We all have our favorite brands! Some of the most powerful today: Lego, Google, or Nike. My favorite? Apple.
But what we don’t always see or remember is the meticulous work it took to build those brands from small garage/dorm-room beginnings into the massive presence they become in our minds and market. What do you think of when I say Nike? The swish! And maybe some 6-pack ab’d athletes!
SEO for companies (short for Search Engine Optimization) is a form of digital marketing that many brands have used to increase visibility to potential customers online. Search for “Buy Shoes” on Google, notice who comes up in the search results? It will probably be a familiar brand that is known to have amazing customer focus and lots of great shoes!
How did that business get there? Well, they have worked hard on optimizing their website and online presence to make sure they rank as high as possible for the products they sell.
With this in mind, here’s why your small business should begin investing in SEO if it is not already:
Fits Well Into Your Marketing Budget
A lot of small businesses and start-ups complain to us about being on a tight marketing budget. One great, cost-effective solution is SEO! We are careful to spend our own money wisely for better results in our business, and we want to help our clients maximize the effectiveness of their marketing budgets.
SEO is more budget-friendly, as compared to either PPC advertising or social media advertising initially. Investing in SEO will continue to provide greater traffic long-term, unlike paid advertising whose traffic will dry up as soon as you stop paying for it. So, in the long-run, SEO can offer great ROI.
Helps Boost The Visibility Of Your Business
Studies show that the first three results from a search query generate more than one third of the clicks! Investing in SEO can help you get your business to the top 3 positions on search, if done well. Search engines will rank your website better for keywords that you optimize for and specifically target.
Furthermore, it is important to know that nearly 85% of shoppers search for product or service information online before making a purchase decision. So, if the products or services your business specializes in rank high, chances are that customers are going to find you and be interested in your business, be it big or small.
Amplifies Organic Traffic
Organic traffic is flow of visitors to your website that come from a search engine. One of the most important benefits from organic traffic is that visitor was looked specifically for the product or service your small business specializes in on a search engine and chose to click on the link to your website. That is a definition of a warm lead.
70% of the links clicked by searchers are organic! Click To TweetTo give you an idea of what the search engines are trying to accomplish, let’s say, as in this example, that person searching for the product or service you provide clicked on your link. And depending on how long that person stays on your website, and how much business they do with you helps the search engine interpret the value your website provides. Websites the do better here prompt the search engine to rank that website higher, which then leads to an increased visibility, which then can result in more organic traffic.
By integrating SEO optimization into your small business website, you’re allowing search engines to drive more traffic to your website. And “more traffic” is the single biggest desire we hear from small business owners as they try to market their businesses online.
Insights Into Customer Behavior
Wouldn’t it be amazing if you could know what kind of people are interested in your products or services?
Or, would it be nice to know which group of people are looking for your industry? Or, how people are reacting with your website? What type of technology they are using to search for your business? Or, where in the world you’re being noticed?
As a matter of fact, the tools necessary to optimize your website performance will give you insight into all these questions. Some of these tools are even free! These tools can really inform your SEO efforts, and provide insights that will improve your marketing decisions.
Integrating analytics tools with your small business website, should help you track customer behavior giving you meaningful data for making better decisions.
Great Long-Term ROI
SEO is a gradual process. You should not expect your business to soar on search engines immediately.
With that said, continuous investment in SEO on your business website does improve your site’s credibility in the long run. Consistent content creation, website optimization, and high quality link building, increases the authority of your website. Ultimately, this leads to increased exposure to customers.
Closing Numbers
Some numbers that are hard to ignore for small businesses:
- 72% of consumers who did a local search visited a store within five miles
- Google receives over 57,000 searches per second on any given day
- 93% of online experiences started with a visit to a search engine
- 70% of the links clicked on by search users were organic
- 70-80% of users ignore the paid ads, focusing on the organic results
- 75% of users never scroll past the first page of search results
- Search is the #1 driver of traffic to content sites, beating social media by more than 300%
SEO can certainly do wonders for your small business, if done well. With smart SEO strategies you can out rank your competitors and you grow your organic traffic. We can help!