Is SEO Worth It For Small Business? BitChip Digital

Is SEO worth it for small business? Search engine optimization offers many benefits, such as increased ranking, organic traffic, revenue, social presence, etc.

Is SEO Worth It For Small Business? What You Should Know

Are you a small business owner seeking an answer to the question, “is SEO worth it for small business?” Or, are you thinking of abandoning SEO?

If yes, hear me out before you make that move! As a business owner and SEO expert, I understand businesses are always seeking ways to cut costs.

Unfortunately, the areas a business owner thinks are unimportant will likely get the knife when considering ways to lower the business’s cost.

Search engine optimization impact doesn’t happen immediate, a reason many businesses prefer paid advertisements. But if you’re running a small business, here are things you should know about SEO.

Here is what you need to know.

Is SEO Worth It for Small Business?

To respond to this question, here’s a study Jupiter Research performed. The researchers discovered that 81 % of people still find websites via search engines.

What does the result of this research mean for small businesses? It means your business needs to have an online presence.

So, how do you establish an online presence? Search engine optimization (SEO) and paid adverts (PPC) are two ways to achieve this.

Now, let’s come back to the answer. With what has been said, do you still think SEO is relevant to your business? Yes, SEO is still very important.

Search engine optimization is worth your time, effort, and money. It may have long-term impacts, which is good for businesses looking forward to the future.

At first, SEO may seem daunting to first-time entrepreneurs and smaller business owners. But the truth is poor understanding and deployment of best SEO practices is one of the factors hindering effective marketing campaigns.

What do I know about SEO? I am part of a team of SEO experts at BitChip Digital. We provide search engine optimization services for businesses across the globe.

We can help improve your website ranking, organic traffic, brand authority, and revenue via SEO. We’ll place your business on SERPs’ first page so potential customers can easily locate you.

A Handy Tip: You can embrace SEO or paid advertisement. It’s up to you to decide. Most business owners may consider paid advertisement given the almost instant result it offers.

It may take a bit longer to start seeing results for your SEO effort, but it’s worth the wait. With SEO, you can get traffic and other benefits even after the campaign ends.

However, keep in mind that SEO isn’t a one-off marketing strategy. You don’t need to take your foot off the gas if you want to move ahead of your competitors and stay in the number one spot.

5 SEO Strategies For Your Small Business

Here are search engine optimization strategies small business owners should know.

1: Create a professional-looking website:

If you don’t have a website, get a web developer to create one for you. And ensure the website is professional-looking and irresistible.

Visitors and potential customers should admire your website, not complain about its layout, design, and features.

Your website is your sales rep online. So make it a reflection of the professionalism your business is known for.   

A Handy Tip: Your website should be simple and professional-looking. It doesn’t have to be too flashy to attract potential customers.

2: Perform detailed keyword research:

Keywords imply “search terms.” They are words that your audience uses when searching for a specific product, service or information.

Understanding the search terms or keywords your audience uses will make targeting them a breeze. So, find the search terms (the keywords) that relate to your business.

For example, if you’re dealing with cars, the related keyword may include ‘cars,’ ‘sports cars,’ and ‘electric cars,’ etc. Put these keywords in your Meta data (titles and Meta description), including your page titles and throughout the articles.

Most entreprenurs assume keyword research is simple. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. Keyword research can be very complicated. You have to figure out the search volume of the keywords, how competitive they are, and whether they will generate leads for your business.

Most businesses fail at keyword research and ruin their SEO marketing effort. Your marketing strategy may suffer if you don’t get your keyword research right.

What tool can one use for keyword research? Various tools exist. You can use Google keyword planner or any keyword research tool you are comfortable using.

Your target keyword should be a long-tail keyword. For example, if your business is carpet cleaning, your long tail keyword could be “carpet cleaning service in Brooklyn.” So, use long tail keywords.

3: Publish quality SEO content:

Two decades ago, Bill Gates used the phrase “content is king.” Content is one of the most important elements of any digital marketing campaign.

Content doesn’t only mean text. It also includes videos, infographics, audio, photos, etc. You must find the content your audience engages with more and publish them consistently.

Quality content takes the readers or audience on a journey to a point where they are ready to take action. And keep in mind that your audience will rate your content. The quality will give them a clue about your superiority in the niche.

Let’s assume you’re running a small carpet cleaning business. You can write content to demonstrate your expertise and prove you’re an authority in your field.

