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Why SEO is essential for small businesses

Written by: Justin Cook

Article Overview: Too many business owners have the "build it and they will come" mentality when having a website created to represent their products or services. Unfortunately, this results in the vast majority of small business websites severely under-performing. Most often, this is simply a case of not being optimized to be ranked and found in search engines; a.k.a. a lack of SEO.

Why SEO is essential for small businesses

Do you remember what it was like starting up your business (perhaps you're still in the start-up phase now)? Recall planning the storefront where you would showcase your products, or sell your services. You wanted business, and there was plenty to be had!

However, imagine that you had established your storefront in the middle of a huge forest. You didn't bother putting up a sign. In fact, there weren't even any decent roads to get to your store! How much business would you realistically expect? Perhaps a few people whom you’ve pitched to personally will call you to order your services. Over time, they may even refer someone else. But if your direct competitor is situated on a busy intersection, I can guarantee that he’s getting far more new business than you!

This illustration aptly depicts most small to medium sized businesses that have had a website developed. They expected that by building a website and placing upon it their sales pitch, enormous amounts of traffic and business will just pour in, (the Internet is global after all)! However, what they don’t realize is that without proper SEO, they may as well be building their store in the middle of a forest, because the many millions of internet users have a small chance of finding it amidst the forest of other sites out there.

SEO is short for Search Engine Optimization. It may seem complicated, but it's really these three basic steps:

1. Definition - Who are your target customers? What keyword phrases do they search for to find what they need?
2. Optimization - Does your website contain the needed content & structure to qualify (rank highly) for those search queries? Is there something that perhaps needs to change?
3. Promotion - Get the word out. Acquire links back to your site from authoritative, relevant websites, informing search engines that you truly provide what you claim to.

To emphasize the impact of proper SEO, I’ve dug up example. I consulted on a website dedicated to a specific pet-related niche. On average, the website accumulated about 30-40 visitors per day, it wasn’t all that profitable. After only 6 months of solid SEO, the site now ranks in the top 3 search results for a number of related terms. The result is that the site now receives over 800 visitors daily! Of course, the most important result is impact on bottom line - revenue generated by the site increased tenfold!

Would your business benefit from a large increase in visits from qualified visitors? Remember, SEO doesn’t just bring more traffic, it attracts to your website the people that are actively seeking your products/services. These are obviously more likely to convert to leads and sales; and there’s a good chance they wouldn’t have known of your brand otherwise. No doubt you're starting to see the power of SEO to drive more business through your website!

In following articles, I'll explain many of the concepts that form the basis of good SEO.

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Article Tags: products services, search engines, SEO



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