A question I get a lot from a lot of small businesses is “Is my business too small to do SEO?” This is an easy and hard question to ask without answering a few key questions. This is a complex question because it depends on many things such as budget, time, resources, audience, and how quickly you want to grow. Once we narrow down your business situation and needs, we can decide what is best for you and your business.

Question 1: What Is Your Current Marketing Budget Per Month?

This is probably the most important question because it gives a digital marketing expert an idea if you have a large, medium, small, or no budget. Based on your answer we can assess what options you have. If you have no budget and cannot afford any marketing expenses, your only option is to do SEO on your own. This is difficult and will require a lot of time but is doable if you want organic results and traffic. Some good sites to learn SEO from are YouTube, Moz, Yoast, Search Engine Journal, SEMrush, Ahrefs, and SEO Roundtable. The more time you put in to making content, increasing user experience on the site, and backlinks the more success you will have with increasing your organic search results.

If you have a small budget of $100-$200 per month and you have no free time your best option is to work on putting out new content at least once a month but ideally once a week if you want better results. With $150 per month, you can get an expert in your field to write a 1000 word blog a month to help get you ranked on specific keywords. Now writing content is only one part of the equation when it comes to SEO but is a major ranking factor for Google. So if you do an article a month and that is the only thing you will do it will take you much longer then expected to rank but if that is the only thing you can afford it is a good starting place.

Lastly, if you have a larger budget and really want to go full throttle on SEO my recommendation is to hire an SEO company to do an SEO audit on your site. From there they can see what SEO areas your website is lacking in and will make you a custom plan that fits your business where you are focusing on the most important things. For instance, if you have a storefront business and you want people to be able to find you locally you will need to focus on local SEO which requires, citations, Google My Business Optimization, and review management.

Question 2: How Much Time Do You Have to Focus on Your SEO?

Most small business owners are so busy trying to get their business off the ground that they do not have much time for anything else. Small business owners must wear many hats such as customer service, website admin, accountant, manager, and sales that they cannot physically wear any more hats because there is not enough time in the day. Other small business owners want to be a part of every process of their business because they cannot afford any missteps, or they could lose a client or get a bad review online. Either way, you are going to need an SEO expert because SEO takes so much time. From writing content to keyword research to link building it is a full-time job. Of course, you can do one SEO strategy at a time but if you choose to go that route it will take you a long time to start ranking on the search engines.

One thing that is important to understand is SEO is not just optimizing your website once and you are done with SEO forever. The search engines are a very competitive space and if you are not feeding Google content and links on a regular monthly basis Google will either not rank you or will rank you down over time. If you think your website can rank on a keyword that gets 100,000 searches a month because you optimized your website once you are sadly mistaken. Let the SEO experts help you rank on Google, Bing, and Yahoo. It is a complex process and whether you are hands-off or hands-on you will need an SEO expert to walk you through the SEO path to success.

Question 3: Have You Had an SEO Audit on Your Website Yet?

I can assure you that most small businesses have never had an SEO audit before but it is crucial to have because it gives you an idea of what you are currently doing right and wrong and how much it will cost to have an SEO expert work with your company. I suggest getting an audit form 2 or 3 different digital marketing companies so you can see your results and get different quotes. If an SEO company charges you to do an audit that is standard but make sure they are not charging you hundreds or thousands of dollars for this. If they do run because they either only work with large companies or they are trying to rip you off. However, if it is free or for a reasonable price this is a good digital marketing company that truly wants to help your business succeed online and is not trying to take advantage of you.

Once you get the audit you can look to see if the SEO company or person/company is credible based on how well the audit looks and if you feel the information they are giving you looks correct. Also, there should a monthly budget for you to review as well for their monthly services. This will also give you a sense if that company or person is too expensive. One thing to watch out for is to make sure the SEO company you are working for does not trap you in a 6 month to a year-long contract. They will tell you this is an industry-standard but it is not. My suggestion is to only work with SEO companies or digital marketing companies that give you the flexibility to cancel at any time or have a month to month contract. I have seen one too many times a person sign a year-long contract and have no results or a bad experience that they can not get out of. That is why it is good to get 2 or 3 of these if possible, to get an idea of if a company is legitimate or not. Also, it is very important for you to check their online reviews. This will show you any red flags with that company that other customers may have experienced.

Question 4: Do You Have an Employee That is SEO Savvy?

Having digital marketing savvy employees is a great resource that should not be overlooked. You can utilize them to help you get your SEO jump started even if they are not an expert, they can still be valuable. Have them do some research on how to start doing SEO or SEO for beginners. The first thing they can do is some keyword research on your competitors and for your business that would be easy to rank for and has search volume. Then you can start writing some content and next you can get them to work on your Google My Business and other citations as a start on the SEO process.

If your employees are not comfortable or digital marketing savvy enough to help with your business SEO there is one other option. Have your employee research what SEO companies are in your area and have good reviews and prices. Next, have them work with the SEO expert on giving him access to the website, Google My Business page, social media pages, and other platforms that SEO experts will need to access to get started. Next, they can follow up with the SEO person on a regular basis to make sure your SEO monthly plan is progressing by looking at analytics, rankings, data, and traffic.  

If you do not have employees that are SEO savvy you will either need to do it yourself or have an SEO expert walk you through the process because as I have stated at the beginning of this article SEO is time-sensitive and complex.

Conclusion

I have been doing SEO for over 10 years and I can tell you from personal experience that SEO techniques and the process have only gotten more complex over the years. It is always good in my opinion to work with an SEO expert if you really want to start ranking in a couple of months. However, based on how you answer the questions above it can shed some light on how to start, what are your options, and what works best for your budget and time.  At the end of the day, you want to do some SEO on your website because it is one of the best ways to get quality traffic on your website. If you start off with a little SEO or a lot at least it is something and it will make a difference.

One thing I like to emphasize is that SEO is a process and it does take a while to start ranking and get organic traffic to your website. You can speed that process up with quality SEO strategies but if you have no resources and budget constraints it could take a while. Do not let that discourage you because at the end of the day organic traffic is one of the most valuable traffic sources that can generate quality leads in the long run.  The search engines have something that other platforms don’t have which is when people are searching for a product or service, those users have intent to buy based on what they are looking for and the keywords they are using.