What is small
business SEO?
Small business SEO is the optimisation for your business
website in the search engines. If that
still went over your head then let me break that down even further.
Everytime a search is made in one of the search engines such
as Google, Bing or any other search engines you will be presented with a page
full of results. This page is known as
the search engine results page or SERPS for short. The results you see on the first page will
have been optimised for the search query. So for example.
“Dog groomers wales” will
show the following results:
All of the above website pages have been optimised for the
search query “Dog groomers wales”.
This technique is known as search engine optimisation or SEO
for short. SEO simply is optimising your
website for potential customers when they are searching for your product or
information.
As you can image for a small business owner SEO can mean the
difference between a constant flow of customers to having a website that does
nothing for your business.
If you have a small business website that doesn’t bring in
any customers then your SEO is not working, or maybe your site is not optimised
at all and sadly if you don’t rank in the search engines then your website may
as well not exist.
How will SEO benefit
your small business?
Right now there are potential customers looking for what you
are selling or providing. There is
someone, somewhere with their bank card in their hand waiting to hand over
their money, but if your not at the top of the search engines then those
customers are spending their money with your competitors.
When explaining what SEO can do to one of our clients
websites I first like to ask them; “how much is a single customer worth per
month to your small business?” then I provide them with some data. So if you’re a dentist in Cardiff and your
looking for extra customers then let me run some search numbers by you.
There are over 3020 searches a month for “Dentist Cardiff”
1990 for “Cardiff Dental”
150 searches a month for “Penarth Dentist”
The list could go on and on, from a quick 5 minute search
you can see that there are thousands of searches each month for dental services
in Cardiff, now if you’re a dentist with a website that isn’t optimised for any
of those terms then you are throwing away money.
For smaller businesses there are a lot of people searching
for what you have to offer. For example
there are over 80 a month searching for legal advice online in Pontypridd.
60 people from Pontypridd a month are looking for a law
firm.
There are 610 people a month looking for “Swansea builders”
Or 860 possible customers looking for “Builders in Cardiff”
I could search all day and make screen shots, but there is
honestly no point. Whatever industry you
are in, big or small there will be someone online searching for your
service. The job of SEO is to get you in
front of those people so that they can choose to purchase from you and not your
competitors.
To make this example easier, lets just say there are 200
customers a month searching for the product you sell, and lets say 1 customer
is worth between £2000 - £5000. If your
website were to get just one of those 200 searches a month then that could mean
that your small business could be earning an extra £60,000 a year. That is the power of SEO.
Is small business SEO
expensive?
Like everything, SEO costs money and the cost of SEO will be
determined on the competition of the keywords you want to go after. SEO can also take a few months to see a
return on investment but the rewards can last for years.
At WeeAre we research what keywords we believe are
achievable to rank for and depending on your budget we will choose words or
phrases that you will want to rank for in the future. We tend to choose a wide variety of keywords
so that you can rank for lower competition phrases which have lower amounts of
traffic as well as phrases with higher competition and higher search
volume. This results in getting traffic
as soon as possible.
We bill for our SEO services on a monthly cycle. We feel this gives you the maximum
flexibility so that you are not tied into any lengthy contracts. We want you to be happy with the service that
we provide and not pressured into anything you don’t want. If you would like to discuss starting an SEO
service today then check out web design penarth they have some great prices.
If your still not decided on if SEO is for your small
business then keep on reading.
Why Small Business
SEO is important
There are many ways to get customers to your business.
Yellow Pages, Radio and Newspaper ads, flyers, online ads etc. But the problem with all of the above is that
they cost money every time you want to use them. Yes SEO costs money, but when you get to
that first page, every click that gets sent to your website doesn’t cost you a
penny. Compare that to online ads which
could cost £2-20+ a click depending on your niche/industry. Online ads or PPC are effective, but
depending on your industry it could cost you a lot of money to compete with
your competitors.
SEO on the other hand is like free traffic. Once you are on the first page then each and
every lead sent to your website doesn’t cost you.
SEO without a doubt is the most cost effective way of bringing
new customers to your business. SEO is
also very targeted, people searching for the service you are offering want to
spend their money, compare that to putting an ad in the local newspaper, how
many of these people are interested in buying what you are selling?
If you run a search in your industry right now, for example
“dog trainers in wales” and you see your competitors on the first page then you
know that they are spending money on SEO each month and that is why they are
outranking you and taking money right out of your pocket. SEO can’t be achieved by luck, it takes good
quality research and planning to be executed correctly. So how exactly does SEO work, and what can
you do to compete with your competitors?
How does SEO Work?
Search Engine Optimisation is broken down into two separate
areas, both equally as important as the other.
The first being on page optimisation.
On page optimisation is everything that is on your website,
this could be the text, imagery and even the code that makes up your site. This is why it is very important that your
website is built to be search engine friendly.
