Understanding Small Business SEO & What It Means For Your Small Business

on Ecommerce • June 07th, 2023

Small Business SEO is in reference to Search Engine Optimization that is strategized around earning targeted, local organic traffic to the website and local listings of small businesses.

Organic SEO services consists of a set of practices that help your website gain more visibility on search engine results pages. On the surface, the services an SEO agency provides may look simple, but it is much more than what meets the eye. In order for you to have a successful small business SEO strategy, you need to focus on multiple factors that go beyond typical, bottom-of-the-shelf optimizations for search engine phrases used by people.

Knowing how search engines operate and what they want from your website will help you get the most out of SEO. You need to have knowledge of how your target audience uses search engines like Google, and also the common things they regularly search for when looking for the type of product or service you provide.

Keep in mind that the idea is to not only make your website relevant to the interests of search engines but also to your target audience using them. You will be able to see for yourself that getting real small business SEO is worth it and helps your business once your website is ranking on the first page of Google for your target keyword.

Even though having a considerable amount of content on your website is good for SEO, it is still not enough. You also need to make sure that your website is well structured, especially from the development point of view. It also needs to have targeted and relevant content. Search engines such as Google like to focus on the quality of the content as well as the overall structure of your website when it comes to ranking one website above another.

Remember that small business SEO services are not a one-time thing but rather an ongoing process. All the major search engines are constantly upgrading and refining the way that they rank websites. This means that you need to keep up with the regular updates because only then will SEO help you bring in more business in the long run. Since the ultimate goal for any search engine is to give users the most relevant results, you cannot ignore it, whether your business is big or small.

Go Deeper: More Resources on small business SEO:

Understanding Small Business SEO & What It Means For Your Business

In the world that we live in today, every business – regardless of the type or size – needs some kind of internet exposure. If your business fails to catch up, then it is bound to be left behind.

However, from taking calls from your customers, filling orders, and dealing with other activities related to your business, there are still many moving parts of a business that you need to manage, even if your business is small. Amidst all this, taking a start on promoting your business online or focusing on digital marketing can take a backseat.

Other than that, you will face a plethora of options when it comes to marketing as you move forward. For this reason, things get a little confusing in regards to what you should or can do to tap into the vast power of digital marketing.

Using SEO is one simple step you can take to start enhancing your digital marketing journey. Despite there being multiple ways of promoting your business online, nothing comes close to the power of SEO. When applied effectively, search engine optimization will fetch you a high ROI.

How Small Business SEO Services Can Help You

The following are ways that small business SEO can help you in the long run:

  • It can help your brand gain higher visibility
  • It allows you to drive targeted, organic search traffic that is relevant to your industry
  • It makes it easy for your website to attract people that will convert into clients.

At present, many businesses still have a misconception about SEO, saying that it doesn’t compare well with the most basic form of marketing, word of mouth. What such companies fail to understand is that SEO is the word of mouth of the internet era, creating a whole new way of gaining more referrals for your business at a lesser cost. Traditional word of mouth marketing is not as scalable as SEO and is in fact much less powerful.

Businesses that are determined to grow are taking SEO very seriously – long gone are the days when search engine optimization was only an option.

Search engine optimization has become an integral part of an effective digital marketing strategy. Don’t ignore the kind of potential that it can create for your business.

Stats on Small Business SEO

  • 57% of business-to-business marketers believe that SEO is the top leads generator when compared to the rest of the marketing methods
  • 64% of internet users depend on search engines to decide whether or not they will buy something
  • 81% of people use search engines to do their homework before they commit to any big purchase
  • 90% of overall traffic on the web is generated by search engines

Having a well-designed website only makes up for one part of the equation. The other part is to ensure that your website is structured in the right way and has relevant and high-quality content. This content should not only be appealing to the users but also to search engine “spiders”. It is only by working on improving the structure and content of your website that you will be able to see the impact on the growth of your business in terms of sales and leads.

Exactly How Can Small Business SEO Help You?

