As an SME it is virtually impossible for us to hire the

services of a good SEO company that is going to spend time

optimising the site, adding new content and gaining good links

for the site, simply because of the cost involved. Other SME’s

are I am sure in a similar position. They would all love to

have a web site that ranked highly in google and the other

search engines and brought in a constant flow of new business.

However to hire an SEO company to do all those things above is

often beyond the reach of many small companies especially those

just starting out.

However as a company providing services ourselves and 80% of

our new business coming via the internet I can thoroughly

recommend that you find a company, invest the money because you

will soon get the rewards back. If you feel that you still

cannot quite afford to go down that path because money in the

company is tight then the other course of action I can

recommend is to write articles. I kept seeing and reading all

this free advice from SEO’s out there on the Web about the

benefits of writing articles and submitting to article

distribution centres and e-zines. I used to think when reading

these words of wisdom how wonderful it would be if only I could

do that, but I never did it. Until recently that is. About a

month ago I decided I would try writing an article. First what

would I write about? Big problem, what could I write about that

had any relevance to my website or the services we provided and

be of interest to anybody else? So I did a search on one of the

article distribution sites looking for articles that had

relevance to my own sites content and found nothing of real

relevance. So nothing for it I would have to write my own. It

still took another week before I came up with any ideas. I

focused on what services we provided and how I could turn these

into articles. Still nothing actually came of these thoughts.

Then one night I was talking to one of our cleaners who was

telling me about the problems she was having with the toilet

brushes on these particular premises she was working at. They

were the wrong shape for doing a good job! The following day I

spoke to the company and they agreed we could put our own in.

Then I realised that this was a problem in many places

especially domestic households. So I wrote my first article

about toilet brushes and the why’s and how’s of how people

should approach the purchase of these objects. Once started the

words flowed. I submitted this to two article distributors and

one ezine. To my surprise it was accepted and I have not looked

back. I now write on average two articles per week and have

reached the grand total of 24 published articles. Each article

gives me about five links on average, some provide more, others

less, it depends on who picks them up and republishes them. Most

importantly it has boosted my visitors and my backlinks and

therefore my search engine position. When I did a search on who

was linking to my site these articles produced 12 backlinks for

google and a staggering 186 on MSN. It was incredibly

interesting to see where my articles were ending up, often in

very unexpected places, and it is global, so they can be picked

up anywhere in the world.

Do not be put of by the thoughts

· I cannot write

· I have nothing to write about

· Nobody would want to read the things I know about

Because you are wrong on all counts. There is a lot of advice

freely available on how to write good articles, go search it

out. Everybody who is running a business has expert knowledge

on some subject, and lastly the whole world is your audience so

there will be many people out there who are interested in what

you have to say. Surprise yourself, as I did, give it a go.

After the first or second article you will find that they just

flow and writing becomes much easier. Very importantly however

they do wonders for your website.