It is no secret there is no shortage of people out there willing to take your money in exchange for “improving your presence on search engines” or “improving your exposure on “businessListings.com”. They will claim to “update your web presence, add videos, improve your listing on Google, etc. While this all sounds intriguing at the time, typically during a webinar or in-person presentation, the reality of the work is a much different story.

Not to be entirely cynical, but most often only a fraction of what they are offering will truly be worth anything. And, in many cases, it was not NEARLY worth what they were charging.

The reality is, if you don’t have someone to create a video for your business (a family member or a really good friend), this can be an expensive and time-consuming process. Anybody can upload a video to YouTube and post it on their website. It takes all of 3 minutes. The trick is getting the video made, edited, voice-over done, etc., so it is something you’re proud of and can represent your business. Don’t let someone sell you on this without explaining “where” the video itself is supposed to come from.

Secondly, I strongly encourage you to not waste time and money optimizing your listing on whatever website they are throwing out there at the time. You know, I know, everyone knows the only place people are doing online searches are at Google, Yahoo! and Bing. Period. According to Alexa (a few months ago), the unique monthly visitors to search engines are: Google (1,100,000,000 – that’s a billion if you’re playing along), Bing (300,000,000), Yahoo! (250,000,000) and it drops off from there. Spending time and or money to optimize for other sites is simply not in your best interest. (The only exception could be specific business sites for your particular industry. But I would carefully check the traffic to those sites before jumping in.)

The last thing we talked about, and something we talk about quite often, was content. My main points are always the following:
A. Do your keyword research and know exactly for what you should be optimizing.
B. Take the time to write a quick blog article about those exact keyword phrases.
C. Be active on whichever social media sites are garnering you the most interaction and use that to drive traffic back to your site.

Chances are you are more aware of what your business needs than you give yourself credit for. Content is still king. Google, Yahoo! and Bing are the ones who want the content. Nobody knows your business better than you. Take a little time to produce some on-topic content each week and have links going back to the pages on your website about that very topic.  At the end of the day, and the end of this blog post, your website should always be the center of your universe.  All of your content should drive that valuable traffic back to YOU. That is the magic of SEO and exposure. (No, not THAT kind of exposure!)