Do Small Businesses Need SEO?

Ask yourself, as a small business owner, would you like to continue paying for leads or having your Sales team spend time sourcing their own? Or is your hope that one day all your leads will be coming to you directly through your website so your Sales team can focus on closing? If you hope that one-day leads will come to you directly through your website, you need SEO.

What is SEO?

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is what increases the likelihood of consumers finding your website through search engines such as Google, Bing, or even social media.

For example, let’s say you own a pizza restaurant in New York City. With the right SEO strategy, you can optimize the content on your website so that when someone searches on Google for “pizza restaurants in New York City,” your website is the first to come up.

With the assistance of search engines, nearly 80% of consumers look for services and products online. This means if your business does not have an online presence you are missing out on tons of web traffic.

We’ve known for years that having a website and being active online is important and it is the future of business. Being online, however, is simply not enough. You can have the best website in the world, with the most valuable information for consumers, but what good is that website if.no one sees it?

Too many times we see businesses create a website and wait for leads to come in. Unfortunately, it does not work this way. This is because the majority of internet users do not scroll past the first page of search results. That’s where SEO comes in.

When combined with other marketing strategies such as blogging or social media, it is a powerful marketing tool that can boost brand awareness and contribute to the success of your business.

Let’s take a look at several reasons why small businesses need SEO.

To Attract New Clients

There are many strategies out there that will help to build strong relationships with current customers. SEO is a marketing strategy that you need to attract new clients. SEO is what will allow your website to be found by a broad customer base. With a solid strategy and a few simple SEO tricks, you can boost your rankings on search engines which ultimately turn into more customers, leads, and sales as website traffic increases.

Cost-Effective

SEO has one of the highest returns on investment rates out there if it is done the right way because SEO constantly delivers results. SEO is not just affordable but depending on the needs of your small business, it can be customized in a way that fits into your budget.

It’s also important to note that SEO is a long-term marketing strategy. While you might see a slight increase in website traffic at first, it might take some time to see the full effectiveness of your SEO strategy. In terms of a long-term investment, SEO will definitely pay off.

Boost Brand Awareness

Why do you think that internet users don’t typically scroll past the first page of search results? It’s because they trust buying something from a recognized brand name, such as those brands that come up on the first page of search results.

Connect With Your Target Audience

Wouldn’t you love to get inside your customer’s heads to find out what type of content they want? Well, SEO does exactly that with keyword research. SEO specialists conduct an intensive keyword analysis to determine what keywords consumers are searching for the most. Once you know the keywords your target audience is searching for, you can create content that includes these keywords so you can better connect with your target audience.

Attracting Customers to Your Local Business

More and more people are using smartphones to search compared to desktops. When people go out to eat or need a local business, the first thing they do nowadays turns to their smartphone to search. As a small business, you want to be one of the first websites they see when their search results come up. With SEO, your local business can attract more consumers who might be searching for you via smartphone.

Allows You To Compete With The Corporate Brands

Many times, we see small business owners discouraged because they seem to believe that the larger businesses always outperform smaller ones when it comes to online search. It actually turns out that it is becoming increasingly more common for smaller businesses to rank her than their larger competitors because of their SEO efforts.

If you ignore SEO and continue to run your business without it, then yes, your website will never outperform the larger companies. The good news is, with SEO, it’s fair game. If you have a strong, consistent organic SEO strategy, you can certainly rank for that number one position on search engines.

Why Not Use Paid Search?

As a business with an organic SEO strategy, it might seem frustrating to see a business pay for a spot on search engine rankings, but we’re here to tell you, the paid search does not work nearly as well as organic SEO. Technically speaking, paid search works because it earns you that spot on search engine rankings but when it comes to getting users to click to your site, they scroll right past you. Most consumers can tell apart the websites that paid for their ranking versus the ones that organically ranked. For those businesses who paid for their rankings, there’s no trust between that brand and its consumers. Not only does pay search break trust between brands and consumers, but this is short-term. Once the paid ad is up, you fall right back to where you were on the rankings.  Organic SEO might take a bit more time, but it is more effective as it builds trust and will allow you to hold your position on search engine rankings.

Joseph Studios: Providing Your Small Business With SEO

To answer the question…Yes, small businesses need to hire SEO experts now more than ever. Here at Joseph Studios, our SEO specialists know what it takes to connect with your target audience and earn you those high rankings on search engines. We will optimize your content so when consumers search for a particular keyword, your website is the first to come up. As a result, you will see an increase in website traffic and ultimately an increase in sales.

Ready to earn that number one spot on search engine rankings? Contact our team and let’s get started!