Google Wants Virginia Small Businesses to Get Online
Posted by Click Finders in google, google adwords, Marketing, organic search engine optimization, SEO, web design | 21 comments
Google wants you Online Virginia
You may or may not have seen an email, webpage, blog article or other news media source that Google itself is pushing out. The crux of the message is ”Virginia, Get Your Business Online!”. The message is a pretty simple one, Google wants all small businesses to get online and publish a website. According to Google it’s an easy, practical and FREE way to promote your business. Google has gone so far as to come into Virginia communities with a small team of Google representatives and met with business owners to give out this free advice. They even point you to ISP’s (Internet Service Providers) that Host a website for one year for FREE and provide free website templates that can have even the most non-tech savvy person configure and launch a website within a couple of minutes and start to be found by the throngs of searches that are looking for the small business product or service you provide. Everything they say is 100% true. Of course, truth can be a relative term.
What do I mean by that? I’m glad you asked. You see, Google has a vested interest in having every small business create and then maintain an online presence via a website. Have they spoke the truth though? Is it possible to put up a live, fully functional website within a few minutes for FREE? Yes, it absolutely is. So if it’s true, then what’s the problem with this scenario? Well from a distance nothing. Google has stated the unequivocal truth and they will undoubtedly stand behind their message with a “we just want to help small business harness the power of the internet” statement. If that’s true, there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. However, as an internet professional who earns a living evaluating, fixing and promoting websites, I have some pretty serious concerns with this kind of message. There is no way a “non-tech savvy” business owner with zero internet marketing experience is going to be able to launch a website within an hour that is even remotely visible to the search engines, not to mention actually promote it.
“Google could be starting the next great thing by helping every small business get an inexpensive website, or they could be setting themselves up for a never ending stream of paid search dollars.”
So what is Google’s motivation for this push? Is it to share knowledge and promote the internet market place? You see, in order to answer that question, you have to understand exactly how Google earns its revenue. It does so by selling advertising and paid search results (the top three highlighted links returned on nearly every search). That’s right. If you want to be on TOP of Google, all you have to do is set up and Adwords account and be willing to pay XX amount of dollars per click that they get you on their ad and BOOM, you get your website listed at the TOP of Google.
Don’t get me wrong, paid search advertising has its place in this world and there is absolutely nothing wrong with it. However, I will take issue with Google (or anyone) who proclaims that any small business owner can get on line for little very little cost and then be at the top of the search engine results pages without an investment of some sort. In order to be at the top you must be willing to invest in one of the following:
- #1 You Invest Your Time – Self education in internet and organic search engine marketing. Expect to spend about 3-6 months just learning what to do and how to do it the correct way. Once educated, then you can start marketing your site and you can expect to spend anywhere from 3 to 24 months on that full time effort, depending entirely on the competitiveness and difficulty of the keywords you are trying to rank for.
- #2 Invest in Organic Search Engine Marketing – You can hire an SEO Services Company and you can invest in an SEO Services Package that will market your company and help you gain the trust and authority you need to rank well in the search engine results pages. This assures you actually get results, that you get those results in a timely manner and that you get them in an ethical and search engine friendly manner (very important, lest you be banned from the search engines altogether for doing it wrong). All this of course, is based on you hiring the right SEO agency to promote your site. The benefits of a properly optimized and promoted website can have lasting affects with minimal cost to maintain the rankings once you’re at the top of the search engines.
- #3 Invest in Paid Search Results Advertising – Quite simply you just need to open a Google Adwords account (or Yahoo/Bing account), register your site,, give them your credit card, spending limits (daily, weekly or monthly), select and bid on your keywords, select your target market segments and then write your ads and publish them. If you have done everything correctly, you can have traffic at your site within a few hours. How much traffic and how much revenue can you get this way? That depends on your keywords, your bids and how good your website is.
So although it’s true, that Google can help you get online within minutes, the likelihood it will change your business that quickly is pretty slim. Just like anything else worth something in this world, if you want quality traffic that is going to affect your business, you will have to spend an investment (in time or money) marketing it. The question about the quality of the site, the quality of the traffic and how you market your site, is up to you.
We would love to hear what the professional web design and internet marketing community think of this Google initiative also. So if you are an internet professional, please feel free to chime below in the comments section. Also, if you are a small business owner and found your way here, please feel free to chime in your opinion as well. We would love to hear what you think.
click-finders is a full service Internet Marketing firm that offers Affordable SEO Services, PPC Management, Social Media Management, Web Design and Development, Reputation Management and more. Contact us today for a FREE, no obligation SEO analysis of your website and find out how we can help get to the top and stay at the top of Google!
