Web Services Hawaii: SEO for Small Businesses?

Observations from the Professionals at MobileREMEDIES®

You are a young enthusiastic entrepreneur who has just started a new business. You have purchased a web address, developed an attractive and functional website through one of the many "free" do-it-yourself hosting companies. You are ready for your business to go viral! It all went smoothly and you are rubbing your hands together in anticipation! You do a Google search for your specialty using various keywords that describe it well and after several tedious minutes you find your website – on page 8! You revise your search using the actual name of your business and now you have moved way up in the list – to page 3! Wait a minute. How can this be? There aren’t that many businesses that have the same name as yours and yet others that seem unrelated come up first. What’s so complicated about alphabetical order, right? Many small business owners lack a basic knowledge about how to make their site visible on the web. The professionals at Custom Computers Hawaii: MobileREMEDIES® thought it might be useful to review some of the basic concepts of "SEO" for small businesses.

Some vocabulary is worthwhile since these terms are so widely used. Programs or applications that allow us to look-up topics on the web are called "search engines". They interpret the phrases we give them by picking out "keywords" and matching them to information in their databases. They get their raw data from robotic code and text readers called "crawlers" or "spiders" that continually sift through, memorize and categorize every location accessible on the web including your website and its links to other pages. Crawlers also take note of other sites that post links to your site. These are called "backlinks". The search engines then use proprietary software, each applying its unique combination of "ranking factors" (algorithm), to weigh the "relevance" and "popularity" of each site and spit out a list designed to give you everything you want on page 1! As you might imagine, that is not such an easy task and certainly doesn’t equate to placing websites in alphabetical order or just looking up individual words. How your site fares in this sorting process is called its "organic" listing (in contrast to the paid advertisements that show up in the "featured" sites at the top of the list). Deciphering how these programs assign their priorities and using that information to bring your site closer to the top of the organic list is called Search Engine Optimization or SEO.

Even though there are over 50 search engines in operation worldwide, 90% of searches go through the top 3 (Google 69%, Bing 12%, and Yahoo 9%). Some search engines use the same crawlers and share databases (i.e.: Yahoo uses the Bing crawler) but their sorting practices may yield very different results. How important is it to be on page 1? The "click-through" rate (how often you actually click on a site that came up on your search) is 52.3% within the top ten Google results! In today’s world, over 75% of people use search engines to find local businesses or to locate products and services that interest them, rather than rely on physical sources such as newspapers, magazines, Yellow Pages etc. Web search rates continue to grow rapidly and it is estimated that online marketing costs now represent 26% of all advertising budgets!

So, as a small business owner can you influence the organic position of your website and eventually get it to show up on the "magical" page 1? The answer is "yes" but how to get there takes many forms. What about do-it-yourself SEO for small businesses? It is possible but very demanding. It is labor intensive and involves many strategies, indexing your site from various sources and building links to other sites. You must first learn much more about it if you hope to be effective. There are several beginners’ sites where you can learn some of the basic strategies such as Search Engine Land or Moz but you will find that it is a vast and highly demanding field that might take more of your time than running your business! Yes, just as you might be able to repair your own cell phone (see Do-It-Yourself Smartphone Repair from Cell Phone Repair Hawaii: MobileREMEDIES®) you may find that there are significant advantages to hiring a professional. Such is the situation with SEO for small businesses.

At MobileREMEDIES®, we have the knowledge, experience and resources to build an SEO program that is right for your business and your budget. Our focus is on small businesses that do not have a lot of extra money to invest in advertising but who realize the importance of their web-presence in building their visibility. In addition to SEO and Internet Marketing, the professionals at MobileREMEDIES® are expert in Web Hosting, Website and Social Media Design, Content Management Systems, and E-Commerce Development as well as creating custom iPhone and iPad applications to improve your productivity.

In addition to Web Services, MobileREMEDIES® with locations on Maui and Oahu and mail-in service from anywhere in the world, repairs cell phones, iPads and all other tablet PC’s, laptop and desktop computers and iPods and game systems (Xbox, PlayStations, Wii, etc.).They build custom computers for gamers and other high demand users, recover lost data, buy broken devices for cash or in-store credit and sell refurbished devices with a 1-year warranty, similar to a manufacturer’s warranty on a new device. You get a free diagnostic evaluation and an estimate of the repair costs and time required. You also always get a 1-year warranty on parts and service. If they can’t fix your device, you pay nothing for the attempt! You can find them at iPhone repair Hawaii, iPad repair Hawaii, iPod repair Hawaii, Data Recovery Hawaii, Laptop Repair Hawaii, Custom Computers Hawaii and Xbox repair Hawaii. You may also go to www.mobileremedies.com or call 1-800-867-5048.