Why is SEO important for small businesses?

SEO is important for small businesses because it can increase your online visibility, build authority and attract the right audience to your website.

The key results of effective SEO are:

Increased brand awareness and online visibility in the search engine result pages (SERPS).
Increased volume of relevant visitors to your website.
Increased leads/sales from your online channels.
Better quality leads, customers and clients.
Increased revenue for the business.

The potential benefits of successful small business SEO far outweigh the associated time and monetary investment that is required to achieve results.

The thing is, if you can get the SEO machine to work for your small business, you’ll spend less than you would on digital advertising and you’ll also generate more leads.

Does SEO work for small business?

Yes, SEO can and does work for small businesses.

To be clear, SEO is not a magic bullet for marketing success. It’s not even necessarily the right digital marketing option for all small businesses.

But, in my experience, there are many situations when SEO is the perfect fit for a small business.

When done right, it’s a very valuable, high-return marketing tactic that can continue bringing results for years when successful.

I’ve seen effective SEO double or even triple the revenue for a small business over the course of a 12-18 month period.

Reasons you might consider SEO for your small business

1. You’re looking for a cost-effective marketing tactic.

In general, online/digital marketing tactics are a great option if you’re looking for financial leeway and flexibility.

SEO can get expensive — for example, you might be considering hiring an SEO firm or an SEO Consultant to help get your rankings up.

You might also want to consider working on a long-term, organic SEO strategy with your in-house marketing manager.

You won’t see instant results, but you’ll spend less, and the results will be more measurable and likely be more evergreen.

2. You’re a relatively new company looking to compete with more established businesses.

The online space is ripe for competition between large and small, new and established firms.

Of course, it’s not a level playing ground, but it’s more level than traditional marketing channels such as television or radio.

On social media, websites, and other digital channels, you can compete with the big boys, and one of the ways to do that is with a helpful website and smart SEO.

3. You recognize that more and more people are online, and you want some of the traffic directed your way.

Billions of people are online every day. And most of them use a search engine at some point during the day.

If any of them fit your target customer/client profile and are searching for your products or services, you want to be sure that your business has the opportunity to get in front of these people.

4. You want to hit the local market

You’re a local business that services local customers. Your customers are all using Google to search for local services, so you need to be showing up in the local SERPs.

Incorporating local SEO tactics into your overall SEO strategy will help your businesses appear in hyper-relevant location-based searches for your products/services.

This type of approach can allow you to compete with and defeat much larger businesses that also service your local area.