Your business has a target market that it is catering to, and you can reach out to your target audience through search engines if you create and publish relevant content on a regular basis. If your content is worth it, search engines such as Bing and Google will not hesitate to rank you higher. This goes a long way in helping you to generate targeted traffic to your website at no extra cost.

Every time people visit your website through Google, you will need to know how to engage with them. If you want to build trust with your visitors, your content needs to work in tandem with your business goals. Getting your visitors to take the next step in your buyers journey once they are at your website is important.

When using small business SEO services to generate targeted traffic, you also need to know why you want people to come to your website:

  • Once there, what kind of action do you want your visitors to take?
  • Do you want them to hit the buy button and purchase your service or product?
  • Do you want them to fill out your contact form or a quote from?
  • Do you want them to opt-in to your email list?

You are using small business SEO to get more business to your site. However, you need to know that this will only happen once have utmost clarity on how you are going to convert the SEO traffic you generate. If this is not the case, then why bother investing your money and precious time into SEO?

Always keep in mind that the people visiting your website are only valuable for your business when they are interacting with your content in the way that you want them to. If you don’t get a direct sale, you at least want them to give you their contact information so that you can follow up on them later and see if they would like to purchase your service or product. People visiting your site through search engines and then leaving and never coming back is the last thing you want.

It doesn’t take rocket science to grow your business using proper SEO help. With that said, let’s look into a few ways that SEO can help your business grow in terms of both revenue and generating traffic.

Boost Ability: Results in More Traffic

There is no doubt that you need to generate more exposure in regards to what you offer if you want to grow your business. Ideally, what this means is that you will have to focus on various marketing methods if you want to get more traffic on your website that can be converted into sales.

However, indulging in an old school, outbound marketing practices such as cold-calling as well as running ads can prove to be quite expensive, especially if or when you are just starting out your business. Therefore, your main objective should not only be to reach out to your target audience, but also to do it in a manner that is cost-effective. A lot of business today are relying on small business SEO to market their company, mainly because small business search engine optimization helps to attract quality inbound traffic.

The advantage that inbound traffic has is that it is targeted and grows over time as long as you put in consistent efforts or get ongoing SEO help from a reputable small business SEO agency. SEO can help you gather qualified leads without costing you an arm and a leg. This can make it easy for you to save money when it comes to outbound marketing activities, leaving you to focus on what works.

Earned Authority: Helps to Build Trust and Credibility

Even though establishing real authority can and will affect your business in a positive way, it will not always happen fast. Therefore, you and your brand will have to work on earning authority over a period of time. Luckily for you, an effective small business SEO strategy can help your brand build trust and credibility in the eyes of search engines, thus leading to more traffic.

In addition to this, there is a strong belief among search users that a credible business will always be found on the first page of Google. When your prospects see you ranking high for the right keywords, they will start to acknowledge that your business website has higher authority. In turn, this will result in more targeted visitors converting to sales.

Added Traffic: Results in More Customers

One of the best ways to differentiate yourself from the competition is by having a business website that is informative and well-structured. Remember, if no relevant person is able to find your website, then it will not be doing the job it was intended for, regardless of how professional it looks.

You need a consistent flow of potential consumers regardless of what stage your business is at in order to win more clients and get more sales. Your website is one of the best tools for doing this.

Can SEO help to get you more customers? The answer to this is a big “yes!” because people who are potentially interested in your service or product are at this very moment searching for them on Google and other search engines. The probability of this is even higher with the growth of smartphone usage.

When people are torn about purchasing a product or service, they typically do their research online. Therefore, if your website is optimized for the right keywords, you will find yourself in the right place at the right time for your buyer. In one way or another, SEO makes it simpler for people to make a buying decision. When this is done well, you will be able to bring your prospects closer to purchasing your service or product instead of them buying from your competition. Getting proper SEO help means that you will be better positioned to increase the chances of more visitors going through your buying cycle.

