The question that we want to answer in this article is not whether ‘why’ local or small business owners should consider investing in SEO or search engine optimization as a part of their advertising and marketing strategy. The most important question is ‘how’ it should be done and who will be right company to help them in their SEO strategy. It’s already a fact among knowledgeable offline business owners that having a web presence is essential. But for those who still have no idea of what SEO is all about and why it should be part of their business strategy, let’s do a quick overview of just why internet marketing for small business is important today.
Internet marketing is commonly associated to those who own a virtual business. It does make sense that a business that exists only in the digital space to market on the Internet as well. But with today’s fast moving and ever changing business landscape, even local business owners or those who operate a brick and mortar business are becoming more aware of the importance of having an online presence.
Take for example Joe who owns a local store. While his products are tangible and he is selling to local clients, he will greatly increase his profits from having a web presence. Even if does not take orders online, he can use the power of Internet marketing to target interested customers to visit his store or to inquire about this products or service. He can hire an Internet marketing agency to build a website that will be a complete representation of his offline business. People who are looking for the kind of product or service that Joe is offering will have a chance to find his website and if Joe’s website is done right, it can actually pre-sell the customer even before visiting his store.
This is already common knowledge and most business owners know this. In fact, almost 93% of local business owners have considered having a website and many of them are currently maintaining one. The next obvious question is, in the middle of all the buzz and chatter on the Internet and with Joe’s competitors who have their own website up and running, how can his website be found by his target customers? This is where good local SEO or search engine optimization comes into play.
SEO is defined as the process of affecting the visibility of a website or a web page in search engines. That is of course a short-cut definition and it will branch out to other areas, but from this simple statement we can understand that having a website is not enough. You will need to apply good and sensible search engine optimization strategies for your website to be found. This is why the goal of this article is not just to tell you ‘why’ you need to do Internet marketing and SEO. There are maybe other resources that you have already read about its value before. It is already a stipulated truth – Internet marketing and SEO is important even for small business owners who want to take advantage of the power of the Internet to maximize their profits. There is no argument there what so ever.
What you need to understand, as a small business owner is “how” SEO should be done today to your website if you are to see any noticeable success in your goal to capture qualified leads, drive traffic to your website and ