Understanding How a Small Business Benefits from SEO

Managing a small business requires all your time from operations, marketing, HR and more.  It’s tough to wait for the choice clients to start rolling in. They don’t seem to do that on their own unless you’ve got some impressive word-of-mouth marketing working on your company’s behalf.  Can SEO help Small Businesses generate more customers in 2020?

Take it from us! Every business owner has been there at least once. The exception is when people purchase an existing business or a franchise. We thought this blog post would help business owners seeking local leads to understand how SEO can help. We know that you want to grow the business and to add more help, but you also need a cost-effective means of generating leads.

The Background

There are plenty of options for the small business owner who wants to find new leads without having to do the legwork. For example, you could purchase marketing lists with targeted leads based on the attributes you identify for each prospective buyer. These are great if you really understand your various buyer personas.

There are also options for advertising the business on websites (i.e. Yahoo!) and content distribution services, social media networks, and mobile apps. However, with SEO — or optimizing your website content for the search engines — you can leverage a website to get new inbound visitors. If your SEO is done well, the people who visit your site are more likely to have an interest in your products or services.

Optimizing Content for SEO

Your website needs to have a healthy balance between sales pages and helpful content pieces which answer questions potential customers might have.  If you are a plumber in Chicago, you of course want to show up in searches for “chicago plumber”.

You might also want to show up for a blog post about the certain error codes on a hot water heater.  Potential customers might first search for the error codes before calling an plumber.  If you write a page about the common error codes on your website and they find it, who are they most likely to call if they can’t fix it on their own?

When you work with an SEO agency, you should expect to choose from different levels of service or scalable packages that fit your business needs. A typical package includes reworking your site and blog content to include links to other content on the same URLs and to include links to other websites (including your business partners, distributors, suppliers, and marketers).

These are the businesses that belong to your supply chain or local market. Studying how traffic gets to your site and adding new content with the right keywords will help your company generate real inbound links. These ensure that visitors come to your site from other places on the Web, and the search engines view these inbound links as more authentic than paid links.

Focus on Local SEO and Your Google My Business Page

As a small business owner, your business will thrive if you can establish and maintain effective business relationships with local people. You need an online presence for consumers who prefer to do their research on a potential product or service provider online or using their mobile device. For example, prospects want to see your company appear in local directories related to their search phrase.

They will want to use your contact information — such as a business phone number, website, or email address — to communicate with a representative. In turn, you or your employee person can assist them in their search for a suitable product or service. If prospects need to schedule weekly pool cleaning and maintenance, they will want to verify that your business is located nearby and offers affordable rates.

How long does it take for your business to show up on Google?

In search engine marketing the only thing that matters is getting on the first page of results.  only 1% of people searching ever go to the second page?   How long does it take for SEO to work?  That depends on a number of factors.

In general, small businesses achieve desired search engine rankings using a recipe or a formula. They want the potential customer to find their website as one of the top three choices after entering a specific keyword phrase. For example, to promote Tampa pool services, a local business owner would want to appear as the first, second, or third result for this bolded search phrase. It takes time for an SEO formula to work. Your improved search engine ranking will not happen overnight.

We understand that your business can grow inbound links over time, allowing the search engines to index your content and to improve the authenticity and relevance of your company to targeted keyword phrases.  If you want to speed up the process, trying using our free tool and check your SEO Score with tips on how to improve.