Keep in mind that every business needs customers and yours is no different. You will be able to double your chances of finding the right consumer by focusing on getting SEO help as compared to a business that does not. Remember that increasing your customer base goes beyond just getting more exposure. The reason why you need targeted exposure is so that the customers you get are qualified enough. Search engine optimization helps you with this by not only letting you attract the right kind of traffic but also allowing you to identify or focus on the channels that won’t necessarily waste your time.

However, keep in mind that SEO doesn’t happen overnight, but the results you get by applying it consistently will speak for themselves.

Investment Strategy: Offer You One of the Best ROI’s

It doesn’t matter if you compare small business SEO with offline advertising or other methods of digital marketing, at the end of the day it will help you achieve a high ROI at a much lower cost. There is a plethora of reason why SEO has one of the highest ROI’s, but the main reason is that it allows you to connect to the right people at the right times. Search engine optimization is an inbound marketing strategy that has been proven to work.

Since small business SEO is not an interruptive form of marketing, people don’t mind it because they hardly take notice of it. With SEO, you are not forced to read or watch an advertisement, so you don’t show up unless or until users are explicitly searching for a business like yours. Therefore, when you are doing SEO, you need to forget about hard-selling to your prospects because the last thing you want to focus on is pushing them to visit your site or try your service or product.

When users see your product pages ranking for the keywords they were looking for they will be convinced that you are the right business to work with.

Targeted Keywords: Provides You with More Business Referrals

Having targeted keywords and ranking high on the first page of search engines allows you to attract more potential consumers. Therefore, the amount of attention you get depends on how high your rank. One of the hidden benefits of small business SEO is that it helps your company get on the radar of complementary businesses, businesses that are not competing with you directly but may have a customer base or audience that complements yours.

You can have more relevant businesses to get in touch with you and actually refer their customers to yours. Since an average business is bigger than a regular customer, their referrals are bound to be bigger and more consistent.

Let’s say you run a web design business: you can have a content creation agency pass you referrals or even white label your services to package and sell with their own. When it comes to partnering with other businesses, the possibilities for this are endless. With effective search engine optimization help, there’s a high chance that such businesses will find yours and help you grow.

Potential Customers: Increases Brand Value

If you work hard on building your brand value then your potential customers will trust your business more. Therefore, it is crucial for any business to have strong brand value, especially if you are just starting out. The beauty of search engine optimization is that it allows you to increase the value of your brand without increasing your costs. With just a small investment, you can be well on your way to building real brand value, one that will ultimately help you gain more customers.

If you are considering the media and print advertising space, you will realize that it can be super expensive to boost your brand value using traditional methods of marketing. If you want real-world results without putting in a lot of money, then using search engine optimization to build primary brand value in your target industry makes more sense to your business, and any business for that matter. Automatically, this makes SEO one of the most reliable tools to increase visibility in your market as well as boost the reputation of your business.

Permanent: Stays in the Eyes of the Public Much Longer

Unlike advertisements, posters, newspapers and TV commercials, the internet is not temporary and neither does it disintegrate or fade out over time. Therefore, users will continue to make their lives as convenient as possible, and so should you with your business.

By putting your business’s services and products online, you are allowing people to access that information for a much longer time than they can on an advertisement, business card or flyer. Once you have debuted on the online scene and have entered the spotlight, you will stay there for much longer, thus attracting more customers as a result.

Helpful Content: Franchise SEO Service

Keith Eneix

My brother Neil and I founded Fannit in 2010 and set out to help entrepreneurs just like us achieve their dreams of being successful business owners. It’s been a rewarding journey for us, and we love every day of it. Inside of Fannit, I work with both our internal team and our clients to make sure that we have everybody working the right roles and we’re being as efficient as possible as a team. I’m always happy to step in whenever there is a difficult SEO challenge at hand... it’s the element of marketing that I’m most passionate about. We’re all here to get better and grow, and that’s what gets me up in the morning! Connect with me on LinkedIn >