Comments on: What web marketing can be done for my small local business?

By: Web Marketing for small local businesses – Local marketing : Metzger Business

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 10:56:59 +0000

[...] a customer is looking for you and is foundational to completing the three step process I outlined yesterday. Lets take an [...]

By: MetzgerBusiness

MetzgerBusiness — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 20:14:21 +0000

My ambiguous comment about "most users still don't recognize the difference between paid search results and organic." was bothering me. I had recently read an article and decided to find the source. I can't find the source I initially read but check out this article. 45% of users don't know the difference between organic and paid search results. The 70% number was also bothering me. So I went out and found another article to support your assertion. I'm not familiar with the blog that I'm citing but the article is well written and supports your 70% number. However they point out that real SEO takes years and costs lots of money. You can find the article here The point being that while paid advertising only provides 3 clicks for every 10 that organic clicks provide a small local business can't afford the SEO cost. The long tail is unfortunately that a long tail and often not searched for often enough to merit those high SEO costs.

By: admin

admin — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 16:59:34 +0000

Francis,

Thank you for your reply and I’m not disputing that SEO can get you above the fold on organic search. However it is less likely for a user to search “Flower Shop Vancouver” than it is to search “Flower Shop.” If the business has optimized for local search and paid search then they most definatly will appear above the fold and most users still don’t recognize the difference between paid search results and organic search results. For a search term such as Flower Shop and a budget of $5 per day a business could have as many as 20 – 30 clicks to their site daily. This is much cheaper then the SEO alternative. Do you disagree?

By: Francis Mella

Francis Mella — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 16:37:38 +0000

Sorry But I don’t agree with your assessment of SEO for local interenet marketing. If your site is optimized for longer tail keywords that include your business trading area it can prove to be a huge advantage. For example, someone is searching for a flower shop in Vancouver, they might type “flower shops Vancouver” if the site is optimized for Vancouver Flower Shops its likely they will be found. And depending what the competition is doing and the quality of your optimization yo could be found above the “fold”

ignoring 70% of potential clicks is a mistake in my opinion.

Francis Mella, Internet Consultant