20 years ago, if you were planning on establishing a small business SEO would have just been an acronym. Today, it is arguably the most important aspect of starting a small business. 

But despite this, few small business owners and entrepreneurs seem to know exactly why SEO is important. 

That’s why we’ve highlighted these 11 reasons why SEO is vital to the success of small business ventures in 2020.

 

1. Why SEO Is Important: A Primary Source of Leads

 

Leads = Customers. This is a simple fact. The more people you can lead to looking at your business and offerings, the more paying customers you’ll create.

SEO is a primary source of lead generation in business operations today. It helps your website list highly on search engines, and who uses search engines? Approximately 92% of adult internet users today.

If you’re interested in further lead generation techniques, take a look at our previous post listing 36 ways you can generate more leads for your business.

 

2. High Conversion Rate

 

Its all well and good generating leads, but they have to turn into paying customers. Leads generated by SEO are more likely to be converted to customers than several other lead generation methods.

This is thanks to the sheer quantity of people who use search engines to find businesses. If you can appear high on a top search engine’s listings for particular services, you’ll likely be deemed one of the best providers of that service by internet users.

 

3. It’s Low Cost

 

Optimizing your SEOs, despite this above success, is a fairly low-cost marketing strategy. Imagine how much it would cost you to design, print, and distribute leaflets advertising your company.

SEO comes with none of those high costs. Thanks to that fact, small businesses can still generate leads and conversions whilst saving money on a marketing budget that would’ve been used on less effective methods.

 

4. It Builds Your Brand

 

As SEO allows links to your website, it can bring more customers directly into your brand. This can, in turn, help you to build your brand presence digitally.

It also encourages more people to interact with your brand. This is essential today where social media and other strategies are paramount to strong brand identity. 

 

5. It Attracts Desktop and Mobile Customers

 

SEO can generate leads from two core mediums. It can help your small business attract individuals on their desktop or laptop. But, crucially, it is also able to attract customers surfing the web on mobile.

This is an increasingly important part of SEOs, as mobile internet traffic has increased by 222% in the last 7 years. SEO strategies thereby allow you to tap into two of the biggest demographics of potential customers today.

 

6. It’s a Long-Term Strategy

 

With other marketing endeavors like billboards, they are present for a time and are then taken down. With your SEOs, it’s a long-term marketing strategy.

Unless Google crashes tomorrow (not likely), your ranking on Google searches will remain important. As such, anything you invest in your SEOs is an investment in the long-term standing of your small business. This doesn’t discredit short-term marketing approaches, but it is a more viable option for small businesses that are just starting out.

 

7. It Can Also Build Your Social Media Presence

 

By finding your website through SEOs, users will be more inclined to follow your social media platforms. 

This means that SEO optimization can not just build up the presence of your website, it can increase your social media following simultaneously. It is, therefore, an essential and worthwhile tool in building a comprehensive digital footprint for a small business.

 

8. It Directly Pushes You Over Your Competition

 

 

SEOs are a competitive medium; any time a business reaches a high ranking, another is pushed down the list.

Because of this, it serves as a way to both build your presence whilst pushing you ahead of your competition. Having a strong SEO presence is a fundamental way in which to appear better than your competitors in the eyes of your customers. 

 

9. The Data is Easy to Quantify and Analyze

 

SEO, once you get your head around it, provide fairly easy to understand data. You can see how many clicks you are generating, and how many of your competitors are generation.

Because of this, it is easy to set goals to optimize your SEOs and beat your competition. This ease of use means that it is vital for small business owners to learn the SEO ropes. The data can then be used to drive all your future marketing strategies.

 

10. It Legitimizes Your Company

 

Any website that is appearing high on search engine searches is legitimized in the eyes of the customer. This is because these websites are seen as the go-to websites for that particular search.

If your company is ranking high in your SEOs, it legitimizes your business in the eyes of future buyers. This helps not only build support for your brand but attract new purchasers to your business. It allows for a level of trust in your company before your website has even been viewed, which is truly priceless.

 

11. It Improves User Experience

 

Picture this; you know you want a new product, and have searched for it exactly. The company exists that has the exact product you’re looking for, but you can’t find it!

This is a dreadful user experience, that mostly isn’t the fault of the company you’re looking for, they just haven’t focused on their SEO. In working on your website’s search engine placement, you are directly improving the user experience for your customers. 

This will make them more likely to invest more money in your company as a result.

 

And So Much More!

 

These 11 points should give you an idea of why SEO is important to small businesses and why you should be investing in it today.

If you need help with your SEO, ShgSEO is the partner for you. We have several SEO packages catering for specific situations including YouTube SEO, Press Releases, Keyword Packages and so much more.

If you’re interested in finding out how ShgSEO can help you, contact us directly today.