At least a few times a month, I receive a call from a small business owner who is frantic about the state of their business.

When asking small business owners what their greatest problem is with their business, most of the time I’m told, “Our website is losing search ranking, and we’re losing traffic and business because of it.”

In most cases, unbeknownst to the small business owner, the nosedive in both search rankings and website traffic can be attributed to search engine updates, more specifically a Google update.

And if not a search engine update, then because they participated in some dubious behavior to game search engines in an attempt to garner search rankings and increase website traffic.

So I circle the wagon once more and ask the small business owner, “What is your business plan? How do you get traffic to your business?”