General Local SEO SEO

Why is SEO important for business? What does SEO stand for in business? We hear these questions and similar ones time and time again.

Over the years since the first search engine was invented, SEO (search engine optimization) has been praised, misinterpreted, overly simplified and even occasionally stigmatized. So much so, that even the most savvy business owners do not fully grasp the importance of seo for business.

While a lot of people still think of SEO as some kind of hocus-pocus, those, who properly work SEO into their online marketing strategy, enjoy such benefits of SEO for business as increase in traffic and conversions, visibility, credibility, brand awareness and better understanding of the customer behavior.

Trusting SEO techniques and tried-and-tested practices, especially if they are not the generic ones, but customized specifically for your particular business, brings qualified leads and happy and returning customers to all types of businesses, from small local companies to huge international enterprises.

If you continue reading you will find the detailed answers to such questions as “Precisely why is SEO important for business?” and “How does SEO help business grow?”, “Why is local SEO good for small businesses?”, “Why is SEO important to B2B” etc.

You will clearly see the benefits of SEO for your business and even get some useful SEO tips and recommendations for the type of business you already run, or just plan on launching.

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SEO for Business: The Most Effective Way to Drive Highly Converting Traffic to Your Website

Traffic is one of the first advantages of SEO for business that comes to mind for most people. Traffic delivers leads, your potential customers. And the reason they find you – is because they are searching for services or products that you offer. If your page is optimized for instance for “IT Services” keywords, then the only way the user will find you is if they actually search for “IT Services”.

Put simply: would you rather set up a brick-and-mortar store on a back alley on an abandoned island or on a busy high street in a big city? SEO is what brings your virtual storefront to the Fifth Avenue of the Internet – first page of Google search results. Yes, being on this virtual Fifth Avenue doesn’t necessarily mean all the traffic that goes through your business will convert into actual money. But chances are – most of the passers-by will eventually become paying customers. That is, if you use SEO techniques and proper marketing strategy to interest the leads, make them stay on your business website and eventually convert into loyal customers that bring in more sales and new leads.

And the beauty of well done SEO is – your business gets quality leads, these people are likely to convert because they were searching for an offer like yours, they already have a need in products or services similar to yours. So if you can make your offer more interesting than the average competitor… Well, you get the picture.

This number of specialists cannot be wrong.

Visibility, credibility and brand awareness are vital to any business

70-80% of search engine users are only focusing on the organic results. This means that people do not want to click on the paid ads at the top of the search results, they want the organic results that come below the ads. In fact, according to New Media Campaigns, provided in the same marketing statistics report – organic is around 5.66 times better than paid search ads.

Ranking higher in organic search results establishes your brand credibility in the eyes of your potential customers, it signals to them that you are the best in your industry, not simply the one who paid for an ad. Do you even remember the last time you yourself actually went as far as the second page of SERP (search engine results page)?
Here’s an interesting graphic from Advanced Web Ranking for you:

See how Click Through Rate drops by position? Quite dramatic, if you ask us.

Moreover – Google, and other search engines along with it, take CTR (Click Through Rate) into account when ranking the web pages. Simply put – Google is likely to place a page with higher CTR at the top of the SERP because it will recognize such a page as more valuable to the searchers.

Getting to the top organic search positions for the keywords relevant to your business is virtually impossible without proper strategy, that is SEO, both on-site and off-site. This process will take time and effort, but while you are climbing to the top of SERP you slowly, but steadily, build brand awareness and get your potential customers’ trust.

Understanding your customers is crucial both for serving the existing ones best, and for finding new ones

Another benefit of SEO for business we’ve mentioned in the beginning is better understanding of the customer behavior. SEO comes hand in hand with trackable and clear results. Tracking every aspect of your website performance, traffic statistics, conversion rates and other results of your SEO efforts, allows you to clearly see what your customers need and look for, how they behave and why.

Thus you get an opportunity to analyze your work and adapt your strategy accordingly. And what’s more important – create a flawless user experience. Why do we mention user experience here at all, isn’t it a part of design?

The thing is – the Internet evolves very fast, how we use it changes rapidly. For instance – very recently mobile use outnumbered desktop for the first time.

Google has predicted this quite some time ago and has already updated the algorithm to ignore unresponsive websites in the mobile SERPs, and just a few months ago they rolled out mobile-first indexing.

