How SEO Can Help Small Businesses
Small businesses are figuring out how to survive—and thrive—as the country continues to face economic challenges. Advertising Week states that US small businesses feel a heightened need to invest in certain areas for growth in anticipation of future economic obstacles in the country. As a result, it’s not surprising that about 47% of small businesses are prioritizing their digital marketing by increasing their digital marketing spending and expanding their marketing efforts to different online platforms.
So if you’re also planning to expand your digital marketing efforts, you should start by prioritizing your SEO strategy. Thanks to a competitive SEO strategy, your small business will experience the following benefits:
Helps in boosting your website’s traffic
One of the first marketing tasks that small businesses should do is to boost their website’s traffic. Getting more people to view your business’s website is important because it allows them to learn more about your small business and what it offers.
In fact, our article entitled ‘5 Things Marketers Should Master in Coding and Web Development’ emphasizes that small businesses can easily track the success of their marketing campaigns through analytical tools like Google Analytics. You can even create reports and dashboards for SEO analytics to assess which marketing campaigns lead people to your website. Through this assessment, you can identify which SEO strategies can help boost your website's traffic.
Increases your local consumer base
Your small business will survive and thrive when it’s well-known among local consumers. As such, it’s crucial to use local SEO strategies to specifically target consumers within your area.
Entrepreneur highlights that about 50% of all Google searches are made by consumers looking for local products and services, which is why you need to focus your efforts on local SEO strategies. To start, you need to optimize the location information on your small business’s website and Google listings so that your business can be featured based on the location indicated in a customer’s search or their IP address. You must also provide clear and complete information on your website and business profile to help Google match your business with several online search queries from local consumers.
Allows you to get ahead of your competition
You may find it hard to attract customers to your website, especially if competing against a business offering similar products or services. While this may sound disadvantageous, you can actually leverage a more established competitor’s visibility for your business’s benefit through the right SEO strategies.
Competitor bidding is an SEO strategy that can help your small business in this case. Ayima explains that Google AdWords competition allows you to bid for your competitor’s brand keywords, so that your small business’s name would show up whenever people search for your competitor’s business. However, you must take advantage of brand keywords with good search volumes and conversion rates to ensure that your small business will gain visibility and potential sales from this strategy.
Builds the reputation of your business
Small businesses still don’t have an established reputation among consumers. So if you want to expand your customer base, then you need to provide a good experience to your existing customers.
One way to do this is by responding to customer reviews. While your responses to customer reviews tell customers that you care about their thoughts, CIO Women Magazine explains that replies to Google reviews can also increase your ranking on the search engine’s algorithm. That's because Google will match your replies to reviews with queries about products and services relevant to your area. As such, you must write diplomatic responses in reviews to maintain your reputation.
Your small business deserves to be recognized in the local and international markets. As such, it's important to use these SEO strategies to attract potential consumers looking for your products and services.
Written by Regina James; regina.james.writes@gmail.com
Image credits: Pexels
