Hi

I have been thinking about this topic and came across this article:
Seth's Blog: Memo to the very small

I don't think this is an approach I'd recommend but I do think that if I was a small non IT businessman I'd be so confused about what to do. Just a quick list of the things you need/should to know about if you have a website:

Website design (stuff like the whole tables vs div thing)
Website hosting (Irish vs US)
SEO (at least a basic understanding and the effects of the above on it)
Adwords optimisation

Thats a awful lot of 'hidden' techy stuff thats value isn't immediately apparent or understandable. The website looks the same so why spend €€€ on this stuff and chances are if your site is only 10 pages and your adwords budget is small your not going to be found anyway...

Surely if the point of the web is to find stuff you need then their has to be a easy/cheap way for small guys like plumbers to be found?

thoughts?
des

To be perfectly honest, that guy sounds like like he's not in touch with reality. At first he remarks that "These are businesses that have trouble dealing with the Yellow Pages", but then goes on to suggest they buy hosting, create a blog, insert RSS feeds and google maps and then create Flickr and Squidoo accounts, so they can spend hours (or days) running around town with a cardboard sign and taking photos and writing blog posts... and then ask their customers to do the same .

Absolute Nonsense

__________________
Print & Web Design

Yeah I agree but there still is a prob for the average small bus - google is not the answer for small companies cause you can't just pay your €€€ and then forget about it

des

I agree with this as well. However, if you're a small business whose main income is not from internet sales (eg: local plumber, local hardware store etc) then a few hundred Euro will get you a very nice, uniquely designed static brochure site with 2 or 3 pages, and that's all you need. A simple site with contact details, location info and some sample work/testimonials etc.

By their very nature, local stores rely on local trade, so there's no need to pay big bucks to Google to get high rankings. Good use of keywords etc should be enough to bring you up in the local searches (eg: "Plumber North County Dublin", or "Plumber Swords" etc).

The old adage of "the internet is your window to a whole world of customers" does not hold any weight here because someone searching for a plumber in New York is not going to care about plumbers in Dublin.

Local businesses can pay anything up to €1,000 for a print ad in their local freesheet which lasts a week at most. This would be ample budget to create a website for their needs.

I see the point he is making about the problems faced by small businesses, but advocating a DIY approach is just not a viable solution in my opinion.

I agree with what your saying but I still think even asking a small business to setup an adwords account is a big deal. Sure you can go in and setup a keyword list and restrict ads to your location but even thats hard enough and if you dont want to waste money your going to need to think about content quality and negative keywords etc... Thats a lot of techy stuff for a plumber.

What I'm saying is there is currently nothing out there that does for the web what the Golden Pages does for print. A place that gets lots of eyeballs and all they ask of the plumbers is: whats your ad text.