Optimizing your website for search engines can dramatically increase sales and attract new customers for small business owners.
Many business owners have their own website, but simply having one is no longer sufficient.
First, the site must receive traffic, and only then can you attract new customers. Now there are many channels in order to express yourself on the Internet and receive orders. These include SEO-optimization, which everyone who has his own business should use.
Search engines like Google and Yandex are a great way to advertise your site and let customers find you online.
This is exactly what SEO is responsible for, and if in very simple words, then in the process of SEO work, the site is optimized by increasing its relevance and popularity in order to increase the traffic that the site receives from search engines. This is a profitable marketing strategy that allows you to get new customers and attract attention.
Why small businesses need SEO
You’ve probably heard about SEO before, but didn’t quite understand why you should waste your time and money as a small business owner who is mainly focused on one specific region. After all, even if you have a local business and the majority of your customers come directly to you, it is worth noting that many of your customers are looking for a product or service on the Internet.
- Search – traffic channel
Search engines (like Google and Yandex) tend to drive 500% more traffic than social media pages and it’s foolish to ignore that. What’s more, Smart Insights conducted a study and found that 34% of search traffic comes from e-commerce sites.
For young businesses and start-ups that are not yet known to anyone, this traffic generation option is very effective, as there is an equal chance to compete for traffic with brands that have long established themselves.
- Users are lazy
How often do you look at the first page of search results?
Most likely not often. Indeed, research from HubSpot shows that 75% of users will never make it past the first page of a SERP.
Instead, they select a site from the top ten that matches their query. As a result, if your site appears outside of it in the search results for a specific keyword or phrase, a significant portion of the traffic will be lost.
It is important to note that publishing mediocre content to simulate resource activity will not yield positive results. If you want to compete and stand out among thousands of other sites in search results, as well as reach the top of the results, you must be prepared to create only high-quality and interesting content.
The search engine will definitely pay attention to this (quality content) and will show your site to people who are looking for your product or service using keywords.
How should it be done? You should start by doing the following:
Choose keywords with a low level of competition to make it easier to break into the TOP at the initial stage.
Do not use black methods of SEO promotion – search engines nowadays have very smart algorithms and can easily figure out cheating or fraud by applying serious sanctions to the resource.
Post quality and useful content! Think about what your audience wants, what they will be interested in.
- SEO will increase sales
Traditional advertising methods are no longer getting a high response from consumers. Direct mail and print ads average 1.7% while SEO leads convert to a whopping 14.6%.
- Regional SEO Is Important
Due to the fact that Yandex takes into account regionality when generating results, and Google uses the Possum algorithm , it is regional sites that are in priority. This means that when a user searches for something, search engines try to show him results that are in close proximity or in a particular region.
Therefore, if someone is looking for shoes, the search engine will show the nearest shoe stores on the map.
This suggests that SEO not only allows you to reach a wider audience from all over the world, but also increases the chances of getting a local order.
- Most people use search
According to Google, four out of every five users use Google to search for company information. They use search engines to locate addresses, business hours, and customer reviews.
If your business doesn’t rank well in search, you’re missing out on a huge number of people who are actively looking for companies like yours and ready to place an order.
Outcome
Whether you use the services of a top SEO company or do your own promotion, SEO can have a very significant impact on sales and customer growth.
