The Small Business Obsession with Big City Coverage

Knowing When Local is Better

For many small business owners, the purpose of starting that business is built on the ambition to own a big business. And the use of digital marketing has become a major part of the expansion strategy.

Beyond the traditional phone book, small business owners are (finally) realising that simply naming the business “AAAA Plumbers” (Google doesn’t care about the alphabet!) won’t get them more customers.

Time-poor and lacking the know-how, small businesses are now looking to agencies and freelancers for help with being found in Google search. And to some hefty financial expense, if the implementation is off-course. Getting the implementation right is a two-way relationship between the digital services provider and the client.

One thing that can burn money for small businesses can be an agency’s apprehension with pushing back on the client’s unrealistic expectations. I have seen this a lot with keyword-driven SEO* campaigns; the agency doesn’t want to rock the boat and risk losing the client for not giving them ‘what they want’.

And what the client wants, to be frank, is often so far beyond realistic expectations, when you consider a location’s population size and the business’ competition.

I have observed one common thing amongst website-owning small businesses in large metropolitan areas: They want to be the number one [insert trade or vocation here] in all of [insert capital city here].

While that is admirable ambition, there are more things to consider than just purely ranking right across town for the sake of it.

I Want it All

As an SEO guy, I have had the following conversation many times. Me: “What is your business, and what location are you targeting?” Client: “Electrician with two employees, all of Sydney.”

Okay, first of all, dear sparky, around 5.6 million people live in Sydney, which sounds like great news for finding a lot of work, but consider:

1. There are around 36,500 electrical businesses in Australia. And Sydney’s population accounts for 1/5 of Australia’s population, so proportionally you could estimate there would be about 7,300 electrical businesses in the greater Sydney area alone.

That’s massive competition. Not only via traditional marketing but also in the digital space.

2. Now let’s assume that even just a small amount of those competitors are running some sort of SEO campaign based on search terms like “electrician Sydney”.

Let’s assume that (and this is conservative) 100 electrical businesses are using that or a similar search term for being found in Google searches.

Okay, that doesn’t sound so bad. 100, right? Out of 7,300, my sparky is one of the very few who are pinning hopes on SEO for leads. Well, remember this: as a default, Google only displays the top 10 search results on the first page. Yes, you can change your search settings to show more than that, but pretty much nobody ever does.

And if you’re not on page 1 for the search term, well, in most cases, you’re not even there.

3. “But I want to grow my business to the whole metropolitan area.”

a. Did you read the competition thing? First page. 10 spots.

With the competition outlined here, you should by now be able to see that SEO won’t be your silver bullet to becoming the next behemoth electrician chain.

In reality, SEO doesn’t work much differently for a small business than good old word of mouth did and still does – family and friends and locals get to know you and your work first, and then the net widens to those strangers you’ve been trying to find. And getting noticed beyond organic (non-paid, non-AdWords) search costs money. That’s a whole other article.

b. Say I could get you ranking for “electrician Sydney”, what are the ramifications?

Yes, say I achieved a short-term miracle and your Mona Vale-based business ranks for “electrician Sydney” on page 1 in Google. Are you willing to accommodate the enquiries?

For example, if someone calls for a quote (not the paying job itself, but just a site visit for a quote) from Kurnell, are you going to take it? It’s a 1.5-hour one-way trip in the off-peak, so 3 hours on the road just to quote the job in the hope that you win it.

Of course, it depends on the size of the job – if it’s to carry out works in a 20-storey complex to the tune of many tens of thousands of dollars, of course, you might consider it.

Google is open for use by everyone, not just ‘blue chip’ or B2B clients – you may very well attract a large volume of low value leads, too, by going too broad. You know, a little old lady in Kurnell who just needs the fuses checked and all the light globes changed. That’s a 1-hour job combined with a 3-hour commute.

c. Costs. And More Costs.

Sure, gaining metropolitan-wide leads could trigger an expansion of your business, but what it’s more likely to do is put you and your staff on the road more, and less time doing billable work. Plus, watch your fuel expenses go up dramatically.

And let me play my Greenie card here for a moment – the more leads you get from outside of your local area, the more congestion and pollution you are creating by having more vehicles on the move over a greater area.

Your Own Backyard Probably Has All You Need

Again, SEO works best for businesses like the trades (‘industries’, if you're reading this from America) in a more localised space. If your suburb—and the surrounding suburbs—has a certain degree of population and building density, you could very well be missing out on leads from potential customers from just around the corner.

What about the little old ladies of Mona Vale who need the basic stuff done? What if—in the case of an electrician—there’s a school, hospital, office block or any number of dwellings or office block types containing customers who have never heard of you?

When dealing with an agency, they may very well suggest a strategy based on targeting just one suburb to start with. And I would strongly recommend going with it.

SEO means a lot of things for what Google identifies as relevant ‘content’ on a website’s page – written copy, video, images and more. At the most fundamental level, written copy is a very strong indicator of a website’s usefulness to a searcher.

That’s the space I work in mostly, unless I have the luxury of having a team of video producers and the like. What the agency (or you, if you have time) will do:

1. Create a page on your website completely dedicated to one search term (Google likes to see single-focused pages without the old ‘keyword stuffing’ technique going on, like putting several suburbs on the same page – do not do that!).

In this case “electrician Mona Vale” would be the obvious choice, but a bit of research put into search volume and competition of a keyword will help you set your expectations; this is where an agency or a freelance SEO-focused copywriter comes in handy.

2. Create content (again, fundamentally keyword-targeted copy) and apply it to the page according to good practices for SEO keyword mapping. If this goes over your head, then you need a professional copywriter to at the very least edit what you write to optimise the page or write it all for you.

The content must be relevant and useful for the user; the days of random garbage are long gone for SEO.

What’s Going to Happen?

At the very worst, probably not much at all, if more than nine competitive businesses in your area implementing this strategy. That is, again, they’ll already be occupying the first page of Google search results, with maybe you sitting somewhere between positions 11 through 19 on the second page. It’s worth a try either way.

Does that mean we’ve failed? No, not really. You see, things outside of the internet might help you get to page 1 without any further action later on – a competitive business may shut up shop or they may for some reason get rid of their website, making room on page 1 for someone at position 11 to move up to #10. Nothing is permanent or static in search results unless the competition is extremely low in your industry.

At the very best, with correctly-implemented keyword targeting, you’ll likely rank first page (maybe position #1, but let’s calm down a bit) for your vocation in your localised area. If this happens, you’ll increase your work leads within a smaller radius of your home or your headquarters and start the process of becoming ‘the’ electrician of Mona Vale.

Let me conclude by reinforcing the main expectation you should have from basic SEO as a small business who services customers at their premises: first Mona Vale, then expand to Dee Why, then to Manly. Then, if you can handle expansion, the rest of the world (well, ‘just’ the whole city). *Search Engine Optimisation