Small Business SEO – Why it Matters

Running a small business is hard enough. Running a small business with no online presence or solid SEO tactics? Nearly impossible. Search engine visibility is essential for any small or local business looking to maintain success. Executing paid advertisements is excellent for immediate visibility and targeted traffic to your website, but focusing on long-term, organic visibility is the best way to achieve SEO growth.

Why SEO Matters for Small Businesses

Search engine optimization (SEO) can help your business achieve the top spot in search results by utilizing the power of strategy. Reaching the first page of search results may feel unattainable to small businesses, but it most certainly is not. With the proper SEO tactics paired with some time, effort, and patience, brand awareness and online recognition can increase dramatically and a host of other benefits.

Some of the most important reasons for a small business to invest in SEO tactics include:

• Increases traffic from search engine users to your website.
• Builds trust with potential customers through stronger brand recognition.
• Maximizes pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns through shared insights and keyword data.
• Promotes positive user experience and increases convenience by making results easier to find.
• Improves website usability by optimizing its content and boosting relevant information.
• Helps build up engagement and conversion rate by driving more potential customers to your site.
• Increases lead generation by steering information seekers to your site.
• Produces long-lasting results by making your small business more visible online.
• Gives your business a competitive advantage by potentially ranking you above competitors in search results.
• Cost-effective by targeting those who are actively looking for your products and services.

Online marketing is continuing to expand and, with it, the competitive landscape. This makes small business SEO more important than ever. Another reason proper SEO tactics and growth matter to a small business is its return on investment. It is a set of efforts to improve your website’s ranking and visibility online over time. Suppose you aren’t confident in your small business’s abilities to consistently produce relevant content, accurately place keywords into metadata, or make other technical adjustments to your website. In that case, an SEO professional is most likely your best option. If you elect to hire a professional or even a team of professionals, the benefits of proper SEO far outweigh the initial costs.

SEO for Growth

There are many factors to consider when growing your small business through SEO. It may seem overwhelming at times, but it’s best to understand the basics first. The most fundamental aspects of small business SEO include:

Conducting keyword research

Researching keywords involves reviewing data and determining what buzzwords your potential customers are searching for online. These are the terms you’ll want to emphasize with your SEO efforts. Develop a list of basic keyword ideas (terms relevant to your business or industry) to determine keywords.

Creating high-quality content

The next step is creating content that includes those predetermined keywords. You must devote the proper time and effort to make sure your content is high-quality so that it is of interest to both search engines and users. Your content should offer something of value to your readers, providing them with all the information they need and is easily digestible.

Earning backlinks to your site

A backlink is a link from another website to yours. The quantity and quality of backlinks a page has is another essential ranking factor for small business SEO. The more links from well-known websites your content has, the more Google considers your website authoritative and improves your rankings.

Improving technical SEO

Technical SEO focuses on the backend of your website. This area of SEO isn’t readily visible to users, but it is a crucial part of the process. Ensuring search engines can crawl and index your pages is one aspect of technical SEO.

Tracking SEO results

When you gather data about your results, you can evaluate that data and use what you learn to improve your SEO tactics and performance. Before launching a small business SEO strategy, determine what metrics you should track and how.

Red Crow SEO

Small business SEO is no minor task. It is not as simple as clicking a button or setting up a website. It requires time and commitment – sometimes more than you have available. Your website should be optimized and promoted at all times, and Red Crow Marketing can help with that. Let our team of online marketing experts help your small business achieve higher search engine rankings and improve your overall success.