We just finished up some design work and happened to check our Facebook account and found an interesting post from a local small business owner. He was frustrated with the Indian River County Code Enforcement policy in regards to placing small business street signage in and around our local public roadways. Apparently Indian River County is not very cooperative when it come to this sort of marketing and it raises an interesting question. Why Not?

As graphic designers we are often asked to design these street signs for local small businesses, and there is a proven number of success stories behind each one of the small campaigns. Local businesses use the small discreet signs for many different reasons. Here are just a few:

-Advertising Current Deals or Sales
-Grand Openings
-Event Announcement
-Change in Locations
-General Branding
-and much more!

Every one of the above listed reasons for placing street signage in Indian River County do two things. They increase the tax revenue the county sees, and increase the amount of revenue these small businesses generate for themselves, employees, and sub contractors. It seems pretty simple to us. Let your small businesses market themselves and create more income for everyone. We pay your salary, and we would rather stop paying labor to remove signs that create what everyone needs right now. MONEY.

If you feel the same way as we do about this topic, we ask that you take a minute or two to sign the petition we created. We have embedded the petition just below this text and will be forwarding this to Indian Rover County Code Enforcement in hopes that they are willing to begin talking about revising their current ordinances regarding this topic.

SIGN THE PETITION!

If you live on the Treasure Coast of Florida and are dumbfounded by the term Search Engine Optimization, you may as well continue to read this article. I am not going to promise to cover the wide array of do’s and dont’s of search engine optimization, but I am am going to talk about the one thing that really matters when it comes to being found online.

What is that one thing?

CONTENT!

You may or may not have heard the phrase “Content is King”. This term has been thrown around ever since Google showed up and knocked us off our feet as the best search engine to date. What is content? Well, content is any page on your web site it is that is index able by search engines. In an effort to explain the difference between a web site that has normal content versus a web site that has great content, Let’s use our imagination real quick.

A business owner named Allen has a pest control business in Port Saint Lucie. He has a web site that consists of five typical pages. His pages are typical for a small business web site and look something like this.

• Homepage
• About Page
• Services Page
• Contact Page
• Pricing Page

The above page list or site map is very typical of a normal small business web site and in a lot of cases it may be just enough to get Allen to show up in the top results when someone searches for “Port Saint Lucie Pest Control”. That is the idea right?

Now let’s say Allen has a competitor in Port Saint Lucie and his name is Bubba. Bubba’s business name is Bubba’s Bug Control.  Let’s just say that Bubba has no idea about the web but knows he wants to show up above Allen each and every time someone is searching for Pest Control Services in Port Saint Lucie.

Is it achievable for Bubba to beat Allen “at the top”  if Allen is already number one? YES!

The key is having Bubba use content management system(s) to populate his web site with more pages and more information that Allen. In fact, Bubba’s web site will more than likely have the same main pages as Allen.  The difference between the two web sites is Bubba is going to take our word for it and begin to add articles or blog posts. What in the world is Bubba going to blog about?

WHAT IS A CONTENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEM?

Well, we aren’t  pest control specialists, we are web designers, but we have some ideas. Let’s make up some possible articles titles that Bubba can write about.

EXAMPLE ARTICLE LIST:

1. How to hire the right Pest Control company.
2. The difference between a cockroach and a palmetto bug?
3. The right way to treat for Termites.
4. Pesticides that are dangerous around kids.
5. Safe Pesticide application.
6. New Pesticide on the Market.
7. Knowing if you have a bug problem.
8. Florida Pest Identification.

These were made up in two minutes, but could go on forever!

Now that you can see how easy it is to generate a list of possible articles, let’s talk about how exactly all of this content gets indexed and ultimately makes Bubba’s phone ring with new business.

Once Bubba begins to blog, his website will begin to get crawled by Google and in turn, Google will begin to store his page(s) and display them  in search results when someone is searching specific things like “Pesticides that are dangerous around Kids” The more content he has with keywords that pertain to his business and his geographic location the more traffic he will get. More traffic can and will lead to more business.

LET’S TALK GEOGRAPHY:
When Bubba has finally added all of this content to his web site, he now has something special about to happen. Potential customers in his area will continue their daily searches and when they do, it is highly likely that they are going to be looking at exactly what Bubba wants them looking at. HIS WEB SITE and more importantly his PHONE NUMBER.

This is because the master minds at Google know where you are searching from. Even if you search a generic topic they are always going to show you local results first.

These local searches can fall into two categories.

A. Someone searching for a specific service
B. Someone searching for a generic topic not interested in services at that time.

Of course Bubba wants to target group A, but group B is not bad either. You are marketing to someone that will eventually need a pest control service, so why not wow them with your web content so it becomes a resource for them. Chances are they will remember you name and service for future use.

TURNING YOU WEB SITE INTO A RESOURCE:

This is the final point we would like to make. Building a simple web site is great and everyone business should have one. The key though is to turn your web site into a resource with all kinds of information for those seeking information about what you do for a living. The more valuable content you have the more likely you are to have people reading your content. When Google sees how much great relevant content you are producing, they will reward you with placement for terms that you have targeted. This is where and when a web site becomes a true business tool.

IN CLOSING:

If you stayed with me throughout this article, I hope you learned a little bit more about how content plays a role in your search engine optimization. Please understand that there is a lot more search engine tools and techniques. We just wanted to touch on the most crucial issue involved. If you are interested in learning what Magnetic Media Works can do for you, we encourage you to give us a call. Typically we can ask a handful of questions and have some solutions figured out quickly. We aren’t afraid to talk to people and look forward to hearing from new clients each and every day. I hope you enjoyed this article and hope you continue to visit our blog! Feel free to share this article with your friends, family, and coworkers!

Keep Rolling!

DOUG SAPUSEK
Magnetic Media Works
owner/designer
(C) 772801.1796
(E) magnetic.doug@gmail.com