So if your online presence is not responsive you are likely losing quite a bit of potential leads and your actual customers as well. This is just one example of how user experience affects traffic and ROI, which are, after all, the ultimate SEO goals.

Every business wants outstanding organic ranking, visibility and all the perks that come with those. Flawless user experience has quite a lot to do with getting there; and quality SEO helps create, incorporate and leverage it to work in your favor.

Is SEO important for every business?

Now that we have established at least some understanding of the importance of SEO to a business you might still have questions like these: Is SEO important to every business? Do you need to invest in SEO even if your business is not actually done online?

The simple answers are: yes and yes, you do. But let’s expand a bit.

Our approach to SEO, the techniques we use and goals we focus on largely depend on type of business, size of business and industry, or niche, your business is in.

The importance of SEO for small business

There’s over 30 million small businesses in the US. But the studies show that over 20% of those will fail in their first year in business, over 30% will die out in their second year of business, and of those who survived the first two years 50% are likely to fail in their fifth year running. And if you think that you dodged a bullet on you 6th year, well… another 70% will go out of business after 10 years on the market.

Meanwhile, only about 64% of small businesses have an online presence. Which looks like lost opportunities if we remember that over 90% of all the online experiences start with a search via Google or other search engines. But if you do have a small business website these stats simply mean less competition and more opportunities for you.

Importance of SEO for small business is quite serious. You see, when you are running a small operation you have to compete furiously not only with other small businesses, but with corporations as well. The first ones might be older, more reputable and better trusted by customers with marketing budgets and vast reach.

SEO tips for small businesses

There are universal optimization tactics every small business should implement if it aims at online success, no matter what industry the business is in. Here’s just a couple of SEO tips for a small business owner:

Get to know your target audience
Learn what your audience wants and looks for by analysing the current market and its trends, analysing your competitors, then make sure your website caters to those wants and needs precisely.
Perform highly targeted keyword research
Long gone are the days when you could overstuff a page with keywords and get to the top of SERPs overnight. Google algorithms have no interest in how much keywords you cram on your pages, they have an interest in understanding if the information you provide is relevant to what their users are looking for. Therefore each page on your website has to target specific ‘cluster’ or combination of keywords to avoid keyword cannibalization and provide make sure that search engine can identify the main topic of your page. Despite the fact that you are using keywords, ensure that your content is relevant, engaging with proper subheading structure.
Make sure your page speed is up to standards
40% of people abandon a website that takes more than 3 seconds to load. As a small business you simply cannot afford to lose this much.
Stay up to date with the changes in search engines’ algorithms and SEO trends
Or entrust your SEO to professionals. You can spend your time in monitoring the changes and trends in SEO, find what works for your particular small business the hard way by trial and error. Or you can do your thing, create your product and let the SEO professionals do the hard stuff for you. How to choose the best SEO company for small business? Good news, guys – you’ve just found one.

How much does SEO cost for small business?

SEO is a very cost-effective way for a small business to reach its goals more efficiently and stay among those 30% of small businesses that eventually thrive. Average cost of SEO for small business will vary from company to company and will depend on what goals you want to reach and what tactics are going to be implemented. If you want a more definite answer – Get a quote
We adapt our strategies to client’s goals, budget and preferences. We work to get results and grow your business and revenue. Therefore we can work with your budget and increase our efforts gradually as your revenue grows.

Why is SEO important for local business?

Out of all searches on Google 46% are local, out of those local results 92% of searchers picked businesses found on the first page of SERPs and averagely 70% of customers choose a store based on the information they found online.

And here’s a great insight for you – only about 54% of local stores have claimed their local listing on Google. This is one of the top reasons why local SEO is awesome to get new customers. And why local SEO for small business works so well, you simply have far less competition if you properly use the tools and tactics to your advantage.

Local SEO, as any other branch of SEO, entails both on-page and off-page activities.

