Small businesses have more tools than ever when it comes to growing their business. Intuitive POS systems, powerful mobile apps…
Heck, if your front door is creaky, most business owners still have a set of literal tools sitting around to fix it.
But a tool is also only as good as the hand that wields it. And when it comes to search engine optimization (SEO), many small businesses have more questions about how it works than the number of queries typed into Google every day (8.5 billion—for those keeping score.)
Fortunately, we’ve narrowed these down to the five most important questions for small organizations looking to stand out amongst a growing sea of web pages:
- What do most businesses get wrong about SEO?
- What’s one way that SEO has changed over the last year?
- What are common marketing KPIs for small businesses?
- What tactics work most effectively for small businesses?
- What should a business owner look for in a digital marketing vendor?
The experts at DSG answer questions like these every day for their clients, and Ruby is privileged to work with them on sharing these insights with our small business community.
We sat down with digital marketing experts Mike Gaydos and Paige Sawin to discuss how organizations of all sizes can use SEO to attract more customers and grow their business in five bite-sized installments. Find the first part of our conversation below, then head over to our YouTube channel for the full scoop!
Read the interview.
Steffney Jones:
Thank you for joining us, everyone. It is my great privilege to introduce you to two of our special guests, Mike Gaydos and Paige Sawin with DSG. Both of these folks have been so instrumental with our partnership and I am so excited to ask them a few questions about their contribution to our most recent content piece: the lead generation playbook.
I’m going to hand over the floor to Mike to do a quick introduction.
Mike Gaydos:
Hi and thank you, Steffney—very generous and lovely intro. I’m Mike Gaydos. I’m the VP of Business Development at DSG. I’ve been with the company three, going on four years. I have a great background in creative advertising as well as digital marketing. So I’m really happy to be a participant this year in the lead gen playbook, and so excited to continue our partnership with Ruby.
Paige Sawin:
And hey everyone, and thank you so much, Steffney! Ditto to what Mike said. I am Paige Sawin. I’m the VP of Strategic Partnerships at DSG. I’ve been working at DSG, which is a family-owned company, for five years, and I am of the third generation of the agency—very proud to be so. My background is primarily in media placement and media operations. We’re so glad to be with you here today.
Steffney Jones:
It is always a pleasure every time I get to work with you both, so I can’t wait to hear these answers. Without further ado, let’s dive in. What’s one thing business owners tend to get wrong about SEO?
Paige Sawin:
I think one major thing that business owners get wrong about SEO today is the enormous scope of what search engine optimization actually is. A lot of folks figure that “hey, this is all about my website and it’s the content on the website,” and yes, that is extremely important to get your branding just right, but there are a lot of off-site tactics as well that you can focus on. There are many off-site tactics. Primarily you want to focus on bringing the content from your website that you’ve curated into those off-site tactics as well.
Mike Gaydos:
And to build on something Paige had mentioned—these off-site tactics can tend to be something that moves the needle a little bit faster than traditional work on the on-site tactics SEO program. We as an agency help many clients focus on what we call digital business information. Making up a huge part of that category is Google Business Profile, which is a hugely successful program that Google’s been updating over the last couple of years and has become a real focus in the off-site SEO world as it gets so much traffic from customers.
Paige Sawin:
That’s a great point, Mike. And he talks about timing, which I think is really important, Steffney. When we talk about just SEO, a lot of times business owners think, “hey, I did my content syndication, I did my blogging—why am I not getting traction?” Well, typically it takes three to four months to actually get traction with those search engines algorithmically. So what Mike is saying is in tandem of focusing on your website, you want to focus also on those off-site business profiles, like Google My Business or Google Business Profile.
Steffney Jones:
That makes complete sense. You don’t want to have information spread out across the internet. Make it cohesive, make it make sense, make it in line with your vision. I love that. That’s awesome.
Mike Gaydos:
Absolutely.
Steffney Jones:
For more information, please check out our lead gen playbook and reach out to DSG if you have additional questions. Thank you both so much. I deeply appreciate your time.
For more from DSG, head over to their website.
If you’re looking for more digital marketing tips beyond SEO, check out Ruby’s free lead generation playbook for additional insights and proven strategies!
