To aid smaller businesses with search engine optimization, Ben Cook developed SEOcoaches, a virtual company that provides personalized SEO services.

”We think of SEOcoaches as a personal trainer for small-business websites and online marketing,” he said in an email.

Search engine optimization methods help ensure websites show up in search results.SEOcoaches’ goal is to drive more traffic to client websites and help clients learn to manage SEO strategies and online marketing efforts in-house.

Cook, who lives in Collinsville, Ill., across the river from St. Louis, owns the company with his father, Jim Cook, who lives in Redmond.

“The best part of SEOcoaches is that it’s an opportunity for us to continue working together even when we are separated by 2,000 miles,” Jim Cook, who’s been a web designer and developer since 1998, said via email. “It keeps us in almost daily contact.”

The company launched in September and is an offshoot of Direct Match Media, Ben Cook’s other SEO company that works with businesses with larger budgets.

“I can’t tell you how often I have sat across the table from small-business owners who were absolutely sold on the need for SEO to remain competitive but simply couldn’t afford even my lowest rates,” Ben Cook said, referring to Direct Match Media.

SEOcoaches performs a scouting report, a one-time audit of a client’s website, for roughly $2,000, depending on the site. The price also includes a consultation. The company also offers weekly telephone coaching sessions.

“Prior to the coaching sessions, we will look at their website and come up with suggestions and plans,” Jim Cook said. “In the call, we will talk them through that, the reasoning for it and what kind of results they should expect to see … It’s more of an education process than just a to-do list.”

SEOcoaches

What it does: Helps smaller businesses improve search engine optimization

Pictured: Ben Cook, left, and his father, Jim, co-owners of SEOcoaches

Where: Redmond and Collinsville, Ill.

Employees: Three

Phone: 541-516-0197

Website: www.seocoaches.com

Q: What is it like working with your son?

A: According to my son, it’s wonderful since he’s “practically perfect in every way.” Seriously, it’s usually great. Our talents and strengths complement each other and, when we work together well, we inspire each other to accomplish more and better things. Occasionally, the employer-employee relationship gets confused with the son-father relationship, and that can be difficult. We both have pretty big egos, and they bump into each other occasionally. Fortunately, we generally manage to work those things out and move on.

Q: Where do you hope SEOcoaches will be in the next five years?

A: We hope to be celebrating the success of a large number of small-business clients who have “graduated” and continuing to help new clients successfully market their companies online. Of course, in an industry that changes as quickly as online marketing, it’s difficult to predict exactly what form that will take.