Well, studies have shown that businesses without a mobile website are at extreme risk of having visitors leave their site immediately upon seeing that it is not built specifically for a mobile device (especially a smartphone).

Getting a great ranking in the search results takes time and costs money, all of which is wasted if your website matches the description given above.  Don’t let it happen to you.  Really, there is really no good reason for it to happen to you.  Get a mobile website for your business and turn potential losses into new customers.  With a true mobile website you are positioned to pick up those who visited a competitor and left when they saw that an impossibly hard to read rendering of the “desktop” site.

Mobile Friendly or Mobile Optimized?

There are multiple options available for getting a mobile website.  One solution is excellent, while the others leave a lot to be desired…

1. Using a plugin to render a mobile-look of the website = Mobile Friendly
2. Using a platform that automatically adjusts the full website so it fits on a mobile screen = Mobile Friendly
3. Having a dedicated, stand alone mobile website  = Mobile Optimized

“Mobile Friendly” means the website can be viewed on a mobile device without re-sizing.  However, choice #3 provides the absolute best solution for a mobile website.  These sites are built specifically (optimized) for mobile devices so they are the easiest to read and most user-friendly.

Ease of navigation and fast loading times are key considerations for users who visit a mobile website.  Options #1 & #2 tend to be much slower loading, so they do not fare as well with visitors.

Below is an infographic that shows what users want when they visit a mobile website…

Click to Enlarge

Mobilize your business and do it right the first time! SweetWater SEO can set your mobile website up so you can take advantage of the growth of mobile AND be what your visitors expect from a mobile website.  To learn more, Contact Us today!

Below is an infographic that we came across that shows what the mobile revolution means to small businesses.  The survey conducted uncovered some interesting (and exciting) statistics that should get business owners excited about the possibilities for their business when they make their business mobile.

Getting your business set up for mobile is something you should be considering.  If it seems to be too confusing or you are thinking it must be very expensive, you will be surprised at what we can do for you and how affordable it can be.

Get a mobile website for your business and start taking customers that are currently finding a competitor.  Contact SweetWater SEO today!

Using email to build relationships came along as a way to help businesses connect with and stay in front of their customers.

Now with smartphones, iPads and other tablets flying off the shelves, mobile is the new frontier in marketing your business.

Some interesting statistics:

If you are a business owner and you are not looking at making sure you are setup to take advantage of the growth of mobile searching, here is an interesting infographic providing some interesting statistics for you to consider.

Infographic courtesy of Mashable.com (see the full article here)

Check it out…

Infographic by MDG Advertising

If your business could use some help being easier to find online, please Contact Us to learn more about what SweetWater SEO can do make it happen.

In order to get your business as a client I could guarantee you a Top 3 ranking because that is important to you and it gets you to pay for ranking services.  But how well does it work out for me if I cannot get you any higher than say #5 or even #4? If you are in a market where a competitor has a lot of money to spend on online marketing, out ranking him may take a while or not happen at all. As the client, you would likely not be happy that you were promised one thing, but got something else, right?

While getting to #4 or #5 on the first page can have a definite, positive impact on your business, the “Top 3″ guarantee was not met. Ultimately this is what will stand out to you. I doubt you would refer SweetWater SEO to other businesses who could use our services if you felt you did not get what was promised. That is not a situation we want.

“First page visibility” is not necessarily the same as a “Top 10 Ranking”

If you have done any kind of research into getting a website or improving your search ranking, you may have learned that you can pay your way onto the first page.

This is true.

You can buy first page visibility, but visibility is different than a search result ranking.

Getting this visibility on the first page this way means having a paid ad pop up (they are located at the top & on the right hand side of the search results page), not having a search engine ranking. To get there you just need to be willing to pay whatever the going rate is for your ad to appear. If you have the budget, then you can pay your way onto the first page.

And there is nothing wrong with using this strategy because it can drive very targeted traffic to your website.

