All businesses today need internet exposure to grow, and if your business doesn’t do so, you could end up fighting to survive. One of the simplest ways to gain attention on the internet is by ensuring that your website gets listed in the primary search results. And here comes the important role of SEO in your small business.
What is SEO?
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. Using the free (also called organic, natural, or even editorial) search results on a search engine is a process that helps you get traffic to your website.
Google, Yahoo, and Bing are some of the most popular search engines, and each of them has something called primary search results. When you type a keyword in the search bar, the first set of results that appear are the primary search results. These search results are thrown out based on what the search engine has deemed to be most relevant to your search.
SEO’s purpose is to increase not just the quantity, but also the quality of traffic that visits your website.
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How Does SEO Work?
Search engines use crawlers that gather information about the content they can find on the internet. Crawlers are programs that systematically goes through the internet to create an index of data. That index is passed through an algorithm that matches the data gathered to your search query.
Search engines rank web pages based on specific criteria, each of which given by weight. Here are some of the top criteria:
Relevance: If you type “party planners in my area”, then the first thing the search engines will do is look for webpages that have words matching your keywords.
Authority: This is the search engine’s way of verifying if the content on a web page is trustworthy and accurate. So how is authority determined? By seeing how many other pages get linked to that web page – these are called backlinks. Thus, the more links a page has, the higher its ranking will be.
Usefulness: Usefulness is measured by User Experience Signals, which is how users have reacted to search results. So, if people like a search result, that website will get a significant boost in its ranking.
Many other metrics are used to decide how highly ranked a web page will be, but these three are the main ones.
Why is SEO Important?
There is a straightforward reason why SEO is so important – it is a massive source of traffic for websites!
Why are Small Businesses Willing to Pay for SEO Services?
Because SEO-friendly pages get so much traffic, it is essential to get it right. And that’s where services from SEO companies come in. Their job is to ensure that your search ranking goes up. When someone types in keywords related to your business, then your web page can be right there on top!
The first thing that SEO services do is research precisely what your customer inputs as keywords. And to do so, they first build your customer persona – the kind of customer who will buy your product or service.
Then, they do the keyword research to figure out which keywords and phrases will be the most impactful for your web page.
And finally, they create content that incorporates all the metrics that are most likely to get you to that first results page on search engines.
Talking about the complexity in the execution of SEO tasks, Mr. Gerrid Smith, the CEO of goblackfin.com mentioned in his recent interview –
“It sounds straightforward, but a lot of research work and working hours go into creating SEO-friendly web pages. After all, everyone wants their small business to be on the first search results page, so competition is intense.”
What are the Advantages of Using SEO for Small Businesses?
The impact SEO can have on small businesses is immense. As a matter of fact, SEO can turn the fortune of small business holders. The primary problem for small businesses is the lack of customers. They want to gain new customers but fail to do so because they do not have the marketing budget. At this juncture, SEO comes in as a savior for small businesses. Here are some of the advantages a small business could gain by using SEO.
1. Get Permanent Results
2. Know Your Customer’s Tendencies Better
3. Stay a Step Ahead of the Competition
4. Increase the Trust Factor for Your Products or Service
5. Reach New Markets Easily
6. Affordable Way of Getting Organic Traffic
7. Give a Fight to the Industry Giants
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The Bottom Line
Finally, SEO is one thing that has created a balance in the market and gave small businesses a chance to compete and survive against the industry giants. Therefore, to grow your business and survive in the market, SEO is the primary thing that you need. You should understand that only the fittest will survive and the importance of SEO in making you the most suitable is enormous.