Key Benefits of SEO

Do you want to boost your reputation as an authority, build a relationship with your audience and promote your business efficiently? Then read through this article to learn about the key benefits of SEO for your small business website.

A fully optimised and responsive website builds your business and improves credibility. And in the age of the internet where the competition grows every day and paid advertising isn't slowing down, SEO is a great tool to enhance your online presence.

How SEO Improves Your Website Visibility

There is no point in having a beautiful and practical website if your customers can't reach you. A solid SEO strategy is simply necessary for a business of any size. It optimises your website to rank high in search engines. And it increases visibility and raises your organic presence through a clear keyword strategy, backlinks, semantic text and on-page content with a single goal - to increase website traffic and get your small business on the map.

And there is one more important thing to consider. If you are a small business owner with a low budget, SEO is the most cost-effective marketing tactic out there! You may want to invest in paid advertising to get more immediate results. But if you need to stick to your budget and constantly get traffic to your website, SEO is a much more sensible approach.

The only cost of this is that you may need to wait a little longer to start seeing the results. But ultimately, the quality of your traffic will be far better. What are the other key benefits of SEO for small business?

1) User-Friendly Website

SEO isn't just about optimising for search engines. User experience is equally as important because when your visitors are happy, search engines are happy as well (the ultimate goal of search engines is to serve high-quality information to the users.) So what are the main elements of a user-friendly website? 

Optimising your website to be well-structured and clean has an impact on how much time your customers spend there. Therefore, it should be easy and simple to navigate your site with reasonably high load speed. Bounce rates are normal (and can also be a good sign!) but a good SEO campaign is able to reduce them. 

The second important thing is to come up with content that's easy to digest and answers your customer's questions. If they find useful and well-researched information, they will stay on your site and keep coming back. When it comes to creating relevant content for potential customers, it's good to think about it as a long-term investment. For this, there simply must be at least a basic content marketing strategy to ensure your content has a purpose.

And then there is mobile optimisation. In 2019, more than 60% of the searches in Google are coming from mobile devices. Responsive design, correct formatting and readable fonts all contribute to a mobile-friendly website. 

A well-structured site, meaningful content and responsive design are the main signals search engines look for when analysing your website's relevancy in regards to user-friendliness.

2) SEO Brings Brand Awareness

The obvious fact is that the visitors trust brands that rank in top positions of Google search results and most of them don't go past page 1. The role of SEO in a brand's inbound strategy is crucial because every search starts in the discovery stage. You want to make sure that when users search for the keywords related to your business, they end up on your website. 

The good thing about this is that you can optimise your content for keywords that you want to be associated with your brand most. This gives you a lot of room to shape your brand image. Careful keyword research also helps to target niche audiences. Knowing who's your customer and focusing your efforts to dominate a very specific customer segment can be very helpful for small businesses owners.

Finally, local SEO has an increasing potential because it allows you to get your small business in front of local customers without going head-to-head with big companies in your field. 

Here are some key stats for local SEO:

• 78% of a local-based search on mobile ends up in the purchase.
• 50% of people who did a local search on their phone went to the physical store within one day.
• 71% of users search the website online first before visiting its local store in person.

3) More Traffic = More Customers

Organic search is often the primary source of website traffic and the essential element of the buyer funnel. People searching for the specific solution of your business have the potential to turn into paying customers. 

And if you spent time optimising your page to be fast and responsive while addressing customer's needs, the chances are your conversion rates will rise significantly. Here are a few tips on increasing organic traffic and making the most out of SEO.

• Optimise for your readers, not Google. Understanding your buyer persona comes before anything else. Think about your customer's needs and pain points. Your SEO will naturally improve if you come up with content centred around a solution to the customers' problems and their search queries.

• Regular blogging allows you to cover all the topics important to your business. Anything from in-depth guides to “how-to” articles or posts about your industry boosts online visibility and positions your business as a thought leader. Along with the blog, research reports, video/motion graphics and white papers all generate high conversion rates.

• Edit your URL, page title and meta description. These three on-page elements are important to get right so Google knows what you are talking about. Page titles should ideally include the search term for which the website was optimised. A meta description is about the content of the page and should have no more than 300 characters.

Conclusion

As a small business owner with a limited budget, you may be uncertain when investing in SEO for the first time - it can take some time and effort to get right. But it isn't optional anymore. If you want an optimised and up to date website that generates traffic and brings you more paying customers, then SEO is an absolute must. 

For a comprehensive search engine strategy to increase search volume for your business, book a consultation with BIAS today.