6 Reasons Why SEO is Important For Small Businesses
Are you a coach or service provider looking to reach more clients in your target market?
Are you wondering, “does seo work for small business?”
The answer is yes.
You’re in the right place!
In this post, I’m breaking down what SEO is and why it’s important for your small business.
The internet has made it easier to reach potential customers from across the globe. But the reality is that you need to be "findable” for you to actually attract these customers.
SEO is how you achieve being visible on search engines like Google.
Let’s dive into this a little more…
What Is SEO?
SEO is an abbreviation for search engine optimization. This is the process you can use to get more traffic on your site.
With a solid SEO strategy, your content and website pages appear on the first page of search results. This result translates to more traffic, more leads, and more income.
How does SEO work?
Whether it is Google, Bing, Yahoo, or any other search engine, their algorithm ranks websites according to certain criteria.
Search engines scan websites for relevant, unique, and quality information.
It’s important to create unique content because duplicate content (i.e. having the same content on your website as another on the internet) will hurt your SEO. This is one of the reasons why you should utilize a plagiarism check for your business.
Quality of content on your website refers to how helpful your content is in satisfying what a user is looking for.
But it’s not enough to get visits to your website. You want website visitors to stay on your website by clicking through to other pages and hopefully opt into your email list or purchase a digital product or service.
There’s a lot more that goes into that, such as decreasing bounce rate, creating compelling copy, and having an internal link strategy.
But I digress.
Having a small business can come with quite a few initial challenges, including visibility. This can feel especially difficult when your competitors are more established in their niche.
Here are some reasons why SEO is important for small businesses and its benefits…
1. Brand Recognition
The more your traffic grows, the more brand recognition you’ll experience.
Instead of searching for particular solutions, people will start Googling your name. They’ll share your links in Facebook groups. They’ll tell their friends about you.
I noticed a definite increase in the Google searches for “Lauren Taylar” - as my blog grew, more and more people were searching for me online.
And with that, I’ve been receiving more referrals from people I don’t know. But they clearly know who I am from my blog showing up in lots of Google searches.
The first time I recognized this uptick in search volume for my name was a very exciting day. You not only grow your traffic with SEO, but you really get to build a name for yourself.
2. Boost customer trust
Everyone likes the familiar. Trying out new things comes with the risk of being disappointed.
The way you instill trust with new people coming to your website (aka potential customers and clients) is to show them that you’re knowledgeable on the topic or industry that you’re in.
You can showcase expertise through the content on your website - in other words, your blog.
Creating in-depth educational content that helps your readers find solutions to their problems creates a natural stepping stone from your incredible free content to your paid offers and digital products.
This can help remove any doubts people might have about taking that next step in working with you. Especially when people find you from Google, having a blog with tons of tips, tricks, and other useful ideas in your industry will showcase your expertise.
Even if you’re not showing up on page 1 of Google just yet, potential clients will still see all the valuable information you give away for free on your website. And that’s an incredible benefit.
3. Cheaper than ads
Most new business owners, especially solopreneurs, cannot afford to spend thousands on Facebook or Instagram ads.
And even if you have the capital, ads typically convert at a lower rate than people who find you through organic marketing.
However, with SEO, your business can become visible 24/7 once you start ranking on page 1 of Google for popular terms related to the services that you offer.
Did I mention that this kind of visibility is free? It’s an incredible way to grow your leads and client base on autopilot.
Yes, it can take a few months to start ranking but you get going with blogging, you’ll start to really see an increase in traffic.
4. Level ground for competition
There are other entrepreneurs who offer services similar to yours. How do you stand out against the competition?
Easy - you rank high on page 1 of Google ;)
The benefit of being this high up in Google search is that 1) people are finding you and 2) they actually click through to read more about you and what you have to offer.
Think about that copy that you spent hours cultivating to write the perfect about page or those thousands of dollars you invested into a whiz copywriter to clarify your offerings…
This is where that all pays off. Your brand, your story, and your offerings on your website will actually be read by ideal clients.
This is where you can showcase what makes you different from others offering similar services.
5. A bigger market
There are 8.5 billion Google searches per day. Everyone is on Google.
If you’re using the right words and phrases in your website copy and in your blog content, then you have the ability to get directly in front of people actively searching for solutions to their problems.
Therefore, you have a wider reach than online marketers who work only on social media platforms.
Most of my clients from Google are awesome people ready to book with me. I love that they don’t require dozens of DMs back and forth or tons of followup messages.
6. More business revenue
With the ability for clients and customers to find you when you’re not actively marketing, you’ll most likely see an uptick in leads and sales.
Especially if you have digital products you sell on evergreen (such as templates, masterclasses, and courses), you’ll see the benefit of ranking high on Google.
You’ll be able to fill your sales funnels with more leads.
How to achieve SEO for your small online business
There are a number of ways to attract readers and viewers using SEO.
Some of the ways to achieve this include:
Create content on your blog that’s unique to other blog posts and articles that are ranking on page 1 for the keyword you want to appear for
Use descriptive keywords in your copy and blog posts so that Google can correlate your website with those terms
Use related keywords to become an authority in your niche
Review your old content and update it over time with new content or internal links to other relevant blog posts
Attain relevant backlinks from similar websites and blogs
Implement a strong user experience on your website so that it’s clear and easy to navigate
Bottom Line
I hope you now know why SEO is important for small business, and the benefits of implementing this kind of organic marketing strategy.
When you implement an SEO strategy on your website, you will not see overnight results. It takes time to build authority on Google, anywhere from 3-6 months depending on how often you’re creating content and gathering backlinks. Consistency is key for SEO to work long-term.
Looking for support with crafting a custom SEO strategy so you can rank on page 1 of Google and attract more clients?
Check out my SEO packages below - whether you have Squarespace, Showit, Wordpress, or another website builder, I can help you :)
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