Where do consumers turn when they need to find a product or service? A majority of shoppers look online — or, more accurately, to Google. In one survey, 56% of consumers relied on Google and other search engines when making purchase decisions.
Achieving high rankings and driving organic traffic requires spending time on search engine optimization. SEO for a small business is a critical element of your marketing toolkit.
What Is SEO?
Search engine optimization is the techniques that help your website rank closer to the top of the results page. It’s all about improving your visibility, which can turn into leads and sales.
What Strategic SEO Can Do for Your Business
Effective SEO for a small business takes time. However, as you work on developing appealing, valuable, and high-quality content and implementing SEO best practices into your site, you’ll begin to see results like these.
Attract Customers
The ultimate goal of any SEO marketing strategy is attracting more customers. Performing keyword research to determine what your customers search for and using those terms effectively on your site can help drive organic traffic.
When someone performs an online search, Google displays a list of sites with the most relevant, trustworthy, and accessible answers to that query. Investing in SEO is a critical element of ranking in the top search results and driving customers to your site.
Increase Brand Awareness
A small business website that consistently ranks number one on the search results page can help increase your brand awareness. This goes beyond just recognizing your company name, though. Highly ranked sites draw more clicks and brand recognition.
Establish Authority
Implementing strategic SEO can help establish your business as an authority in your industry. The fact is that users typically consider the top search results to be the most credible and trustworthy.
Search engines also look for authority: It’s not enough to use the right keywords, but to use them in content that demonstrates your expertise and provides value to visitors. When you do, your content will rank higher and drive more traffic.
Generate Cost-Effective Leads
When you run a promotion or pay-per-click advertising campaign, you’ll likely see a temporary bump in traffic. As soon as the campaign ends, the traffic decreases.
SEO is sustainable and ongoing. It can bring in more customers over time, and considering that most click-throughs are more likely to come from organic traffic than paid links and more sales come from SEO leads than ads, investing in SEO is a cost-effective marketing strategy.
Improve Website Usability
SEO for a small business is about more than keyword research. Google assesses other elements of your site when determining your results rank, including the site structure and navigation, responsiveness, and overall user experience. Giving customers a great experience and valuable information will drive more leads and conversions.
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