SEO tips for local business

Claim your Google My Business profile
It’s free and it will help you get into the infamous Local 3 Pack. If you are not familiar – Local 3 Pack appears right after the paid ads in local SERPs and shows the top 3 of the most relevant businesses on the map. There are pretty pictures, addresses, ratings, reviews and other stuff your customers want to see when they look for a local business.
Local citations are hugely important for your local business
Local citations, or mentions of your business on various business directories are major ranking signals for the search engines too. These are the backlinks of local SEO. So make sure to have your business listed on all of the possible Yelps and Yahoo! Locals. And make sure your NAP (name, address and phone) is consistent throughout all of these mentions.
Optimize for Local Keywords
More often than not potential customers use the location for their search: ‘IT Services Toronto’, ‘organic store New York’ etc. Identify all the local keywords through in-depth keyword research. Use only those that are applicable to your business/services/location by analysing ‘user intent’. For instance, if you offer local services, you need to target only those areas that you serve. For example ‘cleaning services in New Jersey’ or ‘cleaning services in Hoboken’. Depending on the particular case, you could create location-specific landing pages.

In case you still wonder – the quite obvious answer is: SEO is important to all sizes of businesses, and if you do your business locally then local SEO is what you have to invest in, if you want to outperform the competition.

How much will local SEO cost you?

As with everything in life – the price depends on a lot of factors. If you only want to get your business to the Local 3 Pack and have already done your on-site optimization yourself it will be one sum. If you want an SEO specialist to do it all and monitor the SEO strategy throughout the lifetime of your project it will be an entirely different sum. Good news is – we can come up with an SEO solution for every budget. So let’s chat about your small business.

Why is SEO important for national business?

SEO for national or international businesses depends on the niche and the industry, making it crucial for any strategy to be customly developed for each company to avoid unnecessary costs and efforts. However, there are certain tips that are applicable to most businesses targeting one country, more than one country, or certain languages globally.

National SEO differences with local in the ways used to reach the ultimate goals. Where there’s local citations, structured data and Google My Business profile in local SEO, there’s wider and more generic keywords targeted, more focus on branding, and proper link-building in national SEO.

Do I need local SEO to do national SEO?

If you have this question then your business probably has a number of brick-and-mortar locations across the country. We would suggest combining local and national SEO approaches and use them both to leverage maximum results.

When national SEO is better than local?

National SEO is the best solution for a business that operates online and is not tied to any physical location within one country and/or language. Those businesses that operate internationally will need to incorporate multilingual & international SEO.

If you are not sure if you should focus on local SEO or national – send us a message, we will tailor the best SEO approach for your particular business.

Tips for a national SEO campaign

Apply Google Trends
Google Trends is a very valuable research tool for any type of SEO, but it might bring most value to a nation-wide business. This amazing tool allows you to see how your target keywords perform over time, and you can see where they are being most searched. So in the end you can optimize your landing pages to reach the target audience with this data
Build quality backlinks
In the ideal world lots of websites will link to yours without you having to ask them, just because your content and your product or service is the best. But the world is not ideal, and there’s a lot of competition. And if you do not promote your content how would anyone be able to see it? So it comes to you and hours of outreaching to bloggers, journalists and digital influencers that might be interested in what you have to offer. This does take a lot of time, but it pays off big time too. Not only do you get quality backlinks if you succeed (which are a very valuable ranking factor), you also build rapport with important people that can help you out in the future.
Do not ignore low search volume keywords
If your business works within a certain niche (for instance a SaaS company, Technology company or MSP) do not ignore the low search volume keywords with commercial intent. A lot of businesses make a mistake of using only broad high search volume keywords. Firstly, it can be very hard to compete for these keywords on a national or international level. These keywords should be part of your long-term strategy because it will take time for onsite and offsite optimization while you gradually increase the domain authority. Secondly, while broader keywords might deliver more traffic, however more traffic does not equal more conversions. Although there might be less searches for ‘buy automation dashboard wordpress’, then for just ‘automation dashboard’, it is more likely that the first one will get more conversion due to a very specific requirements with commercial intent. When performing keyword research you have to leverage a wide range of opportunities and take into account both short and long-term goals.
Optimize each page for certain keyword clusters
Due to the increased competition when targeting national search, you need to be very thorough with onsite optimization. Ensure that each page targets certain set of niche keywords to avoid keyword cannibalization and ensure that search engines have a clear indication of the main topic of each page. Optimizing different pages for the same set of keywords, forces the pages to compete against each other, reducing the relevance of each. Therefore you need to have a clear website structure in mind, with certain keywords allocated to each page, properly optimized but natural page titles, H1-H3 subheadings and engaging content that is written with the ‘user intent’ in mind based on carefully evaluated user profile.

