The old expression "Jack of all trades, master of none" is very relavent to a small business upstart and to any website that needs to rank well in the search engines. I've worked for small companies and for huge corporations and the evolution of a company always seems to be the same:

1. We started doing something really well

2. We made some money doing that thing, and started doing other stuff and made more money.

3. We started doing more stuff and then our profit margins started to suffer. We began to lose focus on the thing we did well.

4. We bought and integrated some companies that did some of the things we needed to do because they did it well.

5. We got big and diversified (a good thing right).

6. We grew into a huge company that does a lot of things, but nothing really stands out.

7. Profit margin is slim but we make up for it in volume.

8. Finally we regroup, sell off the offshoots and refocus on the thing we do well. (Downsizing)

9. We are a great company that does one thing well, again...

This is no less of a challenge for a small business. If even true of my business! I know it! So I'll use myself as an example. I started as a business that does a lot of things (relative to the web) and had a huge territory I could not possibly cover! As I've grown, my territory has reduced in size! I've become an expert in one thing: local internet marketing. Is that how Google sees my business?

What do I do really well? I can get small, local business to show up consistently in Google search results on Google MAPS and Google organic searches. The point...ask yourself what it is that your company does really well.

What else do I do? Well, look at my home page. I'm making my own mistake! (Don't worry, I intend to fix it). Google Adwords, Website design and development, mobile sites, mobile marketing campaigns, lead nurturing campaigns, content marketing and social media. I could go on. We do all of that stuff but mostly it's applied to internet marketing strategies.

I'm not saying that the ability to provide these services is good or bad. We do a pretty good job because our focus is to apply things like web development and design to make the site rank better. However, understanding the fundamentals of SEO, Google might just see you as a "Master of None". And guess how you'll rank for any of the services (even your best one)? So, relative to your business being the "Jack of All Trades", perhaps at least on your home page, you need to put your master services ahead of everything else.

Google Webmaster tools can be a great tool in understanding this. Google is not human. Google looks at a website and tries to understand it based on rules and word usage.

I'll use my site as an example. I am my own victim. I am good at a lot of things and if I present that on my website, it's tough to figure out what we do as a company, This list on the right is a Google Webmaster 30,000 foot view of my website. The good news is that our focus is on Google (obvious right). Start looking for combinations that make sense? "Google Maps", "Google search", "search marketing", "local search marketing" ... and you get the picture. I would like the terms optimization and SEO to move higher in the list... I'll have to work on that.

This is only one aspect of optimization but a very important one to consider. If you can't derive some important keywords that you'd like to rank for from the content keywords THEN NEITHER CAN GOOGLE! 

Of course, this is not the only parameter to consider when optimizing your website, it is very important. For example, most of the links that I develop for my site look like "seo company DAYTON OHIO". The local term is important. I'm not trying to rank across the country. That is true for most of my clients as well. But the local terms should appear in your content keywords enough for Google to know where your business lives.

So I would challenge you to consider what it is that your company does best, what your core niche is. Let the home page focus on that, and let the other stuff you do follow from that. Google will recognize you as the expert in that category over time (if you really do put some focus on it) and you will be duly rewarded.

Strategically, your business can beat the big boys by whittling away at their major weakness. A big business has less ability to change, to affect any specific niche. That is the small businesses advantage. If you can clearly state what it is that you can do that is very difficult for your bigger competition, you're on your way to finding a niche that can grow both in the real world and on the web.