The benefits of SEO for small businesses
Think as a small business that SEO is not for you? Think again! This week we explore all of the benefits that a structured SEO strategy can bring to small business.
Some small business owners think SEO is a luxury that only big businesses can benefit from. In reality, all businesses can benefit from SEO, especially the small ones.
No matter what business you're in, small business SEO can increase brand awareness, grow your customer base, and increase customer satisfaction. How on earth could your business be too small for benefits like these?
If you still think your company is too small for SEO to be effective, think about this. What happens when your local competitors focus on good SEO practices and you don't? Well, it means that customers searching for businesses online are more likely to choose your competitors.
On the other hand, you can hire small business SEO services for yourself. Then you are the top local business online.
And these are only a few of the benefits you gain with SEO. Read on to learn more.
1. Increase targeted website traffic
The best thing about search engine traffic is that it's from users who are specifically looking for you. And working on your SEO helps you get more of this targeted traffic.
How so, you ask? It's because that's what SEO means: search engine optimization.
Essentially, the goal of SEO is twofold. It focuses on creating the type of content/website that search engine users are looking for. And it does so in a way that the search engine algorithms can clearly recognize.
The result is that your website ranks higher when people search for businesses/content like yours. And the higher your site ranks, the more likely it is that search engine users will click on your website.
2. Improve customer satisfaction
An interesting bonus of good SEO practices is that customers who visit your site will be very pleased by what they find there. This is because user experience (UX) is now a very important part of SEO. That is, your site will rank higher if it's convenient to use and well-organized.
You see, search engines judge your site on more than just the relevance of your content. For instance, there are probably a lot of websites that are just as relevant as yours. But if these other sites load faster than yours, they rank higher.
Search engines also take into account ease-of-navigation, mobile-friendliness, and other helpful features like voice search. For these reasons, any effective SEO strategy focuses first on UX. As such, SEO boosts the satisfaction level of your online customers in addition to boosting your search rank.
3. More online conversions
Increasing your traffic won't do any good unless those visitors convert. Whether they sign up for your email club or make an online purchase, it's important that they do something useful to your business before they bounce away.
Fortunately, SEO helps with this, too. And it's largely from the reasons we've already stated.
First, the traffic you get from search queries are visitors who actually want to be there. Chances are, they will find exactly the product or service they're looking for and make a purchase.
In any case, they're interested in lead. Even if they don't purchase now, they'll probably be interested in signing up for promotional emails or texts.
Furthermore, it's easy for them to take these steps because you've optimized your site for UX.
4. Help customers online 24/7
Your website keeps doing business even while you're asleep. Hopefully, visitors can and will make plenty of purchases or appointments outside of your normal business hours.
They can even get help with many of their problems. For instance, your FAQ page and blog posts will probably answer most of their questions. Aside from this, you can offer 24/7 support via a chatbot or a live chat service.
As a cheaper alternative, you can at least include a contact page. There, customers can send you their questions so you can answer them the next time your business is open.
Best of all, this happens during normal business hours, too. You could be doing a bunch of business online at the same time that you're helping your in-store customers.
However, none of these examples can happen if no one visits your website. So, use SEO to increase your search traffic.
5. Beat out your competition
SEO is arguably the most important way to compete with other local businesses. This has never been more true than it is now, in the post-pandemic age.
A lot of your customers don't even go inside stores anymore. They do all their shopping online.
And how do they find what to purchase? They search for it online, of course. These customers will choose another local business that delivers if they can't find yours.
Besides that, even in-store purchases today often start with a local search. In fact, 78% of local searches end with an offline purchase.
For example, hungry, out-of-town visitors may do a local search for "pizza restaurants near me." Then, any local pizza restaurants that have optimized for local searches will show up at the top of the list.
6. Boost your brand awareness
The pizza illustration is the perfect example of how SEO boosts brand awareness. It's possible that the out-of-town customer has never heard of your business. But they'll know you the moment your business ranks number one in their local search.
The same is also true of site visitors. SEO can bring thousands of additional visitors to your website each day. Many of these visitors have probably never heard of you, either.
Thus, no matter what type of scale you have in mind for your business, SEO can help. If you're content to stay number one in your local community, SEO gets you that local traffic. And if you hope to go international someday, SEO can help you get seen by the whole world.
7. Grow your customer base
In the same way, SEO helps you get any type of business you're hoping for. Obviously, it can boost online sales by attracting traffic and increasing conversions. You can even choose to sell your goods internationally.
And, if in-store purchases are more important to you, we've already explained how SEO helps you increase foot traffic to your business. Plus, you can focus on getting your website traffic to join your marketing e-mail/text list. Then, you can send them coupons that they can use in your store.
Furthermore, we also mentioned that good UX increases visitor satisfaction. This, in turn, increases brand loyalty and word-of-mouth advertising.
8. Connect with more customers
We talked about the option of adding live chat or otherwise receiving and responding to feedback through your website. This is a great option for increasing the connection you have with your customers.
Not only do you solve their problems, but you also gain a better understanding of your audience and what they think about your business. By listening to your audience in this way, you can do a better job of giving them what they want in general.
Improving your SEO provides more opportunity for you to do this since it brings more traffic to your site. You can also use your site to encourage your visitors to engage with you through your support channels.
9. Small business SEO is very affordable
With benefits as amazing as these, you'd think that SEO would be expensive. It's not.
In fact, most SEO strategies are free, in a manner of speaking. For instance, you can write great, keyword-rich content and use HTML tags to optimize it for search engines. This costs you nothing but time.
However, for that reason, you're better off outsourcing to small business SEO services. That way, you have more time to invest in your business so you don't lose focus on sales.
Meanwhile, your expert SEO service makes your website more profitable, too. The ROI for SEO services should more than cover the fee you pay.
10. It’s easy to track
Lastly, most of your traditional marketing efforts are extremely difficult to track. For instance, who can say whether your recent increase in foot traffic is due to the billboard you put up?
SEO, on the other hand, is extremely trackable. You can see your search rank for yourself by searching on Google.
Plus, you can track exactly where your website traffic is coming from with analytics software—no guesswork necessary. In other words, you will know for absolute certain how much your SEO efforts are helping.
Experience these benefits of small business SEO firsthand
Small business SEO helps absolutely any and every business, period. Whatever type of company you run, be sure you never forget these important benefits of SEO.
Of course, there's nothing wrong with getting some professional help for this. If you're finding it difficult or impractical to do your own SEO, take advantage of our small business SEO services.
We'll keep your site optimized with expert skill while you spend more time and focus on running your business. To get started, book your free consultation, which includes a free SEO audit.
