How Much SEO Does My Small Business Need?
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can be a critical aspect of building an online presence for any small business. Before you begin, take a step back and ask yourself:
€Does SEO really make sense for my small business?€
If you are concerned about potentially wasting time and money investing in SEO, ask yourself the following four questions.
1. How are people finding your business? Are you relying on or hoping that your target customer uses Google or another search engine to find your products or services?
Some business and industries gain nearly all of their business via word-of-mouth or referral business. If you're in this fortunate camp, you may be able to coast on mere website maintenance - no SEO required.
2. Does your business have the time or bandwidth to invest in an SEO campaign?
SEO is a long-term investment. Whether you're managing it yourself or hiring an outside consultant, a typical campaign can take 6-12 months to produce significant results. It requires patience and continuous commitment to keep your SEO current and properly managed. Do you have this kind of time to invest and wait for results to organically build?
3. Can you afford to run an effective SEO campaign?
In order to maximize your businesses visibility on search engines, you must be prepared to invest at least a few hundred dollars on SEO services every month. Larger companies spend tens of thousands of dollars a month. If you find that print and other traditional media are more effective strategies for your business and your budget is finite, then SEO may be a lower priority spend.
4. Is your goal to rank on the first page of Google search results?
The first page of Google is one of the €holy grails€ of marketing but very few businesses ever attain a spot there despite the overblown promises of many SEO companies. Even with a strong SEO campaign, you may never rank on the first page for more popular search terms. Can you be satisfied with appearing on page two, three or four? Anyone that promises otherwise is not being completely transparent nor realistic.
If you can answer €Yes€ to all 4 of the questions above, then you should jump on establishing an effective SEO campaign or strategy.
If you answered €No€ to one or more of these questions, you may want to reconsider if SEO makes sense for your business.
It's worth considering many other effective ways to promote your website and business online.
Social Media Marketing - unlike SEO, social media marketing requires more creativity and effort over the long-term. But the value added from being socially active, responsive and engaging can turn out to be far more impactful than keyword optimization.
Blogging/ Content Marketing - make your website a hub of information and compelling web destination by regularly updating your blog. Ask relevant bloggers in your industry if you can contribute a guest post to their blog in exchange for a link back to your site. This would help to organically grow your search engine presence.
Email Marketing - send targeted emails to your customer base with incentives like coupons and promotions. Analyze and segment your customer list to customize the promotions and yield a higher open rate and drive higher conversions (sales).
Publish a press release - promote a new service, product or company news by submitting it to a press release company such as 24-7pressrelease or Vocus.
Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising - placing paid ads on platforms like Google Adwords and Facebook is a great way to gain highly-targeted traffic to your website. Tailor the budget to what you can afford, measure success on a regular basis and adjust accordingly.
How To Tackle SEO-ing My Business Website?
If you've determined that SEO is on your must-do list, consider whether you can handle this internally or whether it's worthwhile to you to hire a professional. If you choose to do SEO yourself, there are many great, free resources you can reference. Here are some we'd recommend:
Beginner's Guide to SEO: Top ranked SEO site, most user-friendly SEO tools to help with keyword research, website optimization, link building, and social media engagement tracking.
Advanced Guide to SEO: An extensive and highly-detailed guide of advanced SEO techniques.
Google Adwords Keyword Planner: Find out exactly how many people are searching on Google each month for specific keywords.
SEMRush - tool provides exceptional competitive analysis, plotting top traffic-driving keywords for both your site and your competition's.
Alexa - Every SEO should regularly check Alexa's multitude of data. This site does more than just provide your traffic score, it also gives you valuable search analytics and keyword query info too.
Need some help getting started with SEO on your site? Executionists has a solid track record of providing full-service online marketing solutions. Some of our successes include:
Improved click-through-rates by 154% for a financial clients' website.
Increased the presence and popularity of one business blog from 2,000 visits a month, to over 30,000 visits per month over the course of one year.
Generated long-tail keyword campaign to increase visibility for e-commerce clients.