As a small business owner this is great! Google really has done something here. I love that they are making it easy and cost effective for small business to get online. We needed something like this years ago. I know my small business could benefit form this sort of thing. I have been thinking about putting up a website for a little over a year now, but did not think I could afford it. Everyone I talked to said it would cost thousands of dollars.
Guess they were all wrong!
John – Thanks for reading and for posting your comment. Yes your friends were wrong and they were right. The question is what purpose do you want your new website to serve. If you want it to bring you new business, then you will have to make an investment in it at some point. This is however a great place to start for small business owners!
Wishing you all the luck in the world!
Double-edged sword. It seems like a fantastic thing – easy and inexpensive (or “free”) website for business owners. But the follow-through on making something that starts out as free and easy into something that is profitable is usually costly and messy. As you said, Mike, this sounds like a great deal — from a distance.
I think there are enough smart business people out there who will not get sucked into the delusion that their free website will actually produce any measurable results or profits. I think they know that an investment is required if results are to be seen.
I also think the upside of this push by Google is that it raises awareness. Now, more business owners will be engaged and will put more consideration into the benefits of their online presence. This is a valuable awareness issue and one that will likely produce more people who are serious about having a professional website and effective SEO.
It is my hope that those same business people will put thought and research into their website before jumping into a freebie that will cost thme more time and money down the road.
Scott – Could not have said it better myself! Thanks for commenting. As always, you bring value and insight that I could not and your words are bound to help someone that needs more information.
Great job I like your type! Would genuinely like to right here your feedback on my blog site! I’m also searching for someone to assist me make web sites!
We would have to look at this from two angles.
1. Things don’t just happen out of blue, they are created from a need: I have seen web designers (not even web developers) charging arm and a leg for simple websites, that have no SEO value. Plus, it is always a notion in the minds of business owners that having their websites developed is expensive (don’t get me wrong, it can get expensive). So, it is understandable from a business owner’s perspective that this is the greatest thing in the world.
2. On another hand, this will be the greatest help that an internet marketing company or an SEO company can get out of Google. In fact, this is much better than knowing Google’s algorithm.
As an internet marketing company you want to deal with business owners who understand the value of your services. When they don’t understand this, it becomes an incredibly hard task to explain the value of it. So we should let these people try to see what it takes to be visible on the net, even with a FREE help from “The Giant” himself (…as they say it in the old world; you learn a lot more from your losses than your wins)… will be just a matter of time!
Gurhan – Thanks so much for reading and commenting!
You picked up on exactly what I hoped this message would convey. That regardless of what Google does with incentives, algorythm changes, paid advertising options…there will always be a need for internet professionals in the form of webdesigners/developers, SEO and marketing professionals. So this initiative by Google can be/should be a good thing for all. It will just take some time to settle out and see how.
Some more input from a friend on Twitter:
@click_finders great post! be wary when anything is free also the urls are subdomains so all link juice goes to intuit
“Link Juice” is what gives good SEO Boost to an already good designed and properly SEO coded website. Having a site link to you is very important in the SEO world, so the fact that the FREE sites are subdomains of Intuit, means any link to the site you create will give credit to Intuit and very little (if any) to the actual site.
Shout out and Thanks to Jimmy Olivero (@Jim1975) for pointing this little tid-bit out!
I’ve had a number of people say to me recently “google phoned and said they will get me number 1 for my search terms for X per month” they ask me to explain how it works’ which I do. But, my problem is if google phone everyone one saying we’ll get you to number 1, well they can’t. My question is that in the long term isn’t this just a sales pitch that will increase the individual CPC?
I agree PPC has its place but if google themselves are increasing the competition for specific keywords is this not slightly wrong.
I ask mainly because a lot of people who don’t understand SEO don’t see the value you put on it – especially when you tell them they need to wait a while to see major results but google seem to be promising the same thing to a lot and they can’t provide – is this not wrong
to clarify I mean if they phone 10 people they can’t promise them all number 1 spot for the same keyword unless each person increases their CPC and go get number 1, then lose it and increase again.
HI Michael – Thanks for reading and commenting!
“My question is that in the long term isn’t this just a sales pitch that will increase the individual CPC?”
The short answer is (IMHO)….yes aboslutely! The more competition for each keyword, the higher the CPC rate and therefore the higher the Bid must be to maintain #1 in the Paid Search results. Calculating CPC is extremely complex and plays on quite a number of factors, of course, each factor favors the search engine, not the bidder.
As I stated above, CPC (paid search) has it’s place in the search world, however, it should never be used as a sole source of click through traffic, lest you want to bound to the SE’s completely and forever.
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@Jenee, @Raisa, @Malka and @Sonny –
Thanks so much for reading and for the kind words!
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