The Internet provides great opportunities for entrepreneurs and small businesses, but doing business online presents unique challenges and requires new skills. Per my experience search engine optimization would be the best practice to improve your online business.

If 200 companies are fighting over one keyword in a single market (& I have a client where that is going on, for several keywords. in addition, 47 of those competitors fight over those same keywords in AdWords for the 1st 11 paid spots.), it becomes labor intensive to achieve one of those coveted 10 places consistently. If 10 other companies, are willing to devoted one employee to develop keyword rich and relevant content to add to the company site each day, then smaller competitors who either do not have employees, or the time to update their content on a daily basis just will not place in the top 10 spots, it is unlikely that they would be able to afford an SEO company to do it for them. & If they were lucky enough to find an SEO company that was willing to do that for them, at some point, that SEO company would realize that their business model was nonviable and would quit the contract, or they would go out of business. 200 small businesses cannot fit into 10 spaces, that is just a fact.

Fortunately, 95% of SEO ‘specialists’ are incompetent, lazy, crooked, or all three. If they are incompetent or lazy, your ranking might suffer, if they are crooked, you risk getting un-indexed entirely by one or more search engines. The real test is has the SEO company taken every possible step to attempt a top position? Most small business owners would not even know where to begin to look.

If I were a small business, I’d hire to company that placed in the top result in my local market…IF I could afford an SEO that good.