8 Benefits of SEO That Every Small Business Needs To Grow
admin Your small business can’t ignore search engine optimization (SEO) as part of your overall marketing and advertising strategy.
If you do, you are not only leaving money on the table, you are falling behind your competitors.
Because of the many benefits of SEO, all small businesses should be using it to grow their business. By optimizing your small business website for SEO, you are setting it up for long term success.
A properly done search engine marketing campaign will set your business up to receive long term, laser targeted traffic to your web site. This is the gold standard of potential leads.
You see, unlike other marketing channels online, such as pay per click, visitors from organic search are actively seeking you out. This makes them the best potential customers your marketing can deliver.
Let’s take a look at eight powerful benefits your small business can enjoy by implementing search engine optimization as part of your marketing strategy.
A High Return On Investment (ROI)
Yes, there is a cost to SEO, whether it’s in time or paying a specialist to do the work for you. However, once you begin to receive traffic from the search engines, that traffic can last a long, long time. In fact, if you do the right things on an ongoing basis, you can be reaping the rewards of free organic search traffic for years and years to come.
Laser Targeted (And Free) Traffic
Online, there is no better potential lead or customer than the ones that come from organic search. Most marketing, such as on social media is interrupt marketing. People are not seeking you out. You are interrupting what they are doing.
When someone visits your small business web site, they arrived because they actively sought you out via search. They are looking for a product or a solution and they’ve come to you. This is as targeted a lead as you will get online. Now it’s the job of your web site or salespeople to do the rest.
SEO Is Much Better Than Pay Per Click (PPC)
With PPC marketing, there are a lot of variables that you have to get right, A lot of research goes into building a customer profile, figuring out your target market, setting up all the possibilities inside your account.
Do you set a high cost per click? Do you focus on leads or likes? There’s a lot going on. Besides that, things are constantly changing and if you shut off the campaign, your traffic dries up. Not to mention the fact that PPC costs keep spiraling higher.
SEO traffic, on the other hand, is more targeted, it’s less expensive, and it’s more long term than pay per click marketing.
Building The Brand
Search engine marketing can help build the brand awareness of your small business. Your site starts to get noticed and remembered when it keeps appearing on the first page of search results. This is very cost effective brand building.
SEO Puts You On Even Footing With Big Business
One of the great things of having an online presence is the ability of a small business to compete with large businesses. By focusing on SEO, you can achieve rankings that your large competitors don’t have. Potential customers will see you as the expert or go to business in your industry.
Local SEO Will Boost Revenue
Local SEO is booming. More and more people are heading to the search engines on their mobile phone for local solutions and products. And according to ThinkWithGoogle.com, a whopping 18% of local mobile searches actually lead to a sale within 24 hours!
By focusing SEO with a local search component and creating a Google My Business listing, your opening up your small business to a lot more potential customers that will being contacting you already set to buy.
Improves Credibility
People trust the search engines to give them quality results from their searches. This means, if your small business is showing up on the first page of search results, potential customers will see your small business as both credible and trustworthy. This can do wonders for your sales.
SEO Is Always Working
Once you’ve achieved search engine rankings on the first page, these rankings are working for you 24 hours a day. Those rankings never take time off, not even for holidays. This means, even when your business is closed, your SEO is working for you to generate new leads and customers.
If you own a small business, getting started on an SEO campaign is an absolute must for your business.