Entrepreneurs often ask me about small business SEO services. Typically, they’ve heard about search engine optimization (SEO) but aren’t sure about the benefits.
The underlying goal of SEO is to appear on the first page of Google’s search results for a given query. Ideally, within the top 3 results.
While it might seem somewhat arbitrary, having your website appear on the first page of search results is a huge advantage for your business. In fact, it’s absolutely essential if you want to attract quality organic traffic. This is why SEO is important for businesses.
Just think – when was the last time you clicked through to page 2 or 3 of Google’s search results? I’m guessing very rarely.
Did you know that over 90% of people who use Google never leave the first page of search results?
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What’s included in small business SEO services?
SEO is the thorough process of fine-tuning your website and its content for search engines, like Google. The goal is to help your business develop a presence in the online world by appearing more often in search engine results.
“Optimized content” is basically an effective piece of writing that directly answers a question. For example, if someone is searching for “What does SEO do for a business”, you’d expect to see this post.
Ultimately, if you want people to visit your business website, engage with your content, and make a purchase, you need to get them to your site efficiently from Google. You’ll also need to make sure they stay there.
So let’s dive right in and take a look at why a good SEO strategy is crucial for your business’s online growth.
Three pillars of SEO for small businesses
There are many ways to start tuning your website for SEO. Generally, this requires improving both the technology and content on the website.
To speed things up, I recommend hiring an SEO expert to set a good foundation. An SEO freelancer, for instance, can do a lot of the heavy lifting initially.
There are 3 key areas that SEO focuses on – Technical SEO, On-page SEO, and Off-page SEO. Ideally, each of these should be led by an experienced SEO consultant.
Technical SEO
In short, this is where your website’s code is evaluated for correctness and quality. It ensures that the site is sending the correct signals to search engines. Google’s crawlers scan your site to try and understand what your business is all about.
On-page SEO
This focuses on the content of your website. This type of SEO looks at the words on every page, images, formatting, user experience, etc. It’s likely what you’ve heard the most about on YouTube and other resources.
Off-page SEO
This places a heavy focus on what’s happening on other websites. Think of off-page SEO as a way to strengthen your website’s authority in your field due to the number (and quality) of inbound links.
The better your perceived authority on a topic, the higher your search engine ranking will be, and the more traffic you’ll get.
All of these aspects of SEO work together to ensure that your website ranks higher on search engines. It allows people to have a much easier time finding your business and converting into sales prospects.
Let’s take a closer look at what each area focuses on, and why they’re important for your business:
Technical SEO
This is all about coding, so technical SEO should be performed by someone who understands both SEO and programming. Technical SEO is my specialty, and I’d be happy to do the heavy lifting for you.
Why technical SEO is important for a business
Believe it or not, Google ranks web pages using their proprietary algorithms and website crawlers. These crawlers examine a website and determine the relevancy of the content.
If something’s wrong with a page, for any reason, such as not being properly optimized for mobile devices, its rank on Google will suffer.
Did you know that 50% of all searches are performed using a smartphone?
That number is only going to keep rising. If your website is not properly optimized, you’ll begin to notice a decline in traffic.
Similarly, If your website is not secured using SSL / HTTPS, your site will be penalized and your traffic and conversion rates will drop. This is another reason you need a technical SEO consultant to help your business.
Technical SEO identifies, and fixes, these (and many other) issues so that your business has the best chance of ranking well on search engines.
On-page SEO
On-page SEO, or content SEO, is crucial for your business because it essentially creates doorways to your website based on specific keywords or phrases people are searching for. Google will try to interpret the person’s search term and provide results for what it believes to be the most relevant web pages. Your business definitely needs to be on that list!
Any good web article writer knows that the content needs to be based on more than just keywords. It should also keep readers engaged. Let’s take a look at how content SEO can help your business.
Why on-page SEO is important for a business
You want potential customers to be able to find your website, right? Ultimately, this means that your content needs to be authoritative and well-written to attract clicks and backlinks.
Think about it…
There could be hundreds of web pages just like yours out there. How will you make sure that people reach yours?
Content SEO is designed to utilize multiple writing techniques to help ensure that people who enter appropriate search words into Google discover and click on your web page as quickly as possible.
Clever content SEO will help your page standout from the crowd. Furthermore, did you know that most people will leave your page if their questions aren’t answered almost right away?
The average time it takes for a reader to decide to stay on your site is about 3 seconds.
If they like your content, on average they’ll spend about 2 minutes checking it out. So, you have about 2 minutes to properly engage, answer questions, and convince website visitors to become customers. Performing proper content SEO can be a useful and effective tool to ensure your website is ‘sticky’.
I can help your business and make sure that more people see and reach your website.
Off-page SEO
The main purpose of off-page SEO is to help your website build authority and reputation. This is done my seeking links to your website from other reputable destinations. These are called backlinks.
Reputation is actually one of the signals that Google uses to rank your site amongst others in your industry. An example of a high authority website would be an industry leader, educational institution, government department, popular news outlet, etc. Having backlinks on these types of websites are ideal for building reputation, but can also be very difficult to obtain.
Why off-page SEO is important for a business
Your business needs to have authority in the online world if you want it to succeed. This authority tends to be built using backlinks. Other signals of authority include online reviews and social media mentions, which can be easier to obtain than high-authority backlinks.
Getting reviews depends on the industry you’re in and the products and/or services that you sell. It also depends on whether your existing customers are willing to share their experience. Reviews can also backfire and harm your reputation if they are predominantly negative.
Did you know that 85% of people read reviews before they make a purchase regardless of your digital marketing? If your reviews are poor, your business will suffer.
Think of it this way.
If you have reviews averaging less than 4 stars, Google may use this information to drop your website further down the rankings. This is one reason why it’s crucial to perform off-page SEO correctly, knowing that you have a reasonable probability of success. You need to make sure that your business is held in high regard by other people. If it is, then this can be used to your advantage to lift traffic and your conversion rates.
Summary
There’s a lot of information here, but hopefully it provides some helpful guidance about what small business SEO services can do for you. At the end of the day, if you want your business to succeed online, you need to put these techniques into practice.
If you’re not well versed in SEO, or need a little help, please let me know and I’d be glad to help with your SEO strategy.
It’s not always about traffic, but when it comes to growing your business’s online presence, SEO should be your number one strategy. Not only can it help your business grow, but it can help keep your visitors remain engaged and increase your conversation rates.
Now that you know what SEO can do for a business, what steps will you take today to ensure your business ranks highly?