The importance of SEO for mid to large enterprises

In our rapidly moving world online market is evolving very fast. Large scale companies often find themselves lost when it comes to reaching the modern audience. You have to be flexible and open to change, the size and structure of big companies often plays against them.

Then there’s the issue with the huge number of pages an enterprise business website might have, and the complex website structures catering to a wide range of locations and languages is if one of the challenges for Enterprise SEO.

Optimizing a huge number of pages according to SEO guidelines requires the right level of skill, dedication and experience. With various established entreprise companies reporting loss in revenue, it becomes evident that even the large players need to stay up-to-date with today’s best practices. Bringing the on-page SEO up to date might be just the right thing that’ll extend the reach and increase the revenue.

How enterprise SEO will help your company?

Better Rankings, More Exposure & ORM
Search Engine Optimization will help you gain authority and credibility, reach out to more audience while at the same time maintaining positive online reputation and presence. Looking out for your brand messaging is important for any company, big or small. Being a ‘big’ company is no longer good enough in today’s highly digitalized world. On the contrary, all the successful companies have strong web presence.
Local citations are hugely important for your local business
Local citations, or mentions of your business on various business directories are major ranking signals for the search engines too. These are the backlinks of local SEO. So make sure to have your business listed on all of the possible Yelps and Yahoo! Locals. And make sure your NAP (name, address and phone) is consistent throughout all of these mentions.
Nurturing the audience
Maintain authority and credibility, create a “face” for your business the public can relate to, and improve your digital reach. Thus making sure your enterprise does not only preserve its rankings, but improves them. One huge benefit of enterprise SEO is the company’s improved relations with the audience, which allows to eventually convert the target audience into loyal customers and brand ambassadors.

How much does enterprise SEO cost?

Enterprise-level SEO services prices completely depend on the website, its current condition and requirements. Perhaps you have great online presence for certain segment of your website, and lack in one or two niches that you specialize in. Or you might have a huge website which is out-of-date, not optimized and have never really done any search engine optimization work. Therefore each client needs an individual approach with custom-tailored strategy. The costs will depend on the amount of work the SEO specialists will need to do.

So, if you are interested in an enterprise SEO campaign built for your company, simply request a quote.

The importance of SEO for B2B companies

Why do B2B companies need SEO? Well, 71% of B2B researchers start the research with a generic online search, while 77% of B2B buyers say they will consider speaking to a salesperson only after they do their own research online. B2B influencers on average do 12 searches before they visit a specific business website.

Importance of SEO for B2B is quite significant these days. Researches show that more and more decision makers in B2B are millennials, and millenials rely on online research far more than the previous generations. The online world evolves rapidly, and no business can survive without evolving with it.

SEO tips for b2b companies

Rely on low search volume keywords more
B2b world is much smaller than b2c, you can not expect to have 50000 searches for your targeted keywords, there will probably be more like 15. Focusing on high value, but low volume keywords is crucial here.
Nurture your reviews
B2b buyers have always had a longer process of making a decision. Studies show that over 60% of b2b buyers prefered looking for third-party review websites before actually approaching a business. Various round-ups, expert opinions on reputable websites delivered by your company, mentions of your company will not only form a positive perception of your company as a trusted and up-to-date business, but will also deliver much needed natural backlinks to improve your rankings.
Cater to multiple decision makers
B2b transactions are usually big investments, more often than not they are long-term arrangements, not one-time purchases. There rarely is a one person that makes a decision to undertake such an investment. There are managers, executives, various CEOs and CFOs involved. And each of them will approach a decision from different angles, so they will be searching with different queries. A well-done b2b SEO campaign will take various verticals of decision makers into consideration.

Price of SEO for B2B

SEO b2b spend often is the drawback that holds many companies back. But the truth is – SEO is one of the very few sustainable options for a b2b company to create an interest for the target audience, generate leads and increase conversions.

The importance of SEO for eCommerce

Why do eCommerce websites need SEO, is SEO necessary for an eCommerce site? The simple answer is – absolutely. To illustrate the importance of SEO in eCommerce let’s just look at a few numbers again: 67% of millennials say they prefer online shopping to brick-and-mortar stores. 62% of people will consult a search engine to research a product they want to buy, as opposed to only 29% willing to talk to a salesperson about it, 43% of all traffic to eCommerce websites is organic Google search traffic and the top 5 results of SERPs get 67% of all the clicks.