That’s the good news.

There is a downside, though.

Once you stop paying, your ad is no longer shown, so any traffic you were getting from your ad immediately goes away. This is no different than other types of paid advertising (newspapers, magazines, billboards, etc.).

For a more-permanent place online, you need to have your site found organically in the search results. By optimizing your site and utilizing other web properties that the search engines will also include in rankings, you can get on the first page within the search results and not have to pay every time someone clicks your link.

• Paid Ad = Bought Traffic (Short-term)
• Search Engine Ranking = Free Traffic (Long-term)

This is not to say you should avoid paid ads.  If you can afford it, it is another way to get traffic, but it should be added after you take care of optimizing your site.

My Point…

There are “SEO consultants” who will guarantee you high ranking or say something vague like they will get you first page visibility in Google. This is, at best, misleading.

You should avoid falling for that sales pitch.

Here is an example:

A while back I had to have some work done at my home. The contractor doing the work was also the owner of the business. He asked what I do since I work from home. When I told him that I help make small businesses easy to find in the search engines, he mentioned that he had recently been cold-called by a guy who does the same thing. For a monthly fee this guy promised a Top 3 ranking in Google.

If the guy who called him were able to guarantee that kind of a ranking, he could just put up his own money-making affiliate sites and make far more each day from each of them than he was charging monthly for his SEO services.

What You Should Expect (Demand) of Your SEO Consultant

• Target the keywords that your customers use when they do an online search
• Include proper content so the search engines know what your site is about
• Optimize your site so it can be found when your customers search
• Avoid any appearance of trying to trick the search engines

If your site gets a high ranking because the system was “tricked”, it will not last very long and it will not end well for you. Eventually the search engines will figure it out and your site will either be dropped many pages in the rankings or be banned, never to be seen again. Obviously this is just as bad as not even being online, but it cost you a lot of money to get there.

If your current online presence is less than you would like it to be, please contact SweetWater SEO today so you can get on top of it before your competition does.

It is impossible to guarantee a specific organic search engine ranking.

Why?

The search engines (Google, Yahoo!, Bing, etc.) want to deliver a positive experience for their users. To do this they are constantly tweaking their ranking formulas.

Why?

Have you ever done a search for something and the first several results were not at all related to your search? You wasted time clicking on a bunch links and never found the answer you needed, so you moved on. That would be a poor user experience. If it happens enough times, the search engines know that you will eventually try using a different search engine.

To avoid losing customers the search engines work to exclude those worthless sites trying to “game” the system in order to get on the first page. For this reason they constantly change the algorithms used to calculate search rankings (the algorithms are highly-guarded secrets).

Due to the number of variables used in the ranking calculation (there are many, but the list is only partially known), no one can guarantee where your site will rank for a keyword search.

To get an idea of how search rankings are determined, please check out How Google Works.

Traffic and Search Rankings Are Not The Same

Traffic is simply the number of visitors to your site.

A Search Ranking is where your site is found in the search results.

These are two different things and while one can be guaranteed, the other cannot.

Traffic to your site may be guaranteed because there are countless ways to drive traffic.  In fact, traffic can be bought. The problem is that it may not be targeted traffic, so all of the visitors to your site may not have any interest in what you sell.  That is worthless to you.

Search Results Rankings cannot be guaranteed. The ranking algorithms are highly-guarded secrets with many variables that are constantly being changed.  Not even Google can promise something like a ranking, so that should tell you all you need to know.

It is certainly true that there are search terms (keywords) that are less competitive than others and if you are targeting such keywords your chances of getting a high ranking can go way up. However, no legitimate SEO consultant will make a specific ranking guarantee. If you spoke to one who has, you may want to follow this advice…

Steer clear of anyone who approaches you with any kind of ranking guarantee.

If your current online presence is less than you would like it to be, please contact SweetWater SEO today so you can get on top of it before your competition does.

