Small businesses face big challenges when trying to first break into the digital marketing scene. There are sometimes thousands of other brands competing for the attention of the same market, so getting your small business to stand out can be an intimidating undertaking.
Corporations that have an established presence may seem to have cornered the market, but there are ways to get the name of even the smallest business out there into the digital world.
One of the best ways for businesses to get a foothold in their online market is by getting help with SEO. SEO, or search engine optimization, is a vital part of establishing an online presence and increasing business success overall.
Check out some of the information below on why SEO is important and what tools are out there that can help improve it.
Why You Need SEO for Your Business
SEO may seem like a buzzword for digital marketers, but it is a crucial element in the success of today’s businesses of all sizes. Even the largest companies have to continually work on search engine rankings to stay relevant.
Fortunately for the little guy, first-page rankings in searches cannot be bought.
Search engines want to provide results that the user finds valuable. For smaller businesses, that means having a functional website offering optimized content that users find interesting is key to improving their search rankings.
Better search rankings translate to more website traffic and better business even if the competition is fierce.
Why SEO Can Be So Challenging
Even the most experienced marketing professional will admit that SEO can be difficult.
The reason it is such a challenge is that the landscape is constantly changing. Search engine algorithms are updated based on how users interact with sites and how they perform searches, and people are continually changing their digital habits.
For example, early in the days of SEO, marketers could write a blog post and stuff it full of the keyword they thought that people would use to perform searches.
The result was content that was obviously just a marketing tool and offered users no real value, so they spent no time on those pages.
To help improve the value that searchers found in results, search engines updated their algorithms to account for things like how long a person stayed on a web page, whether they clicked through the site to other pages, and whether other sites referenced information found on the original website.
In short, this means that SEO strategies that worked a year ago may not work today.
Similarly, the ones that work today may not be useful in six months. For example, as people transition to using voice devices like Alexa to perform searches, the terms they use will change and marketers will need to adapt their content accordingly.
SEO Tools That Can Help
As complex as that sounds, there are tools available to help businesses manage these constant changes.
Google Analytics is a free tool that is powered by Google and offers reports on which marketing and SEO strategies offer the best results. Google Analytics breaks down the results so business owners can see which tactics drive website traffic versus which ones drive leads or conversions.
Another excellent tool from Google is called Google Search Console.
This free SEO tool helps businesses find errors on their website that will hurt their rankings.
It also offers important insights into its performance, such as the number of times the page showed up in the results for a search based on the keyword used and how many clicks per keyword the site has received.
The Bottom Line
SEO is not a straightforward concept, but that doesn’t mean small businesses are out of luck. There are professional services available to help them get ahead on optimizing their website’s content so the workload doesn’t seem so overwhelming.
With a little outside help and a strong strategy, even small businesses can earn a spot on the first page of search results.