Whenever I ask the members of my Facebook group what they need help with the most, SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) comes up top every single time. And I totally get why, because SEO for small businesses is an essential part of any good marketing strategy these days. But for many people, SEO is like learning a whole new language. It can feel overwhelming, the language confusing, and it can be a massive barrier that stops them from growing their business.

If this sounds like you, you’re in the right place.

Whilst I won’t be teaching you how to use SEO in your blog posts in this particular article, I will be showing you why SEO is important for small businesses and help you to get a better understanding of it. Because I personally think it’s important to know why you’re doing something before you actually do it.

And if you are interested in learning more about how to optimise your blog posts, my SEO checklist is coming soon. Let me know in the comments if you’d like to be added to the waitlist to find out more.

In the meantime, here are 10 reasons why SEO for small businesses is key to their growth:

1. SEO Improves Your Online Visibility

When someone searches for something online, they typically won’t look at search results beyond the first page. If they don’t find the information they’re looking for on the first page, they may click over to the second page, but they’re unlikely to go much further than that. So, if you want your business to even have a chance of being found online, you need to get it appearing on those first couple of pages.

But how can you do that?

Well, some people choose the paid Google ads option. Which is great while you’re paying for the ads and it is likely to get you almost instant visibility, but there are two problems with this.

1. If you don’t get your target audience completely nailed down the ads may not reach the right people.

and

2. Once you stop paying, your ads will go and so too will your visibility.

As a small business, it may not be financially viable to keep Google ads running on a permanent basis. Not if they’re not really bringing in much of a return on investment. And depending on the niche you’re in and where you want your ads to appear, you could be looking at paying anywhere between £200-£1000 a month.

Which is why, in my opinion, it is way better to focus on the organic growth and long-term visibility that SEO can achieve. SEO will help your small business show up in search results, therefore making it way easier for potential customers to find you.

Applying SEO practices, such as keyword optimization, publishing high-quality content, building links within your posts will all help you to attract visitors to your website without spending money on advertising.

2. Attracts The Right People To Your Website

Having a website is all well and good, but if hardly anyone visits it, or the wrong people are visiting it, I’d question the value it’s bringing to your business.

By implementing SEO into your blog strategy, you can attract the right audience to your website. But what do I mean when I say the ‘right audience’? Well, the fact is, you don’t just want randoms showing up to your site, right? Because it’s all well and good getting your traffic numbers up, but if the majority of them aren’t people who are likely to buy from you or even vaguely interested in what you do, then those numbers mean nothing.

When people do a Google search, there’ll be a specific reason for them doing so. They’ll either be looking for answers, looking to buy something, or looking for something near to them. If you optimise your blog posts to include keywords that reflect these search reasons, SEO will drive a more targeted audience to your site.

And a targeted audience, is one that is already interested in what you do or what you offer, which means when they land on your website you are way more likely to convert them from leads into sales.

3. Builds Trust With Your Audience

These days SEO for small businesses is more essential than ever because it helps them to rank higher and to build trust with their audience.

Let me ask you this, are you more likely to trust a website that comes up on page 1 of Google or one that appears on page 5? It’s the one on page 1, right? You see, ranking higher on Google is a massive indicator that your business is credible, reliable, and an authority in your industry.

In 2022, Google added E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) to its algorithm. It was done to help user experience and to give users better search results. For website owners, it basically meant they had to up their game. The fact is, sub-standard content, content that wasn’t factually correct, content that didn’t include links, and content that wasn’t useful or serving much of a purpose no longer had a chance of ranking.

SEO plays a major role is gaining the trust of your audience. And when you have their trust, they are more likely to:

• Stay on your website for longer
• Return to your website in future
• Sign up to your email list
• Contact you
• Engage with you
• Buy from you.

When your website consistently appears in search results, provides valuable content, and offers a great user experience, you’ll notice your audience growing as the trust levels increase.

4. Provides Cost-Effective And Continuous Marketing

Most small businesses don’t have hefty marketing budgets to spend on advertising. Which is where SEO for small businesses is a literal godsend. Because SEO can put your website, and therefore your business, in front of the right people and best of all there are no time constraints.

Unlike paid ads, which stop generating traffic as soon as the budget runs out, SEO continuously works for your website. If you implement consistent optimisation within your blog strategy, your website can generate organic traffic for months or even years. And best of all, it does this for FREE!