To some it is part of who they are, how they interact with the world around them.  It is as  much a part of their daily life as swimming is to fish.

To others it is some odd, unnecessary “thing” that is making society less able to actually speak to each other (and spell).

Well, like so many things from history, some changes are signs of and tools of progress.  They have been embraced and widely adopted and they are not going away.  And if you want to be relevant you must be willing to get on board to some degree. Every generation has technology & tools that the older generation just consider new fangled fads.

Social Media is one of these “new fangled fads”.

I know many people who have no idea what it is, why it might be important and surely do not know how to use it effectively (or even appropriately).

There was MySpace.  There is Facebook.  Twitter.  LinkedIn…on and on and on.  What is this stuff?  And how can it possibly really be worth paying attention to for more than a few seconds?

Check out this video and be prepared to be amazed, surprised, perhaps even a little bit frightened.

Is Social Media a fad?  I don’t think so.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5a4kSMA2b5k 570 430[/youtube]

Take care of this and you are helping your business, skip it and you are putting your business at risk.

Name a business in any field and it will benefit from being found by the search engines.  Some are more obvious than others, but there really is no business that would not benefit from being found online. If a business used to be found in the yellow pages, then it really needs to be found online now.

Plumber? 

Lawyer?

Hair dresser?

Piano teacher?  

Massage Therapist?

The Yellow Pages & other print ads (which are very expensive) are being phased out very rapidly. In fact, in some places phone books are only delivered to those who request one. This creates a big change in the effectiveness (i.e. ROI) of advertising methods many businesses use. With this change, a replacement is needed.

There is a replacement — the Internet.

Any business will benefit from having an online presence because online is where people are turning to find businesses to buy from in their local area. Even if it is just a Facebook Fan Page to start with, being found online is critical to current and future success.

Very few small businesses are doing this correctly.

Right now there are many businesses that have a website of some kind (and many more that do not have one at all). However, very few of them have an optimized site.

What is an optimized site?

This is one that has been set up so the search engines can find it and easily figure out what it is all about so it can get ranked.  The truth is, a great looking site that is not optimized will not be found by the search engines, so they will not rank in any searches.

On the other hand, an ugly site that is well-optimized can rank well, but is useless if visitors cannot stand to look at it.

It’s hard to gain new customers if they cannot find you or if they do not want to look at your website, right?

By taking action today and making sure you are not one of those businesses being left behind, you stand an excellent chance of getting ranked highly and ranked quickly. The sooner you get started, the sooner your business can take off.

.If you are less than happy with your current website and/or web presence, please contact SweetWater SEO.  If you would like a FREE video review of your current presence and website, please fill out the form on the homepage and we will be glad to put that together for you.

Should you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us to learn more about what we can do to help your business use the Internet to gain new customers.

We provide a free consultation so you can describe what you currently have in place and what you want to accomplish. After we talk we will put together the plan to get your online presence established and growing.

Already have a webmaster? No problem!

If you already have someone who does your website work and you are not getting the results you want, SweetWater SEO can still help.

Many small business owners have a friend/relative/employee who handles the website work on the side. Usually the cost is minimal and you get someone else to do the technical work. It makes a lot of sense from a cost perspective. However, if the site is not doing its job, it can be a delicate situation when you go to your webmaster with critiques.

We have the solution.

You can get a Website Blueprint, personalized for your business.  You can simply hand to your webmaster as a “resource you found” and he/she can go through and implement the items as described. You get an organized, easy-to-follow plan that gives you an optimized website AND you get to avoid a potentially messy situation.  That sounds like a a “win-win” situation.

Just let us know if you would be interested in this and we can get that going for you.

We look forward to working with you!.

Question 1: Do you think people in your area need what you provide?

Question 2: Do you think that the growth of the Internet is a fluke?

Question 3: Do you think that Google is just a seasonal thing or is it here to stay?

Question 4:  Do you think it would be bad for your business if your customers could easily find you online?