Can SEO work for Small Businesses?

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Traditionally small businesses operate on limited and constrained marketing budgets. Marketing managers in small businesses must prudently budget their spending to maximise the ROI. Marketing budgets for small businesses worldwide will likely be further tightened in the post-Covid-19 business environment. Once the government business supports are removed, small businesses' cost structures will pressure marketing managers to limit any potential wastage in their marketing spending. Naturally, small business owners want fast positive results from their marketing spend. Unfortunately, Search Engine Optimisation is a long term investment that must form part of a well-rounded marketing strategy.


What does SEO do for Small Business?

SEO helps to drive organic traffic to a website.SEO helps a website to be ranked by search engines and provide a quality user experience.  Google continually updates its search algorithms and a focus is now on giving the consumer a better standard of user experience and meaningful, valuable content. 64% of marketers actively invest in SEO, according to Hubspot, which shows the critical role SEO continues to play in marketing planning for all sizes of global companies.

 



Benefits of SEO for Small Business

SEO can provide small businesses with the following:

·         Build Brand Awareness – brands continually found on the first page of Google are more recognisable to current and future customers.

·         Faster Website Performance – small businesses with user-friendly websites which promote a better user experience will rank higher on Google and receive more web traffic.

·         Stand Out against Competitors – investing in the correct optimisation of a small business website will allow for better rankings and more website visitors than perceived larger competitors.

·         Improved Conversion Rates – consumers want small business websites optimised to load quicker and can be navigated easily and mobile-friendly. Once these elements are in place, it is much easier to keep consumers attention and drive them towards converting to a full customer.

·         Attract Targeted Customers – selecting keywords that appeal to a designated target audience helps a small business target the right consumers and avoids wasting time and money on consumers who are unlikely to convert.

·         Cost-Effective – the majority of small businesses operate with limited marketing budgets when compared to their larger rivals. SEO allows smaller companies to reduce their spending on Pay Per Click advertising by targeting the right customers over time.

 

 

SEO versus PPC

Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising is an excellent method to gain faster brand awareness and attract new customers. PPC can also be expensive and increases the cost of acquiring sales leads. In an ideal world, PPC and SEO would both be part of any digital marketing plan. However, if only one could be picked, which would a small business choose?

PPC advertising works on the number of clicks that a paid ad receives. The overall cost depends on industry competition and ad quality. SEO takes longer to enact but is much cheaper and allows a small business to attract potential customers who will likely make a purchase. Organic search results are perceived to be more trustworthy compared to paid ad results. Consumers are bombarded with vast amounts of ads each day. Consumers regard trustworthiness as an integral offering from any business. SEO allows a small business to attract higher quality web traffic by building trust by providing a personalised user experience and meaningful content.


Written By 




Sources:

Oetting, J., 2021. The Ultimate Guide to SEO in 2021. [online] Blog.hubspot.com. Available at: <https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/seo> [Accessed 14 March 2021].

Moz. 2021. What is SEO? Search Engine Optimization 2021. [online] Available at: <https://moz.com/learn/seo/what-is-seo> [Accessed 14 March 2021].

BuildFire. 2021. 7 Effective SEO Strategies for Small Businesses | BuildFire. [online] Available at: <https://buildfire.com/small-business-seo/> [Accessed 14 March 2021].

Location: Dublin, Ireland

Comments

  1. Julian CallanMarch 11, 2021 at 12:05 PM

    A great post Robert. SEO is such an important Tactic for small businesses. More exposure in search engine results will ultimately lead to more visitors discovering a site, which can be crucial for smaller companies who may not have an ad-spend budget for PPC. I feel there's a big connection between optimising a site for speed and standing out from competitors. One thing I always say to clients is that if it takes your site more than 3 seconds to load, your customer is going somewhere else. I think like you mentioned, it's important to treat organic SEO optimisation as something that's going to take time to develop so that's why I always recommend people use it as early in their digital marketing strategies as possible.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Rejane StrattonMarch 16, 2021 at 11:27 AM

    It’s well said, SEO is a long-term strategy, and PPC is more a short-term strategy. Every second that your website is not indexed on Google, you miss out on hundreds, if not thousands, of opportunities in which someone might have accessed your website, viewed your content and bought your product or services. By optimizing your website for search engines, not only can you improve its ranking, and thus be found by potential customers. For this reason, a small business should consider investing in SEO services as a long-term strategy. Also, small businesses should consider what they can do themselves to boost their rank in the search engine. They can start by thinking of potential questions about their offerings and try to answer those questions as fully as is necessary and as briefly as possible in the format of blogging, creating relevant, coherent content aimed at their target visitors and potential customers.

    ReplyDelete

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