How Important is SEO for Small Businesses?
Small businesses face tough competition in today’s market. One of the best things you can do to make your business stand out is to build an online presence. When you are building your website, you will want to consider search engine optimization (SEO) as a way to improve your visibility on the Internet and reach more potential customers.
With more than 3 billion people using the Internet, there are lots of opportunities for small businesses to grow. In fact, with the right marketing strategy, small businesses can build a brand, expand and even survive despite tough competition. Small businesses that have a sound business model and effective marketing strategy gain competitive advantage over their competitors. A marketing strategy should include SEO (search engine optimization) as it helps increase traffic, leads and sales.
This blog post aims to outline why we think the best course of action for businesses is to outsource their SEO to agencies and SEO experts.
SEO Will Improve Your Website
SEO will help your website rank higher in search engine listings, which will result in more traffic and ultimately sales. It's as simple as that!
One thing most business owners don't realise when they are having a website built, is that it will not rank on Google straight away, or ever for that matter, unless it is optimised for SEO.
What does this mean for your business? Well it means your potential customers will never find your website, and will visit your competitors sites (if they are investing in SEO) instead. The only way they will be able to visit your beautiful new website, is if they type in your exact URL into the search bar in Google. But of course, the only people who will do this are people who knew your business existed in the first place, and have that URL address. This means your initial investment into the website goes to waste as it is not working for you, turning visitors into customers, and more importantly it is not attracting new visitors everyday. The only way around this issue is to invest in SEO.
How does SEO Improve your Website?
In simple terms SEO makes your website more attractive to potential customers and easy to understand for search engines like Google. It fills in the cracks overlooked by website developers (no offense intended website developers!) and essentially maintains your digital investment.
Think of an SEO agency as the property management company that steps in after the builder has finished with a development. Maintenance and general upkeep of the property, as well as attracting customers, investors and tenants is their responsibility.
If you want to learn more about what SEO is and the work an SEO expert will do, have a read of our blog post "What is SEO And How Does It Work For Businesses".
SEO Is An Ever Evolving Industry
The world of SEO is constantly changing. Google and Bing for example, constantly roll out new updates, and frequently these updates change the requirements and criteria for websites to rank for certain keywords. It might mean websites which last month were on page one of Google, are now this month on page four and the business owners haven't a clue why. SEO strategies that worked last month may not be effective today.
SEO experts and agencies stay on top of these search engine updates, reading up on the latest industry news and forums and researching the potential impact of the search engine algorithm updates. They also monitor your websites performance so that if there is a change in rankings, they can get to work on making adjustments to combat any ranking slide which might have occured.
SEO Technology & Software is Expensive
It is also worth pointing out how expensive the best tools in the industry are. Yes there are some cheaper ones available to small businesses and website owners, but you get what you pay for! SEO experts will invest in the best technology to do their work, transferring the benefit to your business without you incurring the massive monthly cost of these software platforms.
Focus On What You Do Best
For many small business owners and entrepreneurs, time is their greatest asset and concern. Running a business is time consuming, requires dedication to the project and generally has the business owner fire fighting and attempting to cut costs by trying to do the work of many. Hiring an SEO expert frees up your time to focus on your skill set.
SEO is a very important industry and discipline within digital marketing, and is a dedicated profession. To do it right, you would need to spend considerable time focusing on learning the ins and outs of the industry, from best practices and technical know-how to constant updates and copywriting skills. It is not something you can do once and forget about either. It must be worked on and maintained on an ongoing basis.
At Solid Consulting we highly recommend taking a step back to survey your business and find out where your skills as the owner are needed most. Then if possible, delegate the rest of the tasks and projects to someone else. This could be freelancers, employees or partner businesses, but the important point here is attempting to lighten your load as the owner, and giving the important tasks to professionals in each skill or profession to complete. Your business will benefit from this effort.
Our blog post entitled "Successful Business Owners Don't Do It Alone" covers this topic in detail.
Outsourcing Your SEO Saves You Time
As mentioned already, hiring an SEO expert can save you time. One of the reasons for this is that an SEO campaign usually lasts for a minimum of 6 months, and in most cases a year. The reason for this is that the fruits of your SEO labour will not show for at least 6 months. The time actually varies depending on the industry, the competition and the keywords you are targeting, but 6 months is a ballpark industry norm.
Now on top of this time frame, an SEO strategy will usually map out the tasks to be done in order, over a number of months, usually a year for maximum results. But this does not mean after a year you are done and your SEO work has finished! In today's ever evolving online marketplace, SEO needs to be maintained on an ongoing basis, or your results will start to decline.
It's not unlike the effort you might put in at the gym. You might work out 3 times a week for a year and get fantastic results, but then you get injured and you stop for a few months. Low and behold your fitness has declined and you have to work harder to get to where you were a few months ago.
SEO is the same. Stop for a period of time and your competitors who haven't stopped start to creep past you in the Google rankings.
Generate More Sales, And Boost Brand Awareness
I think at this point everyone realises how SEO can benefit your business, but it’s worth reinforcing the main point of hiring an SEO expert. SEO will get you more sales, drive revenue and increase your brand awareness. And that is a very strong reason why businesses need to invest in their own SEO strategy.
According to BrightEdge, “Fifty-three percent of traffic to websites comes from organic search. Organic search delivers the most traffic to websites by a wide margin.”
And further research from Sistrix tells us that: “The average clickrate for the first position in Google is 28.5%”. Position two on the first page on Google gets an average of 15.7% and third place gets an average of 11%.
These percentages highlight the amount of people who click on the first, second and third positions in Google, and you can imagine how the percentages drop off after that.
So the key takeaway here should be that an SEO strategy is needed for your business to target and compete for its share of this traffic. The result will be organic traffic, sales and new customers.
Brand Awareness
The second key point here is that as a result of your SEO strategy, your brand will be put in front of more eyes. So combined with your social media strategy, your SEO work will help to develop your brand, encourage repeat customers, and create some brand loyalty in your marketplace.
Your Next Steps
SEO is too important to ignore. In today’s ever changing and evolving digital marketplace, small businesses need to invest in their future and the future of business. SEO is a key piece of modern business strategy, and one that cannot be overlooked by businesses of any size . SEO agencies and experts will help you develop a digital strategy which will meet your business needs today and in the future.
If you would like to talk to someone about putting together an SEO plan for your business, get in contact with us at Solid Consulting. We would love to learn more about you and your business, and explore your options to improve your digital presence.
