SEO vs SMM for small businesses

In Digital Marketing there is one certainty, that is change. Change will occur and it if fast paced. This means what is best practice today many not be sound advise tomorrow. There is another certainty. You will need money to promote your product or service else you will fail. No BS and sugar coated sweet talk from me.

Back in 2014-2015 when I worked with a small business the center piece of their digital marketing was SEO. Every other tactic was an add on but the main tactic for driving traffic to a website was via organic SEO, trying to rank a client's business organically so they would not have to fork out hundreds or thousands of dollars on Pay Per Click advertising. Those days are long gone. SEO today is a "nice to have add on". Trying to get customers to find your website via Google search seems great but how realistic is it in 2018. a small business today does not even need a website. Today the most effective way to grow your business is to work out two media platforms where your customers may be. Create one piece of content and have a small budget and push that content to your target audience. The larger your budget the more success you will have. It is highly targeted and measurable exposure. You can measure your success on a weekly basis. Continue this for over 12 months and you would have grown your profiles and reached thousands of potential clients.  Please take note, you will need a weekly budget even if it is only starting with $100-$200 per week.

Client: I just want to make $10000 per month, my marketing budget per month is $150. 

I'm thinking.... "well you would be very lucky to make $150 per month, forget $10000, stop dreaming!!!

As for SEO, it is like watching the grass grow and hoping the birds don't eat the seeds. There are no guarantees in SEO. It now takes longer than ever to rank your business. The more competitive the key words are the longer it will take to rank and what's the point ranking for useless key words that make you no money. These are the tricks scrupulous SEO providers will try to rank you for. Websites that rank have been doing the right thing by Goolge for a very long time, years in fact and they have a team of people working every day to ensure they maintain their rankings. You are not going to come in and outrank them on search after a few months. When will you outrank them? Most likely never and that is the brutal and honest truth.

Client: "I just want to rank at the top of the first page on Google for Bali Villas........In my head "Well you are more likely to be hit by lightening."

Don't even start me on SEM and Google Adwords, that is super expensive. Today in 2018 finding the relevant Social Media Platform and having a small weekly budget is definitely the best approach for a small business.

Rod Day - Digital Expert

SEO Bali Web Design