Its not a matter of if … its a matter of when!

@ MiriamEllis – agreed Miriam, though what if we could help them identify problems, and that would help. Often clients are not really strong business people … they're masters at their craft, but ocassionaly have little business sense. A little insight from a business savy third party can go a long way. We don't have to understand every nuance of their business to be able to say, you need to differentiate yourself in some meaningful way, and "we give better" service" or "we care" is not a key differentiator … everyone says that!

Kungfu Veterinary Clinic … exactly. Another eg. from an acquintance of mine. He had a coffin shop, and to maximize all the spare time he had sitting in the coffin shop opened a rock band promotional company. So his phone system would say "press 1 for the coffin shop, 2 for Black Sabbath tickets." Can you imagine?

Also if we were to use a friend recommendation system, such as a widget that emails a friend the page your looking at, how would Google track this? would we have to install Google tracking code onto our site? will Google start monitoring every email (similar to what could be happening in the UK)?

Not trying to pick holes, I'm intrigued to see how Google could pull something like this off without tapping directly into our heads

You try to learn what you can from what you see going on on the web, but in the end, small business owners should see a small business advisor when forming their plan, as well as doing tons of their own research. No SEO can take on this job that the business owner needs to have done themselves, long before they start hiring folks like us.

Great article.

And, for the weird signs pile:

Kung Fu Veterinary Clinic

I swear, I actually saw this once.
Miriam

A real estate lisitngs website had a poor structure & business model – they asked for site reviews at least twice – and both times were told, by entirely different people, that their goal was unattainable due to some weird domain rules & issues.

One of the biggest obstacles I see in writing about small business – and in talking to small business owners is the lack of research and testing that should be done to determine the viability of their "idea."

PPC ads pointing at very small & simple website is a great way to see if your idea is going to make money – before you sink a fortune into developing it.

@ Submit Articles – soooooo true. Search will only highlight the issues.

@ Paisley – PRECISELY! First search friendliness, then user friendliness, now business model optimization.

@ Dudibob – I'm intrigued by your 'automated system' statement. Can you elaborate? Also, while you're correct that not every site displays prices, once social search is integrated, user behaviour tracking will likely take more of a backseat … friend recommendations will comprise the largest portion of the algorithms. Make sense?