Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is a term that refers to strategies you use on your business website to improve its rankings in the search engines.
Monitoring and improving on SEO can help small businesses reap many rewards, including:
- Improving brand awareness
- Attracting more customers
- Staying ahead of the competition
- Longevity
- Excellent returns on investment
Keep reading to learn more details about how SEO can help you create a strong web presence, so you can outpace your competition.
Definition of SEO for Small Business?
Google loves serving up great content to its users. You can have a site loaded with content, and it will help, but it won’t be enough to get the rankings your website deserves.
Your business has a target market that it caters to. When your prospective customers jump on Google and start typing in search phrases related to your industry, Google strives to serve them the best result that is most likely to solve their problem or answer their query.
By incorporating SEO principles you’re able to target search phrases and keywords that people are typing into Google’s search engine.
When your content and SEO is stronger than your competitors, you will win in the SEO stakes, get more customers, and grow your business.
1. Developing Brand Awareness
Increasing brand awareness is all about getting seen more often. When your site regularly appears in the search engines, people start to recognise and remember your brand.
Being seen also helps to establish trust for your business.
Why?
Because people have an inherent trust in Google, which flows on to the websites Google chooses to display in the search results.
If Google trusts a business enough to recommend it in the search results, it must be worth further research.
If people are using a particular phrase to find a business and your site has stronger SEO for small business than your competitors, your website will outrank them and increase your brand presence.
SEO for small business has become a critical part of branding, and not appearing in the search results can hurt your profit margins.
2. Attract More Customers
No doubt you created your website to attract more customers and remain competitive. A website that doesn’t get any traffic is a liability rather than an asset, but SEO for small business can help you realize a healthy return on your investment.
Small businesses that invest in SEO for their website attract more customers from the search engines and accelerate their business growth over the competition. SEO can also reduce your reliance on paid campaigns for sending traffic to your website.
In terms of affordability, SEO for small business is still one of the most effective marketing strategies in 2021. People who actively search for your service or product and arrive at your site through a search engine link are typically further along the sales process than someone who stumbles across a paid advertisement.
3. Outpace the Competition
Two local organisations selling similar products at evenly matched price points both have websites. Which one will win the bulk of the customers?
The company which has been working on its SEO for small business will achieve higher search positions and get all the clicks. The first page of the results gets the bulk of the clicks, but the top 3 are where most of the action comes from.
Very few of your potential customers will bother going to the second or third page of Google. If you relied on customers arriving from second-page results, you would go out of business very quickly.
Getting onto the first page of Google’s search results will keep your business streets ahead of the competition. If your competitors are investing in SEO, then it’s even more critical you do the same, or your business is the one that will be left behind.
A unique selling proposition will help keep you competitive. Even so, your site still needs to get found ahead of your competitors; otherwise, your USP will go unheard.
4. SEO Delivers Long-Lasting Results
Consider a paid marketing campaign. The advantage is you get almost instant traffic to your site, but it only lasts as long as you continue to fund the campaign.
On the other hand, SEO for small business can take months to get results, but when it does, the traffic will keep flowing as long as you maintain the same rankings.
It’s not unheard of for a well-designed website using sound SEO principles to keep attracting traffic for the targeted search terms for years and even decades.
When you have one page of your website ranking, you can start working on your other content to attract traffic through even more keywords. The page you previously ranked will continue to bring in traffic, and as you continue to rank pages and posts, you will add to your previous levels of traffic.
In this way, your SEO efforts will create long-lasting results with visitors arriving from the search engines week in week out. You can even take a break from SEO and content creation and still reap the rewards from your previous efforts for some time.
5. SEO Provides an Excellent ROI
Developing a website can cost hundreds, even thousands of dollars. Still, without working on your SEO, a website will struggle to create a satisfactory return on your investment.
It’s not a “build it, and they will come” scenario. You need to cast your net out to make your website work, and you do that with SEO for small business.
When you start achieving rankings with SEO, your website becomes a valuable asset that can return your initial investment many times over.
You may have to put money into SEO in the early stages, but each stage builds on itself, and you will soon find the cost of SEO to be much less than what it is returning.
Summing It Up
Search Engine Optimisation is a complex strategy requiring planning and investment in money, time or both. Unfortunately, SEO is not a set it and forget it marketing strategy. It requires consistent publishing schedules and promotion.
You will not achieve instant success with SEO, but if you invest regularly, your continued efforts will reward you with exciting growth opportunities for your business and your brand.
Yes, there may be a lot to learn with SEO, but the stakes are high if you don’t. You can grow your SEO knowledge online through the New Zealand Institute of Education (NZIE).
Attend online classes that suit your schedule and grow your SEO expertise by learning from industry professionals. In a few short weeks you will be able to develop a customised seo strategy to improve your rankings. In addition to this you can implement your strategy simultaneously while learning, with expert guidance!
