This SEO Services for Small Business page caught your eye. You’re skeptical because you’ve made it this far without SEO. You’ve probably been inundated with junk mail from SEO solicitations from all over the globe, as we all have been. Many hucksters have given SEO a bad name and that is unfortunate.
Search Engine Optimization, the real deal, is widely accepted as a necessary component of a successful business. There’s no doubt anymore that all business’ need SEO.
Why is SEO so important?
Here are 8 killer benefits to be gained from a strong SEO campaign:
Top 8 Killer Benefits From SEO
1. Organic Search is the primary source of website traffic
Organic search is a huge part of most business’s website performance, as well as a critical component of the buyer funnel and ultimately getting users to complete a conversion or engagement. Organic search is most often the primary source of website traffic.
2. Catch Customers Early
When potential customers or clients use search, they’re often in the process of making a purchase decision. They’re in a discovery phase, learning, and assessing choices. This is the perfect time you to get in front of your potential customers.
They may be searching for the same product or service you provide, but you’ll be invisible to them if you haven’t done your SEO.
A good SEO campaign ensures that your audience will be able to find you when searching for your product or service. The reason your competitors put in the effort to display on the 1st page of google is due to the fact that only 8% of search traffic makes it past the first page of Google Search Engine Results.
That’s a lot of motivation to get on that 1st page for your product or service!
3. Grow Website Traffic
The purpose of SEO is to build authority so your site will be seen in the top 10 results, then your call-to-action will attract a click, which leads to a sale.
Your website is your 24/7 sales expert which is constantly working to deliver paying customers into your funnel.
Importance of Web Traffic
- Visibility provides traffic
- Traffic provides leads
- Leads provide sales
SEO is essential for any and all small businesses.
Optimizing your digital properties for a specific vicinity, so people can find your business quickly, puts them one step closer to a transaction.
Local optimizations focus on specific towns, cities, regions, and even states, to establish a viable medium for a brand’s messaging.
SEO pros optimize the brand’s website and content, including local citations, Knowledge Graph panel, Google My Business listing, social media profiles, and reviews.
4. Build Brand Identity
Steady exposure builds brand identity which entices people to buy from you. Consumers love a good honest story.
It takes a lot of hard work to refine your brand’s unique style in social channels, and create effective content copy that will inspire your audience to purchase and evangelize. SEO is the glue that keeps it together and brings it to the public.
SEO ensures the world is able to actually discover and enjoy that brand identity you’ve been working hard to build. SEO is the megaphone that get’s your story heard above the crowd.
Being highly visible as a trusted resource by Google will rocket your brand to success.
5. Invest in Your Business
Upon hearing that SEO is expensive, some business owners procrastinate.
However, SEO is truly an investment in the future of your business.
A strong SEO campaign provides compelling ROI and makes a huge difference in the bottom line.
SEO often delivers higher conversion rates than any other form of advertising because traffic from organic search results is more targeted.
SEO targets visibility with people that are looking for a business like yours.
6. Build Trust & Credibility
When we glance at the search results pages, we make immediate assumptions based on what we see first. You want your business there ….. upfront.
Establishing authority will do more for a brand than most other digital optimizations.
Establishing a brand as an authority takes patience, commitment, and a quality product or service.
There are a number of areas that SEO can improve trust factors and grow a small business’s CTR.
7. Improve Conversion Rates
A big part of any SEO strategy involves optimizing your website.
These site improvements not only positively impact your search engine rankings, they also improve conversion rates as well.
Site speed
It’s a known fact that fast load times improve conversions.
Site Architecture
An improved site layout means a more user-friendly experience. A user-friendly, clean interface is key to a lower bounce-rate which helps Google understand the relevance of your pages.
Calls-To-Action
When was the last time you optimized your CTA’s and tested their effectiveness? Do you know if your pages have a CTA above the fold?
An effective CTA is critical to getting conversions.
The modern consumer has very limited patience, and a short attention span. Confusing them with a complicated sign-up process is a surefire way to lose a lead.
A/B Testing call-to-actions will show you exactly what gets people to convert on your website and further improve sales.
8. Beat Your Competitors
You can count on the fact that your successful competitors are doing SEO. Take a close look at search engine results and you can see what the top results competitors are doing to reach their SEO objective. Higher organic rankings makes a huge difference.
How To Hire a Professional SEO
Get corroboration for recommendations.
Ohye’s “strongest advice” is to request that SEOs support their recommendations with a documented statement from Google. Ask to see an article, video or Googler response that includes the issue that needs to be improved and the approach being prescribed.
Oh, and never buy links for ranking purposes. Ever.
If your site has some “technical debt” (not being mobile friendly, or having an antiquated CMS, for example), you may need to invest in improving your infrastructure as part of your SEO project.
In a majority of cases, doing what’s good for SEO is also doing what’s good for your online customers.
Step 1: Conduct a two-way interview
We can’t agree more that you want to find a consultant who’s sincerely interested in you, your business, your customers and your goals. After all, you want someone who feels like an extension of your team.
Ohye advises that if the person doesn’t show interest by asking exploratory questions (check the video for a suggested list), then don’t do business with them.
Step 2: Check references
Talk to past clients about their experience. Ask them how effectively the SEO worked with their various staff and vendors, and what kind of guidance he or she provided.
You want to hire someone who will help educate you, not just implement short-term solutions.
A good SEO should be someone you can work with, learn from, experiment with, and who genuinely cares about you and your business. –Maile Ohye
Step 3. Request an audit
For small business audits, Ohye suggests asking for “a prioritized list of what they think should be improved for SEO.”
For large business audits, she suggests doing this with multiple SEO consulting candidates. Then, compare their audits.
You’ll need to give the SEO restricted-view access to your Google Search Console and Google Analytics accounts (not full or write access) so they’ll have the data needed to perform the audit. You should also let the consultant talk with your developers to understand any technical constraints.
Right up front, Ohye notes that you’ll probably have to pay for the audit. We agree.
This level of custom technical and search auditing requires a considerable amount of time spent by a trained, experienced SEO analyst. If a prospective consultant is offering you a “free audit,” more than likely he or she plans to just run your site through a tool to produce an automated report.
A good SEO will try to prioritize what ideas can bring your business the most improvement for the least investment, and what improvements may take more time, but help growth in the long term. –Maile Ohye
Step 4. Decide if you want to hire
When you’re ready to engage an SEO consultant, make sure your whole organization is on board. Without internal cooperation, you may not see any search improvements at all, no matter whom you hire.
One of the biggest holdups to improving a website isn’t [the SEO’s] recommendation, but it’s the business making time to implement their ideas. –Maile Ohye
Huge Advantage To Hiring SEO/Web Designer – Both in-one
Typically an SEO analyzes, reviews and implements changes to websites so they are optimized for search engines. This means maximizing the traffic to a site by improving page rank within search engines. However, often SEO’s don’t have coding skills and can’t implement many of the needed changes.
Therefore, it is a huge advantage to find an SEO professional who has the coding skills necessary to implement the needed changes, as well as the analysis skills to identify needed changes..
Need More SEO Info Before You Decide?
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“I’ve been working with Mark on a web project for a mutual client since April 2018. A new site had been designed, but had suffered an organic page ranking blow after re-launching. Mark was brought in to get the SEO rolling again. He has been very responsive and a pleasure to work with. The SEO implementations that he has put into place are working very well and our client has been very happy with the results!”