Search Engine Optimisation is an essential tool in the small business toolkit. When done well, it offers a cost-effective boost to your marketing efforts that brings a whole host of benefits. Here are four of the most impactful.
#1 SEO can increase organic search traffic to your site
Search Engine Optimisation is the science of structuring your website and its content so that Google’s (or any other search engine’s) bots value it more highly than other sites, and serve it up higher in the search results.
Each page is assigned an SEO score. The higher the page’s score, the better it ranks within search results. Of course, when your page ranks more highly, more people are likely to see and click on it, bringing more traffic to your site. This becomes a virtuous cycle after a while, with more traffic causing your page to rank even more highly.
#2 SEO can increase local visibility
Do you have a Google My Business account? If not, it’s time to go and get one. When filled out, your My Business profile helps make you more visible to people searching for businesses in a specific location.
For example, if I’m searching for restaurants in Melbourne, Google will show me the top three results with more detailed information (like hours, an address, etc.) than the rest of the results. This detailed information comes from your My Business profile and is a form of SEO.
#3 SEO helps you attract the right people to your website
If you’re a business based out of Sydney and specialising in golf club repair, then it’s a safe bet that someone searching Google for “golf club repair Sydney” is going to be someone you want on your website. By optimising your site to rank well for more complex (often called “long tail”) keywords like that, you’ll bring not only more traffic but more qualified traffic to your website, increasing leads and conversions in the process.
#4 SEO helps your business build trust and credibility
It’s a known fact: people trust results that appear on the first page of search results more than the ones that come after. Along with more visibility, that trust is a big factor influencing the amount of traffic you drive to your website, and what people do once they arrive there. The only way to get to the first page of search results, though, is to have an effective Search Engine Optimisation strategy in place.
Hopefully, by now, you understand the value and importance of having a strong SEO strategy. But where do you begin? One helpful place to start is by auditing your website to understand how it currently performs from an SEO perspective. Doing so will give you a baseline set of statistics from which to measure your future SEO improvement efforts.
About the Author
Prosper Taruvinga was born in Zimbabwe and now living in Melbourne, Australia, with wife, Angela and daughter Kaliyah. A die-hard about personal development, lifestyle design and entrepreneurship, Prosper is a lifelong student of life constantly striving to become the best man that he can be and to help others along the way. He is inspiring others to achieve a happier existence through writing and podcasts on his website livelongdigital.com.au. He believes everyone has the chance, yours is round the corner if you allow yourself to grab it.