The Benefits Of SEO For Small Business
Before diving fully into this course, it is important to first consider what a well-executed SEO has to offer your business, website, blog and you.
You have a lot to benefit from SEO and it is not an exaggeration to say that those businesses that don’t practice SEO are in far worse situation than companies who do.
It isn’t magic, though, and SEO alone is not going to transform your business from a shop downtown Lagos, to Globacom or Dangote. But neither is any other single form of marketing.
Nonetheless, SEO is a strategy that needs to be used no matter the type of business (eCommerce, Blog, Service firm, Product sales, Physical stall, Advertising agency, School, Makeup Artist, etc) that you have or the industry that you are trying to emerge into.
And that’s why we will consider some of the benefits of SEO and probably check out those things that SEO can’t do for your business.
8 Benefits of SEO for business
1) SEO Is Good For Branding:
Branding is the process of building an official identity for a company, group, or individual with the goal of creating a positive, memorable image in the mind of a consumer or supporter.
SEO helps your branding effort by enabling you to build good websites that will better appeal to your targeted audience.
Those reading your site would be able to strongly identify with your message, product, or service.
This is because both branding and SEO reinforce each other’s efforts to create a synchronized marketing front while ensuring that this message(content) reach the right audience.
2) Enables You To Reach More People:
People trust search engines and that’s where they go when they need to discover something new or get answers to questions.
When done rightly, SEO makes you the answer to that question.
Imagine for a second that you run an Event planning company and you have a well-optimized website. Someday, someone goes online to enter the search terms, “how to plan a birthday party?”
Fortunately, you have a post on your website titled “21 Things To Do When Planning A Surprise Birthday Party”.
This post pops up and the potential reader/customer visits your site to read your post. This person then goes to your site to read your other posts and finally ends up in your “contact us page.”
As a result of your good SEO efforts, you have achieved three things. The first of which is that you have been able to reach SOMEONE who is need of your services.
The second is … see the next point.
3) Help in finding new customers
The second is that you now have a potential customer. That’s what SEO helps you to achieve.
It is a fact that businesses that have a website grow twice as fast as businesses that don’t have a website and the number is steadily increasing.
It will help you gain better rankings in search engine result pages and this translates to more targeted visits and essentially to more customers.
Moreover, Google Analytics (which every website should have set up) can track valuable information about your visitors. Find out what browser they use, what key words, the technology they use, their geographical location, the days and times they are most active, how much time they spent on a page…on and on.
This information will help you discover your target market, hone your advertising, and determine strategies based on facts rather than just educated guesses. The better you know your customers, the better product or service you can provide, the higher the ROI.
4) Make Money Online:
This is the dream of most bloggers and online marketers. To make so much money and never have to work again.
SEO is the way to realizing that dream.
By investing in SEO, bloggers and other online businesses can convert traffic to revenue by using the available online income generators like affiliate marketing, Ad placement, Product development and sales, etc.
Moreover, SEO helps to drive targeted traffic that ensures that only those who will benefit from your site will visit it.
5) Helps to explore new markets:
Back to our story.
Let’s assume that your business is located in Abuja Nigeria but your customers reside in Lagos Nigeria. How would you have possibly reached this customer without spending so much on Tv or Radio adverts? But SEO has come to the rescue. You can reach potential customers living on the other end of the world.
A successful SEO campaign will help you find new markets and explore new economies.
6) It is cost-effective:
Compared to the costs associated with other forms of online marketing such as PPC advertising, social media marketing, or purchasing leads for an email marketing program, SEO is pretty cheap.
The reason for this is because SEO is an inbound marketing strategy. That is, it allows you to market to people when they are looking for the products and services your business provides. You don’t have to interrupt their favorite TV show, you don’t have to take up space on a page where they are reading a news article. You just show up when they are looking for businesses like yours. You don’t have to convince them they need your product or service; you just have to convince them that you are the right business to purchase from.
7) Beat your competitors:
You are into SEO but they aren’t. That makes all the difference.
Imagine two businesses in the same niche, selling similar products at similar prices. One of them has a search engine optimized website and the other one has a non-optimized web presence. Other things being equal, which company do you think is more likely to be successful? Which company will gain more customers from the web?
8) Open your business 24×7
Your website is going to be available always. No closing time. 24 hours per day, 7 days a week.
Isn’t that magical?
Now that we have engrossed ourselves with what SEO can do, it is important to emphasize certain myths about SEO. As earlier stated, the goal of SEO is to ensure delivery of relevant and informative content to your website visitors and that’s why this aspect is very important.
Let’s take note of the following:
1) No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google:
Beware of SEOs that claim to guarantee rankings, allege a “special relationship” with Google, or advertise a “priority submit” to Google.
2) SEO means more traffic, not more business. You have to convince your potential customers that you are the right man for the job.
3) It takes a while to start enjoying the full benefits of SEO. It is not a “get rich quick” scheme (You get the point?).
Now that we have set our expectations straight, let’s dive into the next lesson. Have fun.