Is SEO necessary for small businesses? Outsourcing?

"The only problem is deciding what is worth using for small businesses. I know social marketing and Google Places will be huge but do I need an SEO service for these small businesses or will Google Places, social marketing, and setting the clients up with a basic website be enough? If these three services aren't enough what am I missing and what should I be providing?"

The most common misconception people have about SEO is it's all about ranking number 1 on Google. SEO isn't just about getting your website to rank on Google. It's also about establishing your brand and building a reputation online as an expert. It's also about making your website visible enough to the people who may want to buy from you.

So yes, SEO is still necessary for small business. The trick is finding would be finding the right keywords and developing the right strategy to match the business and your target market.

I'd like to add that SEO is essential for G+ Local.

Welcome to the wonderful world of offline. The learning curve is very steep, but no time like the present to get started. I suggest picking up a few inexpensive WSOs to learn about this stuff more. Popular looking PLR packs may be a good start, too, since they would have compiled a lot of useful information.

I agree with the other posters.

You should definitely try to educate yourself on how SEO works and how to not only implement it into your business, but into your client's businesses as well. This can be done with purchasing a few WSOs or spending a day or 2 searching through Google.

By having this knowledge you can then hire lower level people on micro job sites, give them a set of criteria to do, such as keyword research. On the flipside, if you just hire a firm to do all of your SEO work for you, it can get very pricey and cut into your profits.

It does take time to learn, but the long term benefits are worth it, especially in the field you are going into.

A lot of people new to SEO make the mistake of not learning anything about SEO and still offer it to clients and the way they see it is " I outsource the work so I dont need to learn it" Wrong, you still need to learn how SEO works, about Algo updates etc keep yourself informed even if you are going to oursource the work, you need to know what you are selling inside and out in order to explain the benefits to business owners. As post above mentioned, buy a few cheap WSO that will show you the ropes and basics of how things work and Search Box in this forum is your friend as well.

The main factor is competition. And the size of your market usually determines that. You said "huge" so I'm guessing you're in a metropolitan area. If that's the case SEO its almost always critical. In smaller markets it probably won't be nearly as important but again it really all comes down to competition. I've ranked sites #1 in 25k towns for keywords such as "roofing contractors/town" just using really good on page optimization (no backlinking) so in that case there was no need for me to outsource it.

chr0169,

You need to know a lot about each service you choose to offer.
This is so:
1) You can listen to prospects and sell better
2) You can offer what they need of your services
3) You can offer the proper level of what they need such as
a $1000 website or a $5000 website, a little "SEO" or a full
bore "SEO" campaign as Paul differentiated in post #6
4) You can properly hire and supervise whomever you outsource to
5) Then, because you are seen as competent and reasonable, you can
get more repeat, referral, and upsell or add on business.

Amongst other resources, follow the adsense, ppc and SEO section of this forum. It is free and you can really learn proper and current SEO from the heavy hitters who post there. As with anything else, you will know the real deal from the BSers.

You can offer what you know most about right now, such as websites and social media
marketing for example. You can refer other services to a partner firm until you are ready to add to your portfolio of services (or you can be happy referring to them because they do excellent work and pay you enough commission or referral fee).

Dan

Why don't you start off with mastering one service? After you have done so you will have customers to upsell to and start with another service.

DABK,

So I ran these tests on my keywords, I am pleased to say my efforts are paying off in many of my keywords and i found some that need work. I came across a few odd things in my test, when i do city and state my results are not nearly as good. When I did my phone number it stinks I am on page 6 and I have 4 interior pages outranking my homepage. Is this normal. I am about to run these same tests on some of my compeditors sites.

Any Advice will be much appreciated.

Rob