Reasons why every business needs SEO!

 1. Everyone’s online. SEO will let them see you.

It’s a basic point, but one that can’t be stressed enough. The average American spends 24 hours a week or over three hours a day online.

The internet is the new Main Street: it’s where people hang out and meet their friends, it’s where they window shop to see what’s about, and it’s absolutely where they go to get what they need in a hurry. The first half of 2020 might have been an anomaly for internet usage, but the continuous trend has been steady. Everyone’s online and they’re spending more and more time there too.

For virtually any business, that can be a challenge, but it’s also an opportunity. So, you’ve been struggling to get the walk-ins or online ads have been just about breaking even in ROI? When we understand that a search engine results page is just like a row of stores, it becomes clear that the best position will mean more business.

And how do you get that prime location? SEO.

The world might have gone online, but the dynamics are still the same, if people want something, chances are they’ll go to get it in the first few places they see. You’re not going to go into 17 different hardware stores to buy a drill – you’ll check out two or three, presume that’s roughly what the price is, and go for it.

It’s the same online. The top three results have a 75% click-through rate, with the vast majority of people never going past page 1. The trick is getting up there.

2. SEO lets small businesses compete with the big guns.

Say you’re a small pizza restaurant. You make a great homemade product and everyone loves the cozy neighborhood feel of the place. But footfall and deliveries have been static for a couple of years while overheads have gone up. Advertising is the obvious way to boost revenue, but can you really hope to compete with the big chains that also exist within a 10-mile radius? Online, for example, there are only three spaces at the top of Google’s search engine results page for ads, but Pizza Adobe, Papa Joe’s and Checker’s Pizza – all national franchises – just gobble up that ad market and there’s no way you can compete. 

Where you can compete, however, is on local SEO. You’re specific to your area while most of those outlets can’t or don’t have individual local pages. That means that when a user searches for something in your local area, after the ads, Google points them to something in the vicinity. If you’ve got your local SEO on point, that’s going to be you.

3. You’re spending time on building a site that no one gets to see.

An amazing internet fact is that 90% of web pages never get an organic search click. That means they just sit there, unvisited and unloved, talking into the void where no one will ever hear them. This is like getting a local artist to come up with an awesome new sign for your premises, then putting it over the door that backs onto the alley with the dumpsters rather than your main entrance.

We’re sure you’ve got a great product and business proposition. You’ve put your heart and soul into a trade that’s your passion, so why not get that information in front of as many people as possible?

5. Search engines reward sincerity and knowledge.

Google makes big changes to its algorithms every few years and is constantly making tweaks to how it ranks websites.

That’s not just to annoy people whose job it is to promote websites – it’s actually at once altruistic and selfish. Google (and Bing and Yahoo) want people to find exactly what they’re looking for and have a nice time while doing it, as that means they’ll trust the search engine and use it again. So, since its foundation, Google has used the power of its algorithm to force website owners to create a better experience.

If your page has no info but just lots of links to it from elsewhere, that’s no good, so you’re punished. If your photos are too large and take too long to load, that gets punished too. If your site is complicated and users can’t find their way around it, well, that gets punished. If you don’t give users what they’re looking for… you get the idea.

While this might seem like search engines are dealing out a lot of punishment, what it actually means is that if you decide to sit down and write a few hundred words on one of your favorite products in your business or how you do a certain task, Google will love that, as that’s what users want. They don’t want tricks and loopholes that make the experience worse – they want knowledgeable thought leaders who know what they’re talking about. For small business owners who are passionate about what they do, that means that if you just talk about what you do best, you’ll actually be gaining serious SEO capital. Building a sustainable and successful long-term SEO strategy can be the key to upgrading your small business from surviving to thriving. 

At 17 West Digital Atlanta, we love SEO and can’t stop talking about it – so dropping us a line to ask your SEO questions would be like doing us a service. Any time you fancy talking SEO or any other aspect of digital marketing Atlanta, just let us know – we genuinely love to hear from you.