5 months after launching an SEO campaign, we were able to improve one client's bounce-rate from 84.5% to 17.5%.
€Does SEO really make sense for my small business?€
If you are concerned about potentially wasting time and money investing in SEO, ask yourself the following four questions.
1. How are people finding your business? Are you relying on or hoping that your target customer uses Google or another search engine to find your products or services?
Some business and industries gain nearly all of their business via word-of-mouth or referral business. If you're in this fortunate camp, you may be able to coast on mere website maintenance - no SEO required.
2. Does your business have the time or bandwidth to invest in an SEO campaign?
SEO is a long-term investment. Whether you're managing it yourself or hiring an outside consultant, a typical campaign can take 6-12 months to produce significant results. It requires patience and continuous commitment to keep your SEO current and properly managed. Do you have this kind of time to invest and wait for results to organically build?
3. Can you afford to run an effective SEO campaign?
In order to maximize your businesses visibility on search engines, you must be prepared to invest at least a few hundred dollars on SEO services every month. Larger companies spend tens of thousands of dollars a month. If you find that print and other traditional media are more effective strategies for your business and your budget is finite, then SEO may be a lower priority spend.
4. Is your goal to rank on the first page of Google search results?
The first page of Google is one of the €holy grails€ of marketing but very few businesses ever attain a spot there despite the overblown promises of many SEO companies. Even with a strong SEO campaign, you may never rank on the first page for more popular search terms. Can you be satisfied with appearing on page two, three or four? Anyone that promises otherwise is not being completely transparent nor realistic.
If you can answer €Yes€ to all 4 of the questions above, then you should jump on establishing an effective SEO campaign or strategy.
If you answered €No€ to one or more of these questions, you may want to reconsider if SEO makes sense for your business.
It's worth considering many other effective ways to promote your website and business online.
Social Media Marketing - unlike SEO, social media marketing requires more creativity and effort over the long-term. But the value added from being socially active, responsive and engaging can turn out to be far more impactful than keyword optimization.
Blogging/ Content Marketing - make your website a hub of information and compelling web destination by regularly updating your blog. Ask relevant bloggers in your industry if you can contribute a guest post to their blog in exchange for a link back to your site. This would help to organically grow your search engine presence.
Email Marketing - send targeted emails to your customer base with incentives like coupons and promotions. Analyze and segment your customer list to customize the promotions and yield a higher open rate and drive higher conversions (sales).
Publish a press release - promote a new service, product or company news by submitting it to a press release company such as 24-7pressrelease or Vocus.
Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising - placing paid ads on platforms like Google Adwords and Facebook is a great way to gain highly-targeted traffic to your website. Tailor the budget to what you can afford, measure success on a regular basis and adjust accordingly.
How To Tackle SEO-ing My Business Website?
If you've determined that SEO is on your must-do list, consider whether you can handle this internally or whether it's worthwhile to you to hire a professional. If you choose to do SEO yourself, there are many great, free resources you can reference. Here are some we'd recommend:
Beginner's Guide to SEO: Top ranked SEO site, most user-friendly SEO tools to help with keyword research, website optimization, link building, and social media engagement tracking.
Advanced Guide to SEO: An extensive and highly-detailed guide of advanced SEO techniques.
Google Adwords Keyword Planner: Find out exactly how many people are searching on Google each month for specific keywords.
SEMRush - tool provides exceptional competitive analysis, plotting top traffic-driving keywords for both your site and your competition's.
Alexa - Every SEO should regularly check Alexa's multitude of data. This site does more than just provide your traffic score, it also gives you valuable search analytics and keyword query info too.
Need some help getting started with SEO on your site? Executionists has a solid track record of providing full-service online marketing solutions. Some of our successes include:
Improved click-through-rates by 154% for a financial clients' website.
Increased the presence and popularity of one business blog from 2,000 visits a month, to over 30,000 visits per month over the course of one year.
Generated long-tail keyword campaign to increase visibility for e-commerce clients.
5 months after launching an SEO campaign, we were able to improve one client's bounce-rate from 84.5% to 17.5%.