Using on-page SEO techniques (that’s all of the bits you can tweak on your website to improve its SEO) you can achieve sustainable web traffic, increase brand awareness, become more visible online, and convert more leads into sales. Some examples of on-page SEO include:

• Page titles
• Meta descriptions
• Internal links
• Headings
• Keywords
• Title tags
• Alt text

Take a look at this blog post – 5 Blog Title Formulas To Help You Rank Higher On Google – to learn more about how to optimise your blog titles so that your posts rank higher on Google.

5. SEO For Small Businesses Strengthens Your Local Marketing

If you’re hoping to get your website ranking well for local search terms, for example ‘best wigmaker in Salisbury’, using SEO in your blog posts is the key to achieving this.

Local search terms such as this are way easier to rank for as there’s generally less competition. But that doesn’t mean you can sit back and hope for the best. You might be the only wigmaker in Salisbury at the moment, but what about in future?

Using local SEO for small businesses can help them to stand out in their local area. This can be crucial for small businesses who are limited to providing products or services solely within the physical area that their business premises are located.

Google prioritises local searches. What this means is that when someone searches for a product or service online it will automatically show businesses that are close to them. The stronger your local SEO game the higher your chances of appearing in these top local searches.

So, how can you optimise your local SEO?

• Make sure you have a Google Business profile – and if you do, optimise it by including opening hours, photos, and customer reviews.
• Use local keywords – include searchable words like ‘affordable (service) near me’, or ‘best (service) in (place)’
• Share reviews – ask for reviews from your existing customers and put all the best ones on your website.
• Local listings – get your business added to local online directories like Yelp.
• Write local blog posts – share content on your website that answers questions like, ‘How to find the best wigmaker in Salisbury’ or ‘5 reasons to buy from a wigmaker in Salisbury’.

And even if your business doesn’t solely rely on local custom, targeting local search queries can be a great way to get your website ranking higher and help you stand out from competitors who don’t utilise local SEO.

6. Enhances User Experience

As I explained earlier, the purpose of Google’s EEAT algorithm change is to enhance user experience. The better the user experience on your website, the better your SEO, and vice versa.

But what is the user experience of a website and how can you improve it on your website?

Well, user experience is pretty much as the name would suggest, it’s all about how a user experiences a website. This takes into account things like how fast a web page loads, how easy it is to read, the way a page is laid out, how easy it is to navigate, whether the site is mobile-friendly etc.

So, if you can make sure the user experience of your website is fully optimised in these ways, you’re essentially shining a little spotlight on your website and letting Google know, it’s cool, we’re all good, you can go ahead and rank us now.

But of course, this isn’t just about Google. The most important thing when it comes to SEO for improved user experience is that it’s for the purpose of making your website so freakin’ awesome for someone to be on that they want to spend loads of time on there.

Here’s what happens if your website has a bad user experience:

• Slow loading pages – people leave
• Can’t be used properly on a mobile – people leave
• Struggle to find the information they need – people leave
• Unable to read the text because it’s unclear or not large enough – people leave
• Unorganised content – people leave
• Broken links/404 errors – people leave

I think you get my point!

Sort that lot out and you’ll keep your website visitors happy. If your visitors are happy, Google’s happy. And if Google’s happy it’ll show your site to more people. And that my friends is the beauty of good SEO.

7. SEO Helps You Understand Your Customers

SEO isn’t just about helping your website to rank or to improve user experience. It can also be used as a great tool to help you understand your audience better. SEO tools like Google Analytics give you an insight into a tonne of really useful information.

You can find out:

• What people are searching for
• How they found your website
• What pages they looked at while they were on your site
• How much time they spent on your site
• Where they come from
• Whether they’re viewing your site on a desktop, tablet, or mobile
• Which pages are most popular
• What links they click on

Knowing all this information puts you in an incredibly powerful position. Because once you have all this data about your audience, that’s when you can really put your blog strategy into play. You’ll now know exactly what it is your audience want from you and you can tailor your content to support that need, rather than randomly guessing and hoping for the best. By creating in-demand content, you’ll increase engagement and grow your traffic.

8. Positions You Ahead Of Your Competitors

Most small businesses rely on word of mouth, social media, and possibly paid ads. Now, don’t get me wrong, all of these things have benefits, but SEO offers way more benefits in my opinion. One of which is that it helps position your business ahead of your competitors.

