Small business websites

[DavidKonigsberg]

It seems the days where a small business to rank well with out doing linkbait and real marketing are over. What tactics do you still see working post panda and penguin for small budgets ?

[Zoolander]

If local SEO tends to go hand in hand with small business then not so bad I guess?  Even though SEO is "free" and democratic so to speak, by the same principals maybe it's "undemocratic" if it's getting one of the few places on the 1st page of search engines that counts.  That in itself doesn't guarantee a business is the one with the most to offer the customer.  Previously it would have been more "equal" so to speak with paid advertising and the like.

Perhaps social media will play an increasingly more important role, and maybe that would free SEO.  By that I mean I am not on any social sites or have any interest in them other than for business, so as a customer and others like me would need to be reached in other ways.  An old fashioned non-social network based search engine for boring serious people like me.  9 / 10 of my searches are for information.

By the way what do you consider a good Global Exact Match for a key word?

[MortenBratli]

For us all the really white seo methodes still work really well:

• Press releases
• Guest posting
• Commenting on related sites (valued comments, no spam)
• Asking our clients/partners to link back to us in related topics
• Running social competitions

List goes on and on, but there are lots of stuff you can do that dont cost that much (mostly time..)

But to get a agressive linking to the site we still havent find a way that worked as well the grey/black seo before the update..

We have also shifted focus more and more over to the social game.. Hopefully it will make the big difference in the future..

Good luck

[Marcus_Miller]

Hey David

I don't think this is the case at all and in many ways it is easier now than ever before for many small businesses to generate more visibility.

Something we often see with small businesses is that they are doing the wrong kind of SEO and they are focusing on building links and playing a bigger game and completely ignoring localised search and local SEO which can be just such an easy win in many business categories.

It's beyond the scope of this topic to cover everything you can do but Google "local SEO" and you will find plenty of tactics that will help for small, local businesses (it's even really easy to do).

There are a bunch of small business SEO and local SEO posts over on my blog if it helps:
http://www.bowlerhat.co.uk/blog/

Hope that helps. 
Marcus

[DavidKonigsberg]

I agree i was referring to no local targeted business online.