5 Reasons Why SEO Is Important For Small Businesses
24 September 2021
Search Engine Optimisation can seem daunting to those first hearing about it. For small businesses, it can seem impossible to gain traction on search engines. But today we’re going to show you 5 reasons that SEO is vital for any size business. There are even some ways in which small businesses actually have an advantage when it comes to SEO.
- SEO Is A Cost-Effective, Long-Term Marketing Strategy
While other marketing methods like PPC ads campaigns have their place and are extremely effective at driving traffic to a website in the short term, SEO campaigns have a longer-term impact. With PPC, you have to pay for every click you receive, but the SEO improvements you make today, whether you do them yourself or hire a professional SEO services provider like Carden Digital to do so, will continue to benefit your business for years to come. While the specifics of Google’s algorithm change regularly, the fundamentals of well written content, well designed pages, legible layouts, and easily navigable websites will always give you an advantage. Implementing SEO on your website allows you to target a specific, highly engaged audience.
- Small Businesses Actually Have An Advantage In Local Search
According to Google themselves, over half of the searches on their platform are local. This could be a search like “hairdressers near me” or “best restaurant in Brighton” etc.
Why does this matter for small businesses? Well, in an effort to better serve its users, Google has begun giving additional results for local searches based on the proximity and relevance of a business to a user’s search.
So, if your business is near when a user performs a search (particularly on mobile) there is a higher chance of it appearing on the first page of Google. For this reason, performing some basic local SEO optimisation can give your business a massive advantage. Google will normally display at least three different local businesses in the “Map Pack” at the top of a search with local intent. A well optimised Google My Business profile with some good customer reviews can help your business to stand out from the competition. We have an in-depth blog about local SEO strategies you can read here.
- The Results Of SEO Are Measurable
When you have a limited budget, you want to make sure that every penny you spend is seeing a return on your investment. Traditional marketing methods such as magazine adverts, radio spots, or posters in shop windows, have no easy method of tracking their effectiveness. Many businesses try to address this by offering a promo code on the advert such as “20% off your first order” – however, this relies on the customer remembering to use that code, and even when they you do, you’re already taking a cut on your profits.
In contrast, SEO campaigns (and PPC campaigns) are very easy to measure. Due to a time lag in Google crawling and cataloguing website changes, SEO improvements can take a few weeks to start showing their effects, but once they do, you’ll be able to see measurable changes in both your site’s search rankings, and its traffic. If you have a functioning, well designed website, more traffic will result in more sales, signups, and leads.
As part of Carden Digital’s SEO services we provide detailed monthly reports on the work we have completed and the resulting effect on your search rankings and traffic.
- SEO Optimised Sites Are Appealing To Customers And Not Just To Google
A lot of the talk around SEO is focussed on what Google wants and how Google’s algorithm judges your site. It can be easy to forget that the main target of all your marketing efforts is your future customers. Fortunately, what Google is looking for is also what will appeal to your website’s users. Namely, well written, informative content, on an easy to navigate website layout, with pages that load quickly.
The process of improving your search ranking and domain authority will also result in a website which is more appealing to your target market. - Your Competitors Are Probably Already Using SEO
If you are in a crowded market niche, many of your competitors are probably already implementing SEO strategies, either by themselves or with the help of a professional SEO marketing firm.
Imagine a search engine is presented with two websites that may be relevant to a user’s search. One of the websites has been optimised, whereas the other has not. All things being equal, which website is more likely to win the search ranking?
If your competitors aren’t using SEO services, now is your chance to gain a serious advantage over them. Even if you currently rank #1 for your target search keywords, if your competitors are already using SEO services, your website could soon be left behind. It will lose ranking to better optimised rivals, and eventually it could even drop off the 1st page of Google search results entirely.
We hope this has given you an effective overview of the benefits of SEO services for small businesses. If you’re interested in learning more about SEO, we have a series of blogs on the subject, or you can speak to our SEO team directly. We’ve helped businesses both big and small to increase their search rankings, gain more website traffic, and convert their website users into paying customers.