These are just a few of the reasons your eCommerce site needs SEO services. It’s a tough and long road to get to those top 5 positions with a well executed SEO campaign in motion, it is virtually impossible to get there without SEO, no matter how awesome the products you sell are. How long it takes SEO to get traffic to your eCommerce project depends on many factors, but you can expect to see results within 3-6 months. But remember – SEO results grow over time. The sooner you start the sooner you’ll see results.

How does SEO help eCommerce?

Here’s a devastating number for you to consider – Amazon dominates the US online sales with 34% of the market owned by the online retail giant, it is expected to grow to 50% by 2021.

You can not hope to become a new Amazon, you are simply too late to the party. But with good SEO campaign by your side you can get your piece of pie by helping the consumers make better decisions, giving them a way to find your awesome products and providing them with something good to share with their friends and family. With SEO and modern marketing you can create an eCommerce business with a human face, something easier to relate to than a giant like Amazon.

Best SEO tips for eCommerce sites

SSL
Secure Sockets Layer or SSL, is a security technology that establishes an encrypted connection between a server and a browser. All the data that goes through such a connection remains private. These days, with all the security breach scandals out there in the media, SSL is essential for any online presence. It is, however, a life and death situation for an eCommerce website. 84% of consumers will not finalise a purchase if the website is not secured with SSL.
Optimize your images
eCommerce websites are always full of images, and it is good for customers to be able to see a product from all the possible angles and in use. Google, however, does not see the images. You have to tell the search engine what the image is about, so make sure all the images on your eCommerce website have alt tags and file names that describe the images properly and include your target keywords. And while we are speaking about images – they take up a lot of space and slow down the loading time significantly, so make sure to optimize the pictures size as much as possible. Remember – 40% of people abandon a website that takes more than 3 seconds to load
Product pages and landing pages have to be unique
Never ever simply copy the manufacturer’s product descriptions. Your product pages have to have unique content, not even 1% of it duplicated.
‘Categorize’ your keyword research
Although you might not have thousands of products that you are selling, creating targeted categories which will display various sets of products is a ‘go to’ strategy for most eCommerce businesses out there. For example, you are selling shoes. Then you discover in your keyword research that people look for ‘running shoes’ and ‘sports shoes’. Although your ‘sports shoes’ category will feature some of the same products like the ‘running shoes’ category, it is still crucial to have that category targeting specific ‘keyword cluster’.
Watch out for the ‘unwanted pages’
Unwanted pages that are indexed by Google can create plenty of issues like thin content, content duplication, content overlaps. A lot of ecommerce websites have tag pages, paginated pages or pages with dynamic URL parameters. Although it will not land you a penalty, websites which take care of these pages and de-index those that carry no value from customer or search engine point of view generally perform much better.

How much does monthly eCommerce SEO cost?

The question of price is an important one, especially if you run a new online store that does not deliver much revenue yet. An average SEO cost can go from nothing if you content yourself with limited on-site optimization done, to thousands per month if you unfold a huge SEO campaign for a large ecommerce store. What it does cost to do SEO on a new eCommerce website is effort and lots of research, and it all eventually pays off in conversions.

If you want to know an exact sum to do SEO for your particular project – get a free quote, we can come up with a perfect SEO solution for every budget.

Industry Specific SEO Expertise

Reasons why SEO is important for business are quite extensive, the approach to SEO is quite important too. No two SEO campaigns are exactly the same. Well, they shouldn’t be. Every business falls into a niche, or industry if you will. And every industry has its own target audience and its own terminology, its specific goals and, most importantly, its specific ranking factors. How SEO helps your business largely depends on how well the SEO specialist is familiar with your industry.

Properly executed SEO entails an extensive industry research that helps find where the prospective customers tend to gather to exchange opinions on a business, where they are more likely to look for reviews, what keywords are they going to use to look for a product or service, what specific options and features might they be interested in. This is what industry specific SEO expertise is meant for.

Trusting SEO experts who have had their fair share of experience in your niche or industry will deliver the results much sooner.

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