building with a nice exterior, the inside can be a different matter all together. This is what many business websites are like when they focus on SEO and ignore their website design. There is nothing wrong with investing in SEO to drive traffic, but SEO is not the end of the story.

Recently we had a long-time client undergo a major site redesign. The old site was getting a few miles past outdated. Over the years we’ve done well to get their rankings in place and holding steady while continuing to target new keywords as well. We had also been prodding them on occasion about the inefficiencies of their site and how some modifications would do them some good. Their business had been growing pretty significantly since we started working on their SEO campaign, so they were never in a real hurry to make changes. But finally the day had come.

The client invested in a major redevelopment of the site and recently rolled it out to the public. Almost immediately something amazing happened. Their conversion rates jumped by 30%!

This jump wasn’t the result of new keywords optimized (though that was being done), nor was it the result of some previously optimized keywords suddenly moving up in the rankings (though that happens too). No, the 30% jump in conversions was a direct result of a new, more appealing and user friendly web site design.

The new site design cost them about what a years worth of SEO cost them. And the results are time saved from a new back-end system and a more user-friendly front-end. This of course means saved time and additional profits to boot. And with additional revenue on hand, the client is talking about investing more into SEO. And why not? With a newly polished, high-tech interior, why not do all that you can to drive even more traffic to the higher-converting site?

No one can deny the value of getting first page placement for relevant keyword phrases. But many small businesses still need to be convinced that there is more to marketing than rankings and traffic. Bringing traffic into the slums isn’t all that difficult to do. Getting someone to buy from you while you’re there is. Lucky for you, it’s not too great of a distance from Harlem to Manhattan. Conversions do matter. And in the end, conversions are what matter most.

Stoney deGeyter is CEO of Pole Position Marketing. The Small Is Beautiful column appears on Thursdays at Search Engine Land.

Lately, around the Pole Position Marketing office, we’ve been discussing the cost involved in providing top quality search engine optimization. All too often we find value added services or strategic improvements that require more time than initially anticipated. How much additional value can we provide without increasing fees?

While those questions continue to be bantered around, it got me thinking about the cost of SEO in general. As more and more avenues arise within the search marketing landscape, costs of total inclusive SEO services can be quite hefty. And that’s not even considering the SEOs that charge $500-$1000 per hour. The sheer number of hours involved in SEO can make it an expensive venture, whether you’re doing it yourself, engaging a consultant or hiring an all-inclusive firm to manage it for you.

Can small businesses really afford SEO?

That’s the question that many small businesses are asking. And depending on who you talk to, you’ll get answers from “yes” to “no” to a qualified “maybe.”

The trick to keeping your SEO costs down is efficiency. That can mean different things to different people. Finding the most efficient balance between time, budget and what is absolutely necessary for success, is the only way to keep your SEO campaign affordable.

Investment of Time: Time is one of the primary investments of SEO. You’re either spending your own time, paying for someone else’s time or a combination of both. With the vast amount of work that goes into SEO it all boils down to how much time one has, vs. how much time any particular task takes. Depending on those two factors, you then need to factor in which tasks are more urgent—more worthy of the time being invested. Focus on those first and then start working your way down to the less important tasks.

Another component of time comes into play regardless of who performs your SEO and that is simply one of waiting. Very few sites can become an overnight success. Any investment you make into SEO must consider the period of time it takes for SEO changes to work through the system. The length of this time can vary on a number of factors so you should have understanding of this ahead of time.

Investment of Budget: The next consideration to balance into SEO is your budget. Budget can help you determine whether you invest in your own time or someone else’s. But budget itself should not be considered without understanding the value behind the work being performed. Such value should be determined by the quality of the information gathered, the skill of the person implementing the information and the ability of the implementation to achieve positive results. Paying more does not necessarily mean that you get more value. On the other hand, rarely can you find great value on the cheap.

Investment In What Is Necessary: There are a lot of components to SEO, not all of them necessary for every campaign. By and large I would say that the most successful SEO campaigns utilize all possible forms of online marketing, but success itself is not determined merely by doing everything possible. Success comes from doing the right things at the right time, in the right way. If you can determine what avenues of SEO need to be pursued for your campaign, then you’ll ultimately reduce the “cost” involved in getting results.