You can write content like “7 ways to get rid of wine stains from carpet. Or, you can show how to do carpet cleaning the ideal way. You don’t have to reveal everything about your business strategy. Just show your audience that you know what you’re doing, and they won’t regret hiring you.

A Handy Tip: Content writing isn’t all about putting strings of sentences together. You need to place your keyword strategically and organize your points in an easy-to-read manner.

If you’re not proficient in content writing or don’t have time to write, you can hire an SEO content writer to do the job. We assign writers with sound knowledge of our clients’ businesses, and those who can draft quality content in your brand voice.

After writing, publishing is the next thing that follows. On this, the advice is to stay consistent. If you want to keep publishing every Monday, go ahead with it. You can publish once a week, twice a week, once in two weeks, or twice every month; the choice is yours.

Just remain consistent. That’s all we’re saying. Let your audience know fresh content will be available on specific days.

4: User experience and mobile optimization:

User experience (UX) is among search engines’ biggest ranking factors. Why is this so? Remember, there is strong competition among search engines, though Google is still far ahead.

Imagine if all the websites accessed via Google performed poorly. Imagine how internet users will react to this. Most people may even stop using Google as their primary search engine.

Several factors determine a website’s UX. These include page load speed, performance, and ease of navigation. When visitors click on your link, does your website load immediately? Or does it take forever to load?

Now, these factors are part of the UX we’re talking about. You must realize that people have a short attention span. Humans’ attention span is even shorter than goldfish’s.

What does this have to do with your small business?

Understand that visitors won’t wait around if your website takes over 3 seconds or more to load. They would rather move over to your competitors than wait around.

Unfortunately, most small businesses don’t monitor their website performance and page load speed. Some only find out after they have lost tons of sales opportunities.

Your website must load faster if you want your marketing campaign to be successful. It should load super fast on any device too. These include mobile devices, desktops, laptops, and tablets.

Another thing to monitor is how your website displays on various devices. Can your visitors see the entire content, including call to actions? Ensure they can see the entire content on their mobile device.

People will visit your website with different devices, and you should expect more visitors from mobile device users. So, optimize your website for mobile.

We’re in a mobile-first world. Thus, multiple purchases that take place daily happen through a mobile device. Around 86.34% of the global population owns a mobile device (6.92 billion people).

You can see how important it is to optimize your website for mobile. And remember, optimization means reformatting the site to make it easier to navigate, and fit smaller screens.

A Handy Tip: Mobile-friendliness is a top Google ranking factor. Google loves and favors mobile-friendly websites more than the ones that aren’t.

Here is another thing you should know. If a website displays more content on a desktop than on a mobile device, Google will have little context to rank it. So, websites that provide a better experience on desktop than on mobile would have their ranking hampered.

5: Digital PR and Link Building:

If you run a small business, understand this: link building is important and can make your digital marketing effort succeed.

What’s linkbuilding about? It involves directing links from other sites to yours. In other words, your links are placed on high authority and niche-relevant sites. That’s what link building is.

We encourage small businesses to build a broad and healthy backlink profile. In this case, the links are sourced from high-authority sites practicing white-hat SEO.

Avoid websites considered link farms and spammy. You won’t get any benefit from such websites.

Here are ways you can get quality backlinks:

• Guest posting
• Social media marketing
• Search for broken links
• Outreach journalism
• Secure mentions online (reviews and testimonials). In addition to serving as backlinks, these are great social proofs.

Final Thought

Is SEO worth it for small business? The obvious answer is yes! Let me break it down for you.

Large and established businesses are ruthless in their marketing campaigns. They have the capital to spend on diverse marketing channels to attract more customers.

As a small business, we don’t expect you to have the budget that these large corporations have. Most small businesses cannot run paid adverts. Paid ad is capital intensive and most small businesses can’t afford to run it for a long period.

These big corporations can run paid adverts for months, and spend thousands of dollars each year. But the good thing about SEO is that it offers a level playing field for small and large-scale businesses.

Google won’t look at your business size to rank you or send more traffic to your website. Rather, it has ranking factors which it considers. These include quality of content, page speed, user experience, mobile-friendliness, etc.

So, if you have a small business, put more effort into SEO if you want to compete with large businesses online.

Here is the benefits search engine optimization can give your small business:

• Increase organic traffic
• Increase revenue
• Boost social presence
• Increase search engine ranking
• Finally, SEO can help your small business reach more potential customers.

You don’t need to know SEO to deploy it. It’s a cost-effective marketing strategy and can help you achieve success online. BitChip Digital has SEO experts ready to help your business grow online.