Small Business Marketing
SEO + Conversion: Why it Matters to Your Small Business
You know what makes your business great. You know why people would want to buy your product or use your services.
Now put yourself in your customer’s shoes. How will they know? How will they find you?
Getting Found
There are lots of ways to market your small business, from the traditional to the innovative, and most of these will require some investment. But the best way to market your small business? The Internet.
Why? Because most people start there. Most online buyers, and many who plan to buy offline, begin the process with a search engine. What does this mean to you? It means that you need to make it easy on your potential customers. You need to help people find what they are looking for.
If they are looking for what you offer, make it easy on them. Make their choice obvious. The best way to do this is through SEO, search engine optimization, one the best investments you can make in your small business.
If you have an Italian restaurant in Toledo, and I am hungry in Toledo, and I type “Italian food in Toledo” into my search engine, you want me to find you. You want to appear on that first page of options, if not in that first slot.
How It’s Done
And this is not as hard as you might think. First you need to optimize your website to include the specific keywords you wish to rank for. Next you will need a strategy for obtaining links from other websites to yours. Writing articles, submissions to directories, commenting on relevant blogs, participation in forums and other social media channels will help the search engines “discover you”. This will drive more traffic to your website: authentic traffic from real people.
Using SEO plus conversion strategies, you need to make every page on your website search engine friendly. But you don’t want to stop there. You also need to make your website human friendly. It doesn’t do any good to drive people to your website if they don’t stay there long enough to look around.
Once again, you need to help people find what they are looking for. When your visitors arrive at your site, they should be able to quickly and easily find what they need and become your customer. This is how you convert your traffic into actual dollars. This is how you make sure your investment counts.
SEO + Conversion - How You Benefit
So, could your small business benefit from SEO plus conversion? Yes! When done well, they:
- help new customers find you, and reminds repeat customers of how to find you.
- widely increase your sphere of influence and your marketing reach.
- help to convert organic, targeted website traffic into sales.
- work for you long term. A small investment now will keep working for you for years to come.
- help to provide your visitors with the best experience possible.
