SEO for Small Brick-and-mortar Business

I'm about to give away a good portion of the store, so read carefully

I help small to medium-sized businesses come up on "money" searches. When prospecting, I can show many examples of businesses that I have helped, a couple of which I helped push to the top on some fairly competitive key phrases. Not to brag or anything...

Not coming up on business-related searches can cost a business its livelihood. When people are looking to spend money, whether they need a new hairdresser or a new automobile, they begin online. Not being found is very costly. There really is no other kind of "pull" marketing these days. Nobody uses the physical Yellow Book these days. Search engines are the new Yellow Pages.

Here are five bases you absolutely must cover:

1. Choose the right keywords. What do your potential customers seek? For small brick-and-mortar businesses, there is usually a location attached. "Dog groomer in Tuscaloosa," "Italian restaurant in Skokie," "Yoga studio in Boulder" -- these are the money searches. These words are extremely important because they will be integrated into all your web verticals -- your web site, your videos, your blog, your reviews, your social networking presence -- all of it, and there is much more than what I just listed.
2. Optimize your Google Local listing. This means filling it out as much as possible. Include your website address, your videos, pictures, social networking sites -- everything you can -- and make sure to make your keywords prominent in your listing. If your business is not strictly local, make sure that you are listed in relevant directories and follow the same advice.
3. Remember that your web presence extends far beyond your website. How are your reviews? Encourage loyal customers to add more. These reviews come up on searches. Do you have a video? Are you participating in organizations (get listed there!)? Do you have a blog (you probably should -- it can give you exposure and enhance your credibility)? Are you participating in social networking sites? Has anyone mentioned your business anywhere on the Internet? If so, find out and make sure to leverage all of it.
4. Get your messaging correct and consistent. This is where guys like me come in. Make sure that your website, reviews, videos, social networking, etc. are consistently delivering your brand message, and make sure that it is a compelling message. What does this have to do with SEO? Everything. The search algorithms are getting very good at natural language processing. A widely distributed, interlinked, conceptually consistent message will take you far.
5. Don't overlook gold dust. Not all profit comes in the form of huge nuggets. Some small, infrequently searched words can be valuable. For example, if you ran an Italian restaurant, you would want to make sure that your menu is spiderable. People do search for "best eggplant parmesan in San Luis Obispo." As a general rule of thumb, make sure all text on your website is just that: Text. Flashy text doesn't get spidered. Text images don't get spidered. PDFs, in my experience, don't get spidered as thoroughly. You're throwing away easy gold dust by not coming up on more obscure searches.

There are other considerations, of course, but if you want to do your own business SEO or if you want to make sure you're hiring a good SEO consultant (or if you are an SEO consultant), make sure to consider the bigger picture. It's not enough to have your website "on the front page of Google." That is a necessary but not a sufficient condition to SEO success. You need to be on the TOP of the front page of Google for words that drive business.

Good luck.