5 Sure Fire Ways to Invite Competitors To Dominate You Online

Optimizing a site for local search marketing dominance can be an overwhelming task. Some companies imagine it can't be worth the effort of trying.

It isn't necessarily a matter of not caring. It's just that every company has staff to deal with, vendors to juggle and ‘alphabet soup agencies’ to keep happy. Finding time to research and grasp unique internet marketing opportunities can be more difficult to handle under these circumstances than most people are willing to deal with.

But doing nothing can be as dangerous as outright inviting competition. Here’s a quick little checklist to see if you're inviting competitors to dominate you online. See if you are thinking of making any of these mistakes:

1) Stay offline.

Many companies do not have a website at all. Peruse just about any Chamber of Commerce website and take a look for yourself. Many of the companies have website. But usually most do not.

This trend is the same with non-chamber businesses too.

After speaking with a number of companies in my own area, I estimate that only around 10% of all Central Coast companies have a website of their own.

This is sad. Every local merchant, retailer, professional and service provider should have a website to give directions, transact sales where possible, and develop business relations with existing and potential new clients and customers.

It amazes me that in this day and age when it’s reported that 87% of businesses use the internet to find new vendors and 43% of consumers are expected by the year 2012 to make purchases influenced by the internet –if not directly transacted online– that any company would choose to opt-out of this primarily free source of revenue.

Worse than simply walking away from free revenues, not building a site leaves doors wide open for local competitors and competitors outside your area to rank high for searches that should belong to businesses in your area. This is a compounded loss.

If you own a business and do not yet own a website, you are in essence ’stealing’ resources from your community. The money that local buyers are sending to competitors outside your community is money that is not being reinvested into your community.

As an SEO consultant, I'm excited when I see those kinds of opportunities. It allows me to increase my value in the eyes of my clients as we expand into additional communities where appropriate.

Before you say to yourself that this is a little thing, consider that perhaps 90% of businesses in your area are making this same mistake. That has to be a huge amount of money that is no longer available to strengthen your local economy. All because only a few companies appreciate how important it is for businesses to be online.

2) Buy into the myth that erroneously claims, ‘if you build it they will come’.

Of the companies that do have websites, the majority lack an online presence.

What I mean is the site exists online, but they are poorly positioned in search results. Few net 'surfers' ever find the sites when searching common expected keywords.

So instead of finding local sites, the surfers end up landing on pages that have nothing to do with any company in their community. Junk searches and out of area companies tend to show up first, when relevant local or niche industries should be reflected in search results.

Why is this happening?

Because many local companies that do have sites online have imagined that internet marketing is a case of 'set it and forget it'. That is, they think that just putting up a web page online or listing their web address in paid ads and on their business cards and stationary is going to drive massive amounts of traffic to the site.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Creating a great looking website that no one can find while searching online is like building a major superstore and placing it in the middle of the Amazon Rain Forest — sure it’s there, but who can find it?

With over six billion competing pages listed in Google alone, there’s slim chance many people will find a site that is poorly positioned for critical and relevant keywords and phrases.

3) Hire a SEO ‘expert’ to spam search engines with useless content and dirty tricks.

Using illegal "black hat" SEO tactics and scams can and will get your site blackballed. Eventually.

All it takes to bring you down is one disgruntled employee or annoyed vendor or competitor to report you. Your site will get blacklisted. In some cases permanently.

Might as well shoot yourself in the foot at this point because now your site will never show up when people go online to buy. A better approach to search marketing is to operate with full integrity.

Never mislead visitors or try to trick the search engines. You’d only end up hurting yourself in the end.


4) Believe that SEO is limited to altering meta tags, title tags, and other on-page elements.

This is sad. I’ve lost track of the thousands of pages I’ve scanned in Google of so called SEO experts who charge huge four and five-figure fees to alter meta tags and other simple on page factors, while claiming that is what SEO is all about. It isn’t.

Trust me on this one. I’ve been online since before the world wide web existed. Back in the early days of online marketing, having tons of on-page words and phrases was the key to fast SEO ranking advantage.

But over the past four or five years the search engines have gotten smarter. Way smarter.

The SEs know spammers falsify meta tags and other on page factors. That is why the major search engines ignore keyword meta tags alone. Instead, the search engines’ algorithms focus on other relevant data to build search results.

Spamming your site with fake content doesn’t cut it. More is required. Much more.


5) Spend $10,000 a month for ‘guaranteed’ 1st page results in Google.

That lie is a scam! No one can guarantee #1 position on Google. But don’t take my word on it… here’s what Google says about guaranteeing 1st page results:

"Beware of SEOs that claim to guarantee rankings, allege a "special relationship" with Google, or advertise a "priority submit" to Google. There is no priority submit for Google. In fact, the only way to submit a site to Google directly is through our Add URL page or by submitting a Sitemap and you can do this yourself at no cost whatsoever."

Source: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35291

So what are these ‘guaranteed’ companies guaranteeing?

Non-competitive and low competition phrases, like your own company name. This is a no-brainer. Anyone who owns the ‘official’ site for a company should rank relatively high on Google very easily for that name. After all, there is only one ‘official’ site for anything and Google wants to provide the highest user value possible.

That usually includes first of all delivering up the official sites for all relevant searches. This doesn’t cost $10k to accomplish. In fact it’s usually free and is automatic. Don’t fall for the scam.

Ok. That's the checklist. If you feel your site isn't optimized for achieving highest local rankings possible, take heart. You’re company probably won't go belly up because of it.

You simply will be missing opportunities to increase sales and to develop better relationships with current and future clients and customers that your competitors just might snatch up. You will be inviting competitors to dominate you online.

I can't imagine anyone would want that. Check out my local SEO article to learn of successful SEO principles, uncover why local SEO is important, and learn why having a site online isn’t enough for competing in today's economy.