Digital spaces are increasingly competitive for businesses, especially for local and small businesses. With so many competitors vying for limited market share, it can be difficult to stand out from the crowd and effectively beat larger businesses with larger budgets.
When leveraged correctly, however, the internet can be a great equalizer for small businesses looking to edge out their competition. Through search engine optimization (SEO), it’s possible to increase both your visibility and credibility, which can help persuade potential customers to choose your business over others. This blog takes a dive into what SEO is, why it’s especially important for small and local businesses, and steps you can take to improve yours. Read on to learn more!
SEO: How Customers Find You
SEO is one of those marketing buzzwords that gets tossed around a lot, but few seem to understand everything it entails. It is the process of improving your website so it appears higher on the list of search results when people are looking for businesses like yours.
For example, if you were to search for industrial fabricators in a nearby city, Google would populate a list of results. The order in which these appear isn’t random; it’s based on an algorithm that determines which websites are most likely to be relevant to the user performing the search. Your business needs to be appearing at or near the top of these results: the first five results of a search receive the overwhelming majority of total traffic. That’s why it’s important to optimize your site and appear above your competitors!
How Small and Local Businesses Can Benefit
The internet is a coliseum full of businesses fighting for the patronage of potential customers. In this cutthroat environment, it may stand to reason that small businesses are always trampled underfoot by larger businesses that simply have more money to spend on marketing. This isn’t the case, though!
It’s a David and Goliath story: armed with nothing more than a few site improvements, it’s possible for small businesses to feel much larger than competitors. Even with minimal capital investments, small businesses can optimize their website and take advantage of Google’s algorithm.
SEO improvements can be incredibly cost effective and can pay off quickly in increased site traffic. It becomes easier to reach new customers and untapped segments of the market and gives your business a sense of legitimacy – two things that are invaluable to businesses trying to carve out market share.
How to Improve your SEO
Your SEO score is determined by Google’s algorithm. After checking out your site, Google identifies your site’s pros and cons to see how relevant your site is. For instance, Google values your site’s security, size, loading speed, mobile-friendliness, and keyword density. If your site is large, full of relevant keywords, and is technically optimized, it’s likely Google will deliver it to more people. Conversely, if your site is small, outdated, and built with poorly written content, the algorithm will almost certainly shuffle you to the bottom of the results.
Some changes are easier to make than others. For instance, keeping your site’s plugins updated is an easy way to keep your score high, and consistently publishing blogs is another way to quickly expand your site’s size and increase the density of certain keywords. Other changes, such as graphics overhauls, backlinks, and adding alt text and tags can be more complicated and require a higher level of training.
By investing in your website, your business, regardless of size, can compete online. All you need is a solid marketing plan! Your success stems from your site’s strength, so be sure you devote the appropriate amount of time and energy to optimizing it.
Whether you’re looking to make some changes to your current site or build a new one from scratch, the team at Baer Performance Marketing can help your small business succeed! Take advantage of our FREE SEO REPORT found on our homepage, and get in touch with us to take your site to the next level.
