SEO Can Help Small Businesses Be Found Online
If you’re a small business owner and looking to improve your online presence you need to start with search engine optimization (SEO).
The Key Benefits of SEO for Small Businesses
The benefits of SEO have been found to be critical for your online brand. In fact, it can really help your company to reach the next level and compete with bigger and more successful companies.
1) User-Friendly Websites (User Journey)
Frist you need to hire a professional web designer to create a faster, easy to navigate, user-friendly website. Cramming in a bunch of keywords is the old definition of SEO, thinking that it’s only about optimizing for the search engines.
Google Algorithmus for indexing sites and ultimately page ranking includes improving user experience for both desktop and mobile. Therefore, your site performance, how it looks and functions are important ranking factors.
Clean, well-structured, and uncluttered websites engages users to stay longer which will increasing page views. Similarly, high quality content that is relevant to your visitors keeps them happy because they are more likely to find answers to their questions, solve issues or find exactly what they’re looking for.
2) On-Site SEO Work
Today search engines have grown exponentially more sophisticated, so on-site SEO work is more than adding keywords.
While keywords still matter, what’s important is context or relevance based on the user search queries. For each of your pages, ask yourself how relevant is the content to the potential customers intent behind search queries.
I use a SEO tool for WordPress called Yoast SEO which helps me with Page Titles, Meta Descriptions, readability and focused keywords.
3) Add Call to Actions (CTA) for Better Conversion Rates
Optimized websites load faster, are easy to read and navigate which in turn is more likely to grab and hold attention from your readers or visitors. Hence, they’re more likely to click on your call to action, become a customer, subscriber or even possibly return for more information.
4) Don’t Forget About Building Brand Awareness!
Simply building a website and optimizing it for search results isn’t enough. You need to think about Social Media, Pay Per Click (PPC) with Google AdWords and your Google My Business listing.
For social media start company pages on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube if you have videos.
You can also run Facebook & Instagram Retargeting Ads. Basically how it works is if someone visits your site and has a Facebook account it will display your ad to them on FB or Instagram. Find your online community and be active online giving advice or answering peoples questions.
Lastly, ask for reviews, referrals or links to your business. Positive Google reviews are online gold!
Small businesses that build brand awareness (either locally or nationally) need to invest in SEO and start gaining rankings for searches related to their business.
Best SEO companies in Minneapolis
If you’re reading this article it’s likely that you are looking for an SEO company in Minneapolis. I can help my clients find the best SEO companies in the Twin Cities and consult them on ones to choose or avoid based on what they are offering vs. your costs.
If you are completely new to the concept of SEO, you should first have an understand of the wide range of benefits that SEO will be able to provide for your company and how it works.
Some of the most important reasons you need to optimize your website:
- SEO helps in improving the visibility of your business.
- With the help of keyword research and appropriately designed websites you can attract a specific group of customers.
- In addition, Geo target a location so customers in your area can find your business online.
SEO can help increasing your businesses credibility
Ranking on the first page of Google results or in Google My Business (Google maps) gives your business instant credibility. So with the help of search engine optimization, hopefully you can get your company name listed on the first page of Google. If the user trusts the results the more likely they will click on your listing aka website link.
In conclusion, always track your ROI vs. SEO costs
Too many businesses think SEO is some dark arts or magic that happens behind the curtains of your website. There is no magic pill or easy solution to building your online brand and page rankings. It takes work with a multifaceted approach, strategic thinking and knowledge of how search engine optimization works.
Investing in a professionally designed website that is easy to use and optimized for search can be money well spent.
Please contact me today if you need help navigating SEO or want to improve your online brand awareness.