Has your small business been forced to tackle a “must-do” project like Y2K or ISO9000 where the only result was a big bill and lots of wasted time? After watching dozens of clients invest in search engine optimization (SEO) and reviewing my own experience, I am coming to believe much of SEO is electronic snake oil. Let me explain.

Defining SEO
Search engine optimization is supposed to elevate your website’s Google and Yahoo rankings by fooling their programs into believing your site is the best answer to key words. The pitch of SEO is that you can “beat the system” by adding special phrases, formats and styles to your website, so it will be “seen” by the web spiders and crawlers who will “tell” the search engines to rank it higher. Doesn’t this remind you of gambling in Las Vegas? Only in a casino would you spend your money trying to beat the odds against those who set the rules. And as soon as they catch someone “beating their system” like counting cards, they make up new rules that keep the odds in their favor.

But isn’t SEO the same thing? As business owners we bet our money on SEO firms to beat the Google “system” but we can’t even bluff Google since they see all our “cards” as soon as our SEO “expert” puts them on our site. So actually we are subsidizing Google’s R&D efforts every time we “bet” with our SEO secrets which Google immediately can and does learn from! But armed with fancy graphs and charts, SEO experts promise us “get noticed quick” schemes that will place our firm on the first page and ahead of all the other firms that aren’t smart enough to invest in SEO.

What’s a Business Owner to do?
Don’t throw out the baby with the bath water.

1. Basic SEO is good business.
   Tell the truth. The key words that truly describe your firm’s Best and Highest Use should already and always be throughout your website. For example if you install home theatre, your company name, website name, and website content should of course contain the words home entertainment and listing some key words is sensible.
2. Buying your way onto page one is not a shortcut for success.
   Think how you feel when someone says, “I sell insurance, cars or legal services.” I immediately assume the worst as they have commoditized themselves by refusing to narrow their focus, sharpen their offer or state what they do in terms that are special to me. The internet is no different and to expect to own a generic category such as public relations services online is per se evidence of a lazy, sloppy and probably incompetent business. If a business takes the time to focus and understand its best and highest use, the needs of a specific target market and to resolve specific kinds of pain or opportunity your message sends to the marketplace and the compelling way in which it will be received will not only impress prospects and clients but SEO engines. Therefore, the very activities that a small business needs to undertake are the very ones that need to benefit its online marketing.
3. If a business has been carefully targeted and positioned as discussed, then what is the real role of SEO?
   I’m not sure there is one. Before spending thousands of dollars to optimize my site, Birol Growth Consulting was on page one of Google and Yahoo. Today it is there as well. Why? Because by staying focused on a given message based on a best and highest use and pointed out a specific target market, there is no doubt of what I do and whom I do it. The key to me is to add content continuously, examples and links that continually pay off on the narrow positioning and target marketing you defined in the first place.

Conclusion
My experience with SEO is the same as it is with Las Vegas. It’s okay to dabble and gamble a bit, if you do so for the entertainment and the short term thrill you may get. But banking on either in lieu of focusing on your day job of narrowing your focus and pointing it at exactly who needs it is irresponsible.

Focus on developing content and proof that your expertise helps your target market and leave SEO to the pretenders and who have more money than brains.

By now, there’s no question the U.S. economy is mired in an economic slowdown. While your specific industry may actually be strong, slowdowns are epidemic in nature and have a way of leaking into otherwise solid sectors.

The simple fact is that expectations drive consumer behavior. A mindset of limitations is replacing an attitude of abundance. As a result, people are hedging their own bets and risking less.

All of this has put business owners in a precarious situation that they haven’t witnessed during the roaring ’90s. But that doesn’t mean your business has to stop growing just because the masses are taking a wait-and-see attitude.

Here are 12 tactics to help ensure your business doesn’t follow the downward trends.

Warranty and maintenance contracts that extend the useful life of the status quo.

Programs/products and services that promise reduced costs and greater efficiency will be more attractive than those promising increased sales

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Channel power will go to those with paying customers or the ability to retain their margins.

Loyalties and relationships of convenience/laziness will be broken. In times of stress, relationships either deepen or disappear. Pick and choose your partners on both the supplier and the customer side. You can’t be all things to all people.

The transition from having not enough people to having too many people may be sudden. “Bargain-price” human resources can help increase customer service or search for new customers.

The challenge of focusing on the PACER circles (best and highest use, target market and customer pain) becomes all the more imperative. As demand slows down, every purchasing decision will be questioned. The practice of finding the best suppliers may be replaced by finding the one lowest cost supplier.

As people become more risk-averse to selling on the basis of fear, uncertainty and doubt will be effective.

Capital goods will be harder to get approved by customer finance departments. If so, they will be prioritized in the following order:

Those that improve profits

Those that increase sales

Those that decrease production costs

Those that decrease administrative costs

Technology factors. When tech capability greater than the market’s capability to absorb it, then price falls when everyone beyond the early adopters stop buying it. The minute the technology isn’t used, the value drops. Technology starts being given away and revenue streams devalued. Inevitably, the technology is adopted and price goes up, or more likely the next great thing replaces it as the cycle repeats itself.

Outsourcing may or may not decrease but the need doesn’t.

Leverage goodwill if you already created it with your customers.

Rethink the time versus money tradeoff. People may have more time to spend on tasks they formerly might have paid others to perform.

While there is no surefire way to avoid a slowdown, if you’re proactive in your approach odds are you’ll be better off then your not-so-prepared competitors.