Search Ads: Is the Little Guy Getting Left Behind?

Although many small businesses are being pushed out of the online market due to decreasing sales via CPC programs. There is so much they are NOT doing to their own sites like podcasts, rss, blogging, better web sites and more to a) increase profits from EXISTING customers and b) increase traffic from NEW customers. There is SO MUCH they are not doing!

Sites like clickz, wilsonweb and others are full ideas in how to make web sites better - we are JUST beginning.

Ramon Ray, Editor, http://www.smallbiztechnology.com - producer Small Business Summit 2007 - http://www.smallbiztechsummit.com

We have begun to see employers use search to connect with job seekers. It’s an interesting application of search. Both large and small employers stand to benefit as search can connect them to both, active job seekers looking for jobs and passive seekers looking for career related info.

How small is small? Using features such as geo-targeting, local businesses have an inherent advantage over larger firms. An ad for a local business can get a higher quality score based on relevancy, decreasing the cost of a PPC ad relative to what bigger-businesses are shelling out for a misguided attempt at branding. The nature of search marketing is its highly targeted nature. Large enterprises that just throw money at it without concern as to ROI will soon come to there senses. In addition, ads with qualifiers, like geographic qualifiers, are still relatively inexpensive. A brick and mortar running an ad for a hardware store in Seattle is inherently in the long tail and can therefore still get keyword real estate on the cheap.