SEO can always be affordable

SEO doesn’t have to be expensive. In fact, expense is just relative to the return. To some, anything more than a few hundred dollars can seem expensive. But if the value returned is several thousand dollars, then it’s not so expensive after all. The same holds true if you invest several thousands of dollars. It’s only expensive until you get multiple thousands in return.

A little can go a long way. But since SEO often has much more value than the sum of its parts. The more time, energy, knowledge and skill you invest, the more exponential the returns tend to be. The idea is to invest what you can, where you can, when you can. And when the returns come, reinvest that even further to expand your campaign and your return on investment. As long as your marketing campaign is returning a positive ROI, then the true cost of SEO is affordable.

Stoney deGeyter is CEO of Pole Position Marketing. The Small Is Beautiful column appears on Thursdays at Search Engine Land.

Let’s face it, in a world where almost every conceivable metric of analyzing your website traffic is available to you, the only metric that really truly matters is conversions. Click through rates, page views, time spent on site, number of pages read, entrance and exit points, abandonment; all of these metrics are fantastic, but if you’re not using them to improve your conversion rates, well then, you’re simply not using them.

Most people look at their website as a whole but in reality it is merely a collection of parts. These parts (web pages) are essentially individual steps—or stepping stones—that should lead your visitors to a specific goal: the conversion. If all of your steps are working properly, you should see an increase in conversion rates and sales. If your steps are broken or lead your visitors to the wrong thing at the wrong time, then you’re giving qualified visitors an opportunity to exit before the get what they came for.

In order to guide your visitors from the entry point to the conversion point, you need to pay attention to the steps along the way.

The stepping stones of web conversions

Step 1: Create your path The first thing you need to know about getting web conversions is that all your stepping stones need to work together. The first step should lead to the second step, which should lead to the third and so on. You should not have more stepping stones than you need to get to the conversions, but worse, you should not be missing any steps either.

In order to create the path, you need to understand the starting point of the conversion. The obvious is the home page, but not everybody enters on the home page. Some may enter on product pages, testimonial pages, informational pages, etc. You need to start a path at each of these pages that will help the visitor take the next step(s) needed to the conversion.

Step 2: Create additional paths Not every visitor has the same wants, needs or desires as the next. If you employ only a single path to the conversion, you will ultimately be eliminating a sizeable portion of your target audience. Even visitors that land on the same page will have different needs, desires, temperaments, etc.

A path to the conversion should be created to provide your users precisely what they need in order to take the next step. For some this may be product options, for others company reassurances, and still others, more information. Be careful however, as too many paths (options) can create confusion and inhibit your visitors from choosing any path at all. Don’t try to be all things to all people, but instead try to narrow the options down to the most common and significant for your visitors so you can be sure to meet their needs.

Step 3: Follow your paths Once you have created your paths, you then need to start following them. This is essentially a path quality inspection tour. You want to put yourself in the mind of your visitor and follow through with as many paths as possible. This is where you’ll find out if there are missing or too many steps, and to few or to many paths.

During this process you’ll want to take notes of anything that creates obstacles to getting to the conversion. Look for missing information, errors on the pages, broken links, calls to action and the like. You want to make sure that the visitor finds no hindrances to getting to the destination and are able to find all the information they need to make a confident purchase decision.

Step 4: Fix your stepping stones on the path This is pretty self-explanatory. Once you’ve uncovered any problems with your conversion paths, you then want to fix them. Patch holes in the process so that each step is a firm foundation and jumping off point to the next step.

Step 5: Add or remove stepping stones to create the most efficient path After you’ve tested your paths you’ll have undoubtedly uncovered gaps where steps need to be added or places where there are additional steps that merely distract from the goal of getting to the conversion. You want to streamline all of that by making sure that each step has its place and is where it needs to be.

Step 6: Test new paths Once you’ve tested, fixed and retested your original paths, and everything is functioning as it should, it’s time to start looking for ways to create and test brand new paths. Consider your users carefully here. The first pass at creating paths was designed to hit the majority of your target audience. Now it’s time to accommodate the rest. While the broader target is easier to hit, the smaller target is no less important. Build paths specifically for these users as they can be the source of many additional sales, and potentially higher conversions.

