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If you're a small business owner in the quad cities area you probably don't spend a lot of time reading about SEO (Search Engine Optimization), Social Media Advertising & Impressions, you probably spend most of your time focused on your own business. In talking with my clients one of the things I hear most often when we start talking about all the analytics and work behind the scenes this kind of thing is would be "Go ahead and take care of all of that for me". Of course, some customers really like going through all the reporting and analytics I provide on these services but generally speaking this has been my experience.
Which leads me into the point of this article, why working with a local firm you can talk to and who takes the time to understand your business is so important. Many of these, very expensive, SEO and Marketing contracts include all sorts of things these clients have never and will never use. Here are a few of the items I see businesses paying for and never using.
Custom online dashboards and reporting tools. Not only to an untrained eye is this information often hard to follow they also require plugins and setups that the clients don't know how to do. This renders the service useless. So while a large company with IT professionals might make use of this kind of thing, it's seldom a wise choice for a small business.
Facebook, Google, Instagram plugins. These firms promise to manage your social media accounts, posting content multiple times a week or even day. The catch is you are supposed to be delivering the content, you have to configure the plugins, so basically you still manage it. They just post it for you. Rarely do I see clients taking the time to do this. While providing some content is required for this kind of thing, or at the lest approving of content that is posted for you, it's not realistic for a small business owner to spend all day using this kind of tool. Again it goes back to "Go ahead and take care of this for me."
Keywords! This one amazes me. The SEO company will ask the client, hey what keywords would you like to rank higher for? Then they throw maybe 5 keywords on there and bam sign a contract for a year. Here is the problem with that. Knowing which keywords you want to rank higher for should be a decision you make based on quite a bit of data. What is trending in the area? What is driving the most traffic for your business services? What keywords are you doing well with now and not so well with others? The answer to these questions also changes over time.
The bottom line is this kind of thing takes work. It takes someone who is going to pay attention to your specific business, not just once a month or once a year. It's an ever-evolving process. When you hire a global marketing firm, maybe some firm from New York or Los Angeles, you are a small number in their very big business. Working with someone local will allow you to get focused results. Your business means everything to small business owner like myself and we'll work each and every day to earn your business.
Rick Mucha, CEO
Prescott Digital Solutions
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