When I first started blogging about SEO here at SEOpCentre I made a promise (mostly to myself) that I would not discuss specific details of the sites that I work on or the companies that I work with.  After all, this site is my personal blog about learning SEO techniques and I prefer to keep things general rather than going into detailed case studies of individual sites.

I do want to share with you some of the things that I’ve come to understand about SEO and website promotion by helping other people with their sites.  I’m still not going to say, “Hey, check out this site and look at what I did!” but I will give enough of a general background to help you get a handle on the type of business in question and hopefully be able to apply these insights to your own, or your own client’s, sites.

A Small Business Still Deserves A Big Web Presence

The site in question belongs to a friend of mine who has built up his business over the last few years in a fairly specialized niche market, which has attracted a loyal following among its customer base and draws new business largely through word-of-mouth referrals.  The site has an active forum community of its own, as well as a highly visible presence within a national forum site for its industry.  For the sake of this example, let’s say that they’re involved in the sport of Ten Pin Bowling.  They aren’t, but it fits the example quite well, as far as being a sport with a community built around the team and their involvement in regular “bowling tournaments.”  It’s also a sport which has a far bigger following in the US than it does here in the UK.
Just to reiterate: they are not a ten pin bowling team.  If you’ve found your way here looking for tips about bowling because my use of the term in this example has accidentally optimized this post to show up in Google’s results for searches about bowling, perhaps you’d be more interested in checking out Bowwwling.com they seem to cover a lot more on the subject than I will.

The lay of the land

The current site is a few years old now, built around the Joomla CMS and was developed with little or no consideration given to keyword research or other Search Engine Optimization techniques.
At the time of writing, the site barely ranks at all in Google for anything other than the company’s own name.
Fortunately, very few of their competitors have engaged in any truly meaningful SEO activity either, so with a little research, a bit of relevant copywriting and some general house-keeping we should be able to improve things quite quickly.
They are now in the process of developing a new site (this time using MODx so if any one knows any tips or decent resources for getting the most out of that system please drop a link in the comments) and I’ve been able to have some input towards various aspects of the development and content creation in an effort to ensure that a variety of SEO best practices are followed.
I’ve also managed to convince them of the benefits of having a company blog to run alongside the main site (Yay!  WordPress!  That’s where I get to play).  But it wasn’t easy.

Modesty Is The Best Policy

One of the biggest bug-bears for my friend is that he doesn’t want to create the impression that the company is “bragging” about their successes (he’s generally happy to do that in private, among friends, but is acutely aware that his is an industry where those who openly shout “We’re the best!” are usually perceived as dickheads and are opening themselves up to be targets for others to try and knock down a peg or two).  Getting the point across that the kind of promotion I have planned for him involves demonstrating the years of experience and training that he and the rest of the team have built up, as a way of showing prospective new customers that they will be in safe hands, is not about bragging but is instead about establishing the authority that the company already holds within its niche for a new audience.  These guys have been “bowling” for a great many years and have even received training from a number of ex-professional “bowlers” which has given them a real edge in the sport and is something that they are now able to pass on to other “bowlers” by holding training days and offering corporate team-building events and experience days in addition to their regular “bowling tournaments.” 
They have every reason to be justifiably proud of what they’ve achieved, but it’s important to strike the right tone and not appear to simply be saying, “Do it this way because we said so.” 
A much better approach is to say, “Try doing it this way, because we’ve found it to be incredibly effective for us.  And, by the way, if you know of a better way, please join the discussion and share it with us.”

The Web May Be WorldWide, But The Company Isn’t

This company operates entirely in the UK and nearly all of the customers attending its events are from the UK (with occasional visits from the continent for really big events).  There’s no reason to try and attract visitors to the main site from other parts of the world and the focus will be on building search engine rankings within Google UK.
The blog however (which will be hosted on a blog.companyname.com subdomain) will be actively promoted at a worldwide level.  The online community for “bowling” has a much larger following in the US than it does here in the UK and the blog will provide a great way to attract and engage American “bowlers” while still allowing the main site to focus on promotions to a UK audience.  As blog posts grow and generate links from others in the worldwide “bowling” community, link juice and authority can be passed to the main site through site-wide links to the homepage, forum and other important sub-sections, as well as through more targeted links within specific posts to the relevant pages deeper within the main site.
For example, a blog post about “the best technique to get a spare from a 7-10 split” would be linked to the main site’s page on upcoming training day events for UK “bowlers” to come and learn how to put the theory into practice.

While establishing a blog as a way to help promote a commercial site (even one for a very small business such as this) isn’t exactly a unique or ground-breaking strategy, it’s still one that can be very effective in building a brand and improving search engine rankings.  A great many of the SEO blogs that I read are by consultants who work for much larger, established firms and their advice relates much more towards their experiences performing SEO services for big companies with massive sites.  There are also a lot of great SEO blogs out there by consultants who work on sites for smaller businesses and these will be the ones that I will be turning to for advice and tips.  I know there’s a lot of talk about pricing for SEO services and how the high prices quoted often reflect the higher end of the market, while looking down on more budget friendly services as “snakeoil salesmen” but I’m confident that there can be a middle-ground of competent Search Engine Marketers who specialize in providing advice and services to small businesses with small budgets while still maintaining the ethical standards and effectiveness of the “big hitters.”  And that’s a sector of the market that I’m happy to be working in (at least until the multi-nationals start emailing me with the big bucks offers )

BTW  If anyone out there knows where I can find out the best way to identify all the pages from the old (ugly-URL Joomla) version of the site and set up 301 redirects to their new (friendlier-URL having MODx) counterparts please drop a link to it in the comments.  You will instantly become my new best friend if you do