When it comes to small business SEO, many business owners feel like it’s too complicated or that they don’t have the budget for it. However, small businesses can benefit from SEO in a number of ways. In this article, we will discuss the benefits of small business SEO and how you can get started today!
SEO Can Improve Your Website’s Visibility
SEO can help small businesses in a number of ways. First, it can improve your website’s visibility on search engine results pages (SERPs). This means that potential customers are more likely to find your website when they are searching for products or services that you offer.
Why is this important? According to BrightEdge, 68% of all online activities start with a search engine. And when online users are searching, 75% of searchers never click past the first page of results. (Forbes)
So having your site optimized to appear near the top of search results will get your business noticed easier online. This is like free advertising.
SEO Helps You Get More Customers
Second, SEO can help to improve your website’s conversion rate. This means that once potential customers find your website, they are more likely to take the desired action, whether it is making a purchase, signing up for a newsletter, or contacting you for more information.
The Daily Egg reported that 14.6% of SEO-generated leads are converted into sales. And Pew Research states that leads from SEO are eight times more likely to become paying customers than those generated through traditional ad campaigns.
This means that, if you are considering paid advertising online, you will get better results by having your website SEO optimized before beginning any ad campaigns. And according to Hubspot, inbound leads generated through SEO cost 62% less than outbound leads. So good SEO will help reduce your online advertising budget as well.
SEO Helps Build Trust in Your Business
Third, SEO can help small businesses build credibility and trust with their target audience. When your website appears at the top of SERPs, it gives the impression that you are an authority in your industry. This can help to build trust with potential customers and make them more likely to do business with you.
Consumers are much more tech-savvy today as 81% of internet users research a product online before making a purchase. And an online searcher tends to engage with or read, three to five pieces of content from a business’s website before contacting a sales representative.
Creating credibility and trust through SEO helps qualify your business as someone that a customer wants to buy from.
How to Get Started with SEO for Your Business
Now that we’ve discussed the benefits of small business SEO, let’s take a look at how you can get started today optimizing your website. Each of the following stages is how an SEO services agency would evaluate and get your site ready for search engines.
Some of these steps can be done on your own. While other steps will most likely require a person with more knowledge of SEO.
Setup a Google Business Profile
This should be your first priority because it costs you nothing but your time to set up. Go to the Google Business site and set up a profile for your business.
To help you understand why this is important, we describe in more detail why having a Google Business Profile is so important.
This is one of the more simple SEO tasks. But you can still experience issues. If you have trouble setting up or configuring your listing, contact our team for a free Google Business Profile Review and we can help get you pointed in the right direction.
Having a business profile on Google help tremendously when you get to the point of working on your business’s Local SEO as well.
We have created a Free Downloadable guide “8 Steps to Create and Optimize Your Google Business Profile”. Once you have had a chance to go through it, feel free to schedule a Free Discovery Call if you need any help.
Technical SEO Readiness
The first step is to assess your current website from a technical standpoint, and see where there is room for improvement. This is referred to as Technical SEO and is the most affordable SEO service for small businesses.
Here is what you need to look for:
- Are your titles and meta descriptions optimized for relevant keywords?
- Is your website mobile-friendly?
- How fast does your website load?
- These are just a few of the factors that search engines take into account when ranking websites.
All search engines use these elements (title, description, etc.) to display your website in search results.
Google also examines how your website looks and performs on mobile devices as well. All of these factors contribute to where you will rank when someone searches for a term relevant to your website. So it is important to get these fundamental elements correct.
Once you have a good understanding of where your website needs improvement, you can begin to make changes. If you don’t feel comfortable making these changes yourself, there are plenty of SEO agencies (such as Highpoint Digital) that can identify Technical SEO issues and fix them quickly.
Local SEO
This is where I would recommend you begin looking for a trusted SEO services agency. If you are tech-savvy and you feel confident digging into the task, I will outline some helpful tools below to help get you started.
There is too much to cover in this article about Local SEO. I will be publishing a dedicated article on this in the next week or so. So stay tuned.
But for you self-starters, here is a list of Local SEO tools (non-affiliate links) to help you. Keep in mind, you should already have a Google Business Profile setup when you use these tools. But some of these tools can help you optimize that as well.
- BrightLocal – We use this and it is simple and very helpful
- Local Viking – This tool was built specifically to help you with your Google Business Profile
- Whitespark
- Moz Local
- Listing Management Tool by Semrush
I ordered them on my personal preference and trimmed the list down to the top five. I have used the top three in the list and would recommend them. Keep in mind that these tools are built more for agencies. So a paid subscription might be a bit cost prohibitive for a small business.
The Final Word on Small Business SEO Services
Thank you for making it this far in the article. I appreciate the time you took to read this.
The SEO services beyond this point require a dedicated budget and a better understanding of how SEO works for your website. This is where we come in.
Our SEO Professionals are available to discuss your goals and help you determine which SEO services would be the most cost-effective and beneficial to your business. We offer a free 30-minute strategy session call to get you pointed in the right direction.
The Highpoint Digital team is here to help.
I hope you found this helpful.