The ideal scenario would be that your competitors don’t use SEO on their website, but you do. Because that leaves the playing field completely open to you. Using SEO effectively on your website and throughout your blog posts, means you can out rank the competition, attract their audience, and establish yourself as the main authority in your field.

SEO means:

• Higher search rankings
• More traffic
• Growth
• Improved user experience

But obviously that’s an ideal scenario. The reality is more and more businesses are using SEO to improve their online visibility and it’s therefore much harder to ensure your website stands out in what is a very crowded online space where everyone is fighting for those search engine top spots.

So, what’s the answer?

Here’s how to make SEO for small businesses work for you:

• Identify gaps – Do some keyword research to find keywords that your competitors aren’t ranking for so that you can fill that gap before they do.
• Create the best content – Quality content will always outrank crappy content. Make sure you’re sharing the most useful, the most informative, the most value packed, and most engaging content you can.
• Build backlinks – Backlinks are links that point back to your website from someone else’s. The more of these backlinks you have, the more authoritative your site looks, and the better you’ll rank. Consider adding guest posting to your blog strategy.
• Target long-tail keywords – Whilst lots of small businesses are more clued up about SEO these days, many are only focussing on keywords. However, long-tail keywords (phrases made up of 3-5 words) are more specific and easier to rank for, so concentrate on those instead.
• Local SEO – I mentioned local SEO above and for small businesses this is the best chance you have of outranking your competition and some of the larger brands.
• Personalise – Big businesses are far less likely to make a personal connection with their audience in the same way that small businesses can. Make sure your content is engaging, community-driven, and personalised to you and your business. Let your audience see the real you, share your brand story, your successes, your failures, your day to day life, your opinions. People buy from people, and this is your small business superpower.

9. SEO For Small Businesses Increases Brand Awareness

Here’s the thing, even if you manage to get one of your blog posts ranking on the first page of Google (which if you do, well done you, that’s pretty freakin’ epic) who’s to say someone’s going to click on it? Sure, the odds are greater, but if that’s the first time they’ve seen your business name, they’ll likely click on a link that has a name they do recognise.

But imagine if you were appearing at the top of the search results for not just one page or one keyword, but you were showing up in lots of different places. Appearing in multiple searches for various search terms within your niche means your brand name, your website, your business is seen more. And the more people see you, the more your business name sticks in their mind. As that brand familiarity increases so too does the chances of people clicking through to your website.

This is all part of the trust building process. If your website keeps cropping up in search results, people will see you as an authoritative source and will feel confident that you can give them the information they’re searching for. SEO for small businesses, such as optimising for multiple keywords and creating content that answers common questions or pain points in your industry, helps to build brand awareness and ensures your business is super visible.

10. Allows You To Track Your Results

So, I spoke about how SEO tools can help you learn more about your audience, but another thing they’re really great for is keeping track of results. And this information is absolutely key in revealing whether your existing SEO strategy is working or whether you need to change tack.

Unlike traditional marketing, SEO allows you to track the performance of your website with real data. It will tell you what’s working, what’s not, what needs improving, and what you should do for long-term growth.

Here are some useful SEO tools that are good for tracking web performance:

• Google Analytics
• Google Search Console
• Ahrefs
• SEMrush
• Ubersuggest

These tools can help track your website traffic, monitor keyword performance, check conversion rates, bounce rates and engagement rates, as well as keeping an eye on your ROI. All of this means you’re able to make informed decisions about your website and continuously improve your online presence.

Final Thoughts

Organic traffic growth for small businesses is more essential than ever. And it’s SEO that drives this organic traffic growth. SEO makes your business more visible online, builds brand awareness, grows an audience of the right kind of people, and helps you to get ahead of the competition. If you don’t currently have any form of SEO strategy in place for your business, you are seriously missing a trick.

If you’d like to learn more SEO tips for small business owners and explore how small businesses can rank higher on Google, join the BlogWell Facebook Group.

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Author Bio

Bex Stafferton is a blogger who started off writing her blog The Art of Healthy Living as a hobby when she was a stay at home mum and caring for her two young children. The same blog now earns her a full time salary while working part time hours.

Bex is on a mission to help teach businesses how having a blog on their website is a valuable marketing tool. Helping to build a strong online presence, grow an engaged audience, and increase sales.

When she’s not blogging, Bex spends her time hiking up mountains, trail running, cuddling her two cockapoos, and volunteering at a local wildlife rescue centre.