Ahhh my small business owners. My do-it-all mamas. My crafty, spiritual CEOs. My ever-juggling entrepreneurs. Do you ever feel like you are on a treadmill trying to keep up with the different marketing trends and strategies? I feel you. I am you. However, there is one slight difference. I now understand the importance of SEO in small businesses.
Chasing my tail trying to keep up with companies that had employees handling just one of the many hats I wear. I didn’t realise it was unsustainable or unrealistic until I had my first burnout. I thought to myself, there has to be a better way?! I can’t keep doing this!
It was when I was working on other business’s marketing needs that I learned the value of search engine optimisation. If I just tweak this web page or write a blog about this topic, I could future-proof their business. I of course then went down a rabbit hole, and am now an SEO convert.
This blog is not here to shame or to make you feel bad for not looking at SEO sooner. It’s here to empower you and give you the facts you need to make decisions on where you take your business digitally.
So are you ready to see why you should bother? Let’s dive into the low down on the importance of SEO for small businesses.
Future-proofing your business
Firstly, I’m not here to bash social media, SEO’s glamorous cousin has its place, but it’s not the be-all and end-all. It even has its own SEO element to it (hello searchable hashtags and keywords). BUT I’m here to highlight the significance search engine optimisation has for the digital side of your business.
Setting your business’s website up with a good base of SEO means you could be setting yourself up for years to come. Here’s a juicy statistic that might get those brain-cogs whirring. From a 13-month study of 28,000 websites that SemRush conducted, more than 50% of those websites didn’t have at least one backlink, which meant…they NEVER featured on the first page of Google results once, whereas the other 40-odd did. Nuts, right? If any of those businesses had just ONE backlink, they may have stood a chance at being seen in the top results. And all that is, is a link from another site to your own. No hours of content creation, just a link being placed on another website, and it forever more helps your business.
Increase your digital footprint
Blogging is definitely not dead. Long in-depth content is in. What not only Google but everyone who types something in the search bar is looking for is authoritative, detailed, and educational information. So, why don’t you provide it? You are an expert in your field, let’s tell people. Then while you are at it, let's increase your digital footprint. Get your domain authority up, and start building those stats. The more you do this, the more you will attract.
Let me put it in a different way via the form of numbers (we love numbers around here):
Businesses that have blogs on average receive 67% MORE leads than those who don’t (hubspot)
Those savvy business owners that have those said blogs get 55% MORE website visitors than those who don’t (hubspot)
70% of the people (yes your people) prefer to learn about a business through an article than an ad (do you hear savings?) (hubspot)
Essentially, the more you give your website - the more the internet gods give back. So, set aside a good chunk of time and start writing.
SEO for small businesses gives us a chance
We small guys will never be able to compete with the goliaths of our chosen industry. We may not have the budget to hire teams of digital marketers who spend their days (maybe nights) optimising their digital assets, BUT - that’s okay. Utilising SEO could give you a bit of a sneaky leg up. Instead of being waaaaay down the search results, you could be on the first page with the big guys and SOMETIMES beat them. How does that sound? You could be part of the crew who receive on average 19 times more clicks than those paid ad fellas over there (SemRush).
It’s FREE!
Okay well, it might not be totally free, because your time is valuable, and If you want to get to the top but you decide this is not the mountain you want to climb, then you will have to pay some data-loving nerd to help you do it (oh you know like me). BUT it does create organic reach for your business. Instead of having to pay for the content and then pay again for the ad spend, you create the content and bam! It gets to work while you sleep, and it continues to work and work and work. It’s like your digital workhorse, which we small business owners love. It’s not just us working hard, so is your website’s SEO!
Save money and resources
One of the biggest bonuses I see from SEO is the amount of money and resources it saves you. You don’t need to keep relying on external platforms or trying to chase the current trends to matter. You can do it all in your small space of the big world wide web. Simply by tweaking your website to function, and sell who you are and what you do, better. You are showing EVERYONE your authority. That what you do matters.
Be a part of the 8.5 Billion
On average EVERYDAY Google performs 99,000 queries per second. PER SECOND (just for those people at the back) this equates to an average of 8.5 Billion searches per DAY (Forbes). That number blows my mind every time I read it. Wild. BUT what's even wilder, is if SEO is not part of your digital marketing strategy…You are getting left behind. Literally.
This is your call to action as a small business owner to take the digital part of your business seriously. Don’t leave it to collect dust.
You may not be a multi-billion dollar corporation, but you matter and there are people out there looking for you. So…what are you waiting for? I believe you’ve got this, but Your SEO Sista is always here to help.
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