If the search engines cant read the code on your website then it is going
to struggle to know what your website is about, and because of this your website
is going to find it hard to rank.
If you hire us to build your website then you will be
thankful to know that all of our sites are built to be search engine friendly,
they are also built to be mobile responsive as standard. Your website should be mobile responsive as
this is also a ranking factor that the search engines take into consideration
when deciding where to place your small business website.
Getting your on page optimisation is essential if you want to
rank your small business website for any keywords or search terms. On page SEO tells the search engines what
your site is about, the importance of certain keywords on the site and how to
understand the keywords that you have chosen.
If you help the search engines to understand your site then you are
already in a good position to move forward to the second part of SEO.
The second part of SEO is off page optimisation. This is primarily made of links pointing to
your website. This could be from other
relevant blogs or social media sites like facebook, twitter, linkedin,
pinterest and many more.
Off page optimisation done wrong can ruin your online
presence. Get your off page optimisation
wrong and not only will you not rank but you could face a penalty and have your
website black listed from the search engines.
Poor link building practices have ruined businesses time and time
again.
Don’t fall victim to a cheap SEO service which may do your
business more harm than good.
We have been practising different SEO techniques for years
and we follow good link building practises and because of this our clients rank
and our sites don’t get penalised. We
can create quality links to your website through a few different techniques,
one of which is creating quality content that others want to link to.
If you would like to hire us to improve your rankings in the
search engine then you should contact web design pontypridd.
Other things to
consider for your small business SEO.
This section can become a little technical at times so if
you are reading it and you start to think I have no idea what I have just read
then don’t worry. You don’t have to
understand the next few paragraphs, I have included them so you can get a
better understanding on what we do, but this section is optional.
The software that your website is built on can affect your
SEO quite a bit. For example, we build
all of our websites on top of a content management system called
wordpress. You probably have heard of
wordpress as it powers over 23% of the websites on the internet. Companies like NASA, CNN and Forbes all use
wordpress and there is a good reason for this.
Out of the box wordpress is easy to use, and makes managing
your on page optimisation easy. You can
change the permalinks which is the link of a post after your domain. For example a site could be
Yoursite.com/post=123
Or with wordpress
Yoursite.com/dog-groomers-in-wales
Which of the above do you think tells the search engines
what your web page is about?
Wordpress Plugins for
SEO
If your not a techie then you may want to skip this section,
but if your interested in learning a little about what plugins are and how they
can assist you with your SEO for your business then keep on reading.
A plugin is an additional piece of software which can be
added to your website. Wordpress offers
some great plugins that can assist your small business SEO attempts, one of
which we use is a plugin called Yoast SEO.
Yoast SEO allows you to create sitemaps which the search engines loves
along with many other options that start to become a bit techie, but don’t
worry we assure you they help your website in ranking.
SEO and your
businesses credibility
Think back to a time where there were no search engines,
just a big yellow book that ruled the business world. The Yellow Pages. If you were looking for a plumber in wales
would you go for the guy on the first plumber page or the 7th? Most people went
for the first guy as that guy seemed more credible. The same applies to the search engine result
pages. If your on the 2nd
page then your customers don’t even know you exist. Get on the first page and your business
suddenly becomes more trustworthy.
A good SEO campaign can instil trust with your clients, your
business is seen as more credible and if you sell good this can only help the
sales process.
SEO is good for
business branding
SEO first and foremost is about getting traffic to your
website and then converting those visitors into customers, but SEO can also
help with branding. Most searchers don’t
search just once for a product or service they will search many times. Quite often the terms in which the user will
type will change so one search could be “dog groomers wales”, the second time
they search they could look for “dog grooming services in wales” and the third
time “dog grooming in wales”. All three
searches are slightly different, but if your website is showing for all three
terms then you will instantly gain more credibility with that searcher and
chances are they are going to click through to your business.
SEO and ROI
SEO doesn’t interrupt users when they are listening to their
favourite song in the car in the mornings, it doesn’t interrupt users from
finding out who killed who on their favourite TV show. Instead SEO allows you to market only to
people who are looking for your product or service. These people want what you are selling, they
just need to find you first. With SEO
you don’t have to convince a potential customer that they need your product,
you just have to convince them that you’re the right company to purchase from.
Small business SEO
Summary
Phew, if you got this far then you should now have a better
understanding of what SEO is and hopefully you now know what SEO can do for
your small business. If your still
confused on SEO don’t worry you don’t need to know the difference between on page
and off page optimisation. SEO can be a
complicated subject, but even by getting the basics right you could get ahead
of your competitors.
SEO can be the most effective way of getting new customers
to your business each and every month.
If you would like to discuss hiring us for your small
business SEO then click here and we can give you a quote today.