6 Benefits of SEO For Small Businesses

Running marketing campaigns and strategies for small businesses can be challenging. After all, you’re directly competing against large enterprises with seemingly limitless marketing budgets.

This is why many small companies are turning to search engine optimisation (SEO), which is a cost-effective method to increase profits and revenue. With the right SEO strategy, businesses can directly compete or even gain a competitive advantage over their larger competitors.

Below are the 6 main benefits of small business SEO.

• Boost Targeted Traffic
• Get In Front Of New Customers
• Build Brand Awareness
• Improve Conversion Rates
• Outrank Competitors
• Achieve Long-Term Growth

Boost Targeted Traffic

By utilising the proper marketing techniques, your website will increase its traffic from various customer demographics. Although attracting all kinds of customers is ideal, it’s better to focus your marketing and SEO efforts on attracting targeted traffic, which refers to the people that visit your site with intention.

These visitors are the ones who believe that your offered products and services can satisfy their needs. This means they are likely to convert or turn into paying customers.

To get a clearer idea of this concept, check out the data presented in this graph from the State of Inbound Global Report by HubSpot.

It clearly shows that hyper-targeted ranking techniques rank better compared to other effecting lead-generating methods. Whether you choose to utilise pay-per-click (PPC) ads, SEO, or other marketing efforts, you can be sure that targeted marketing will be able to attract the type of people who have the intent to convert.

Get In Front Of New Customers

Another major benefit of SEO is how it can improve your brand exposure, which can present significant opportunities for small business owners. With SEO, your site can reach the first page of search engine results pages (SERPs) and attract more customers. To illustrate how effective SEO is compared to paid ads, understand that sites featured in the top 10 ranking positions can secure around 94% of all clicks. Ads, on the other hand, only capture the remaining 6%.

One major factor that drives most people to click on the top-ranking websites is trust. According to a survey by seoClarity, around 65% of respondents trust Google more compared to other tech giants, such as Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft.

Following this idea, being able to perform well on SERPs can allow your site to gain the trust of potential customers even though they are aware of other brands.

Build Brand Awareness

Effective SEO strategies have a direct impact on the online presence of your business. By ranking your web content within Google SERPs’ top 10 positions, you’ll be able to secure a bigger organic traffic percentage and cultivate more touch points.

Take Google, for example. This search engine giant has managed to secure over 85% of the market share. Other search engines, however, such as Bing and Yahoo, have only managed to get 7% and 2.85%, respectively.

Since Google processes about 3.5 billion searches a day, ranking higher on SERPs can lead to significantly more leads and better brand awareness.

Placing your brand in front of visitors who are likely to convert can be achieved by carrying out various SEO strategies, such as building backlinks, creating high-quality content, and conducting keyword research.

Improve Conversion Rates

Google’s algorithm uses different preconditions to determine the ranking of a website. One of these is user experience. Specifically, Google pays close attention to a site’s page speed, navigation, and mobile optimisation. Performing well in these areas can help websites secure top positions on the first page of SERPs.

Properly executed SEO strategies can improve a website’s conversion rate optimisation (CRO). Together, SEO and CRO can provide a smooth user experience. For instance, SEO and CRO can improve the load speed of your site’s pages.

According to an analysis by CloudFlare, web pages that load in 2.4 seconds or less have a 1.9% chance of converting. On the other hand, slow web pages, or those that load longer than 2 or 3 seconds, can turn visitors off and cause them to leave.

Outrank Competitors

For many small businesses, getting noticed by target customers can be challenging, especially if they’re competing against larger companies within their industry. Thankfully, with SEO, you’ll be able to outrank your competitors on SERPs.

This can be achieved by targeting local search, which involves ranking for keywords that users within your area use to search for products, services, and topics that are related to what you’re offering.

Taking advantage of local search and keywords is important since around 46% of Google searchers are about local information. Also, approximately 86% of customers search online to find a local business to satisfy their needs.

Achieve Long-Term Growth

As mentioned earlier, organic listings tend to capture about 94% of clicks on Google, while PPC ads only get about 6%. This data clearly shows the sustainable impact of SEO techniques on the long-term digital growth of websites and online businesses.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that PPC ads are not effective. They are still a great way to capture leads and boost sales. However, the overall effect of paid ads can still be limited since there’s a budget involved. SEO, on the other hand, is a cost-effective way of generating organic or non-paid traffic for a long time, which is a more sustainable option for small businesses.

Is SEO Worth It For Small Businesses?

By targeting the local market, attracting interested potential customers, and optimising a website, SEO is an essential marketing tool that can improve the overall performance of small businesses. Although implementing effective SEO strategies may still require some level of investment, it is still a cost-effective method that can provide your business with long-term rewards that come in the form of higher organic traffic, better online visibility, and increased sales.