Dogs and Oranges, do they use SEO?

Opportunity  is all around us. So often we don’t realize  that everything we need is right in front of us. The “if only’s”, the “when’s”, and “if they’s” can kill you and your local business. I think one of the biggest mistakes local businesses make is spending all their time putting out camp fires and not planning on how to burn down the forest  (sorry for the analogy tree huggers -I’m one so no offense).

Here’s a couple examples:

One of my business associates years ago sold office supplies on the phone. He was whining that he’d run out of inventory and money and so I stopped by to see if I could help.  When I arrived at the his office  and he poured out his woes I was amazed because there were shelves of office supplies there. I asked him if something was wrong with the supplies. There weren’t. Well, he had a hundred excuses but bottom line he wasn’t “seeing” what was right in front of him. I told him to call his customers be honest with them. And I mean honest. And sell the supplies on hand at discount, raise some capital and move on. Depression, darkness, produced by wrong thinking had stopped him dead in his tracks. The whens, if only and “I’ll do it later”.

The other example comes from a farmer I knew in Texas. He was getting old and had been a dairy farmer all his life. He was going to sell the farm because his kids weren’t interested in taking over and really nobody else was and frankly he was just tired. I asked why he didn’t just raise beef and some hay and stay in the house he’d been raised in make some money and live happily ever after.

So what about the dogs and oranges. Everyday I  take my Skipper on walks in the alley ways around my house and there are hundreds, thousands of orange trees, hanging over the walls of the alleys. (here’s my little buddy)

And almost all year long I come skipping home with Skipper it’s with a big bag of delicious fruit. I’ve actually counted 17 different fruits (in the middle of the desert in Tucson). Most of the homeowners just let the fruit fall to the ground in their yards and rot. This is what a lot of local businesses do with their greatest asset. Their knowledge base.

So, simple answer, no! Dogs and oranges don’t use SEO. However, within those two words there are over 2,700 keywords of niches that you can plug into and make money with good SEO research. I mean think about dogs, how many breeds, how many problems, how many products, how many, how many. And oranges (and other fruits), how to prune, grow, recipes, varieties and on and on and on.

Small business, local business, are in a position to capitalize on these tiny niches and monetize the dogs and oranges like no other group out there. Big corporations can’t touch you. Chains and franchises are out in the cold but you Local Business person can by using the internet and deeply connecting with your local community. By showing to the world and especially your local world that you are the expert in a particular dog, orange, cacti, hair style, and again on and on will drive more customers through your doors. Promise.

And the best way to do this is to tell stories. It was the first thing my speech professor would say at the beginning of every class, “the whole world loves a story”.

You are full of stories about your niches but start pulling in the stories, tips, information, and knowledge about the dogs and oranges in their lives. Then either DIY yourself or get a hold of someone who can  hooking up all this newfangled technology, letting the world know who you are and what you know.