An SEO Plan for Your Business

Littlefish IT Support reports that UK studies show only a third of small and medium sized businesses have an SEO plan of any kind.

I haven't found US studies on the subject, but I wouldn't be surprised to discover that the proportion was about the same.

You need a plan.

I was sitting down with colleague Tom Hapgood yesterday looking at some websites and Analytics. First we looked at his new site on a documentary film. His Analytics showed that people who were specifically looking for the site and knew what to look for were finding it. The keywords showed that people arrived by looking for the name of the film, the names of people involved in making the film, and so on. Visitors clicked through from news reports about the film, and there was direct traffic as well -- people typing in the URL.

That's stage one. Your customers can find your website.

Then we looked at a musician's website. This is a portfolio site, built by Shan Pesaru to use for demonstrations in SBDC seminars rather than for promoting the musician in question, so it doesn't get a great deal of traffic. But we can see from the site's Analytics that people find it by looking for the kind of thing this musician does, as well as looking for her specifically. That is, they find her by looking for "mezzo soprano" or "classical singer." They also click over from links at websites about singers.

That's stage two. People who ought to be your customers but aren't yet can find your website.

We could have looked at the Analytics for this blog, though we didn't, and we'd have seen that it's at stage three for search: people come here from searches for all kinds of things relevant to what I do. People who find me by looking for my name, sometimes spelled in some creative way, or by looking for "search engine marketing 72703" are probably clients or possible clients. People who visit here looking for "compelling content" or "how to use Google Alerts for SEO" may not be shopping for my services right now, but they might remember me in the future when they are.

The person who came looking for "Tim Graves llamas" was probably disappointed.

We didn't look at the Analytics for this blog. We looked instead at those for a client on whose new website design we're working. His current website's Analytics show pretty clearly that people finding him on the search engines have to have inside knowledge. His referring sites are not public sites. The few keywords people use to find him include his company name and his own name, but otherwise are random and not useful -- like the llamas mentioned above. Everyone gets a few of those, but a preponderance of lost people visiting your website says that you don't have a plan for SEO.

The details of your plan will vary, naturally. The best plan for you depends on your field, your level of authority in your field, what you're selling or promoting, your budget, the skills and talents you have available to you, and lots of other factors.

But at the very least, you should have a plan that covers these three steps:

• Make sure that people who are looking for you and your company can find you.
  
• Help people who need your goods and services but don't know about you to find you.
  
• Help those who aren't shopping right now but are interested in what you do to find you.

If you don't have a plan like this, I can help you. If you do have a plan, good for you -- you're already way ahead of those who have no plan.

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