As a small business owner, you will always be looking for ways to improve and grow. One of the areas that have yet to be exploited by most brick and mortar businesses is digital marketing. Digital marketing is a broad discipline but what will be of interest to you as a local business is local SEO. One of the reasons why people don’t like trying new things is fear. There are a lot of resources out there even if you don’t want to hire someone to do the work for you. You can check out optimization training Local Client Takeover if you’re looking to improve the visibility of your local business. Here are some of the benefits you can get from doing SEO for your local business.
Organic Traffic
In most instances, an organic search will form the majority of a website’s traffic. If you’re running campaigns, you might have to spend a lot more money for your site to appear on top of the search results. As you might know by now, not a lot of people will bother looking at the ads. We are not saying that you shouldn’t be running PPC campaigns, they should be part of your broader marketing efforts.
Google controls about 75% of the search market. This means you will have to strategize your SEO campaign with Google as the priority. You can also find other options on this SponsoredLinX website.
Building Trust and Credibility
Before the SEO campaign can begin, there should be a website in place which will act as the online storefront of the business. The website should be beautifully designed with a user-friendly interface and is mobile responsive. It should also load fast as no one wants to wait for more than 10 seconds in order to access a web page.
After the basics are taken care of, the next step will be to establish the authority of the website and this can only be done properly with SEO. Authority will be accrued over time and will come from factors such as:
· Quality of links
· Machine-learning signals
· Optimized pages
All these factors will require that you have an understanding of SEO. It is recommended you outsource the work if you have a sizable budget. You could also learn about local SEO as there are tons of both free and paid materials on the internet.
Better User Experience
Good SEO will also translate to better user experience. Everyone will be looking at how to maximize their website for better ranking. User experience is one of the key elements in better rankings on search engines. There are marketers who are still hanging on to the old definition of SEO which involves keyword usage. Google wants to make sure that searchers are being matched with relevant information. More than half of all searches on the internet come from mobile.
That is why Google has shifted to mobile-first indexing. It is giving priority to websites that are mobile-friendly and easy to navigate. In order for you to rank, you will need to take care of such basic elements which will ultimately lead to improved user experience.
More Customers
Your brick and mortar business might be doing well, but you stand a chance to witness exponential growth when you leverage SEO. More than 50% of people who search for local products or services online end up visiting the store. Those businesses that have invested in SEO will bring in more customers and are likely to witness twice the growth of those that only depend on offline marketing. SEO is one of the most efficient and effective marketing strategies you can incorporate into your business today.
Improved Conversion Rates
When your website is SEO-optimized, it will load faster and potential customers will easily find the information that they need. This will lead to better conversions as you’re satisfying the queries of the searchers. That is why it is important to invest in SEO so that everything is being done in the right way.
Build Brand Awareness
Once your website starts getting traction, there will be return visitors. Such visitors will in some cases just type the URL of your website when they want to access it. This can be advantageous for a small business that does not have a big marketing budget. SEO has leveled the playing field. You can compete with Fortune 500 companies even when you don’t have millions for a budget. If you’re a small business owner who still sitting on the fence, we hope this post has been an eye-opener.