Step 7: Test new stepping stones By this time your conversion process should be going strong and you have pretty solid conversion rates. Well, if it ain’t broke… fix it anyway. Never stop looking for new opportunities to improve your conversion process. Test, test, and test some more. Sometimes adding new steps in the process can help improve conversions with certain audiences. Just be careful to keep an eye out for any negative effects as well. The goal here is improvement, not to add clutter.

Stoney deGeyter is CEO of Pole Position Marketing. The Small Is Beautiful column appears on Thursdays at Search Engine Land.

There are over 200 signals analyzed by search engines, creating an endless combination of tactics and strategies that can be employed to achieve exposure, rankings, and—by far the most important—conversions.

To successfully deploy these tactics and strategies, however, requires a tremendous investment of time. To say that SEO is a full time job is a vast understatement. One can spend weeks or months dedicated to learning and employing just the more common aspects of SEO. Add to that quality copywriting, link building, usability testing, data analysis, and the myriad of social networking opportunities that seem to spring up over night, and you can see why today’s SEO is not just one, but several, full time jobs!

Deciding how, when and where to invest

Because of this, search engine optimization can seem to be a daunting task for many small business owners. On the one hand, to hire a good consultant or firm can cost more than a small business owner has budgeted for marketing for the year. On the other hand, to attempt to perform optimization in house, one finds that there is often an insufficient amount of time available to do that and run the business while being effective at both. There are only so many hours in the day!

What options are available to the small business owner in the vast landscape of online marketing? The way I see it, there are only two real choices. You either do it yourself, or you pay someone to do it for you. Either way, you have an investment to make, and you must ask yourself, what makes the most sense for your current situation.

What many small business owners fail to understand is that in order to succeed online a significant investment must be made. Gone are the days when you could throw up a website and expect to become an overnight success. Most of today’s overnight business success are back by investments in time, money, resources or any combination of those. While starting and running a business online is easier than off-line, the investment considerations should be no less. And with that, you must decide how, when and where to invest your resources, whether those be financial, personal time, or whatever else you have available to you.

Setting goals to achieve the desired result

What can an SEO firm accomplish for you? If one chooses to hire a consultant or firm, you must consider what that firm will ultimately provide you. Making such a choice on budget considerations alone is a decision based on faulty logic. You must choose a firm based on the tasks you want accomplished. If “top rankings” are your desire, then you can probably hire relatively cheaply. But if you are looking for a more solid marketing plan that considers reputation and conversions as a measure of success, you’ll likely shell out a lot more.

What can you expect to accomplish yourself? Conversely, if a small business owner chooses to optimize the site themselves, I suggest taking baby steps through the process. Set aside a specific amount of time each day dedicated to the education and implementation of SEO strategies. Don’t worry about the “big picture” but instead start by focusing on the on-page aspects of search engine optimization.

As you learn, don’t take a single source as gospel. Find multiple sources that can confirm each other and also take in contrary opinions. These can only serve to confirm what you believe is the right approach. But most importantly, learn by doing, testing, and analyzing what you have done. Don’t expect big immediate payoffs, but be patient as you work through the SEO process and its implementation of your site.

Depending on the size of your site and the amount of time you can dedicate to it each day, it may take several months to a year to “perfect” the on-page optimization. At that point, its time to start learning more about the off-page factors. Again, baby steps are required here lest you become overwhelmed. SEO is literally a sea and if you try to take it all in you’ll likely drown in it. Instead, just take a small area to learn and master as best you can before moving on.

The decision you make in how best to invest your optimization campaign is of great consequence to the long-term success of your business. It doesn’t matter if its in-sourced or out-sourced, either way, realistic expectations must be in place and your decision must be based on the ability to meet those expectations.

As a small business owner, you have to move forward in a way that is best for you, not just today, but a year from now, and five years from now as well. In any case, never be afraid to step beyond your boundaries if you believe the yield will be beyond your expectations. There may be over 100,000,000 ways to invest in SEO, but you only need to find one that works for you.

Stoney deGeyter is CEO of Pole Position Marketing. The Small Is Beautiful column appears on Thursdays at Search Engine Land.