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It baffles me at times, thinking why many small business owners are not investing in SEO. I feel this way because I have witnessed myself, and there is more than enough evidence readily available that proves what wonders a good SEO strategy can do for a small business. It goes without saying that marketing is one of the most important aspects of any business. Small businesses have to invest in marketing to grow period. In this day and age, where human beings rely on the internet from the time they wake up to the time they go to bed makes you wonder that only focusing on old-school traditional marketing solutions is really the way forward for your business to grow? The answer is an absolute NO.
What is SEO?
SEO Search Engine Optimization is a way for your website to organically appear and rank on Search Engines like Google, Bing & Yahoo without paying for any advertisement. For Example, when you look for something online and type in your query, the results you get back are SEO optimized websites. Without SEO, it will be impossible for your potential customers to find your website on Search Engines. Unless they know the exact address or otherwise, it will be like finding a needle in a haystack.
Benefits Of SEO
Increases Traffic To Your Website: Once you start optimizing your website, you will see a gradual improvement in rankings on Search Engines like Google for your site. With the right SEO strategies, any small business can achieve the first page 1st position rankings no matter how big their competition is. The higher the ranking higher is the chance for your customers to visit your website.
High-Quality Traffic: Google is a multi-billion dollar company for a reason. More than 90% of internet users all around the world use Google. Google’s highly advanced artificial intelligence algorithms do a great job providing its users with an excellent experience. They provide highly relevant results to its user for their queries, meaning you will get traffic to your website of people who are looking for your products or services.
Good Return On Investment: High-quality traffic converts into more sales. According to the Search Engine Journal out of all digital marketing channels, Organic Search has the highest ROI of 49%, followed by Paid Search 19%, Social Medial 18% & Email Marketing 14%.
Business Development & Growth By Adapting Best Practices: Your website is the same as your office or a store. Traffic to your website is too same as walk-in customers. Companies thrive and successfully grow by providing excellent customer services. The department stores with categorized sections for their products with helpful staff informing the customers to help make the purchase and fulfilling their needs are excellent customer experience indicators. The same goes for your business website. A responsive, well structured with quality content, and easy to navigate website plays a similar role digitally. A good SEO strategy includes providing an exceptional experience to your website users. Google algorithms do a great job of recognizing businesses with outstanding business practices and rank those websites higher. Therefore this gives an incentive and creates an opportunity for small business owners to adopt the best practices that leads to development and growth.
Builds Brand Awareness & Trust: Ranking on the top of Google’s search results for the related keywords for your products and services is like having a billboard on the busiest road. Anyone searching for your products or your services in your service areas will notice your website. The first page results not only increase the chances for your potential customers to click on your website but according to data, the higher rankings also give your business credibility and enhance customer confidence in your products and services.
What To Expect
SEO Takes Time: Many factors determine the forecast of the progress of SEO for your website. Every website is different. Depending on the current condition of your website, like, how old is your website? How much SEO has already been done? Your site content quality and quantity? The link profile for your website? and many more SEO factors. These factors decide how long it will take for you to see the results. Generally, the SEO agencies tell their clients it could take up to 6 months to 9 months.
Competition: You are not alone. If you search for your products and services in your business area, you will find your competition. But that shouldn’t be a cause of concern. With the right SEO strategies, the results are very much achievable. SEO is not the same as it was a few years ago. Long are gone the days when everyone was only targeting and competing for the main keywords. Nowadays, with advancements in technology and gadgets like smart home devices, Siri, Alexa, more and more people are giving commands to their smart devices will full sentences instead of typing in keywords; this creates an opportunity and provides a ray of hope to those businesses with highly competitive keywords.
How To Proceed
Do It Your Self: Yes, you can, but you will need to dedicate time & effort to learn. If you are familiar with using the backend of your website, it will be a good advantage. The internet is full of SEO guides, online training, and courses. It is never too late to learn.
Hire An SEO Agency: Hiring an SEO agency is the most common practice for small businesses. There are many agencies out there doing great a job. Digital Marketing Agencies or SEO Agencies display their work on their websites titled Case Studies. Case Studies are a great way to learn about the agency’s work in detail, and it helps make an informed decision when hiring them.
In House SEO: Many businesses prefer to hire in-house marketing persons. Depending on your business, this could also be a good option. If you already have an in-house marketing person or team, you can take the initiative to have them trained in SEO.
It is never too late to take action. If you are unsure about the SEO for your website, there are many free SEO audit tools available online. You can use the tools to investigate your website’s SEO or contact an SEO agency to do an SEO audit for your site. The agency will be able to do an audit and submit their SEO proposal for your website.
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This content is brought to you by Mannie Usman.
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The post What Small Business Owners Are Missing Out On Without SEO appeared first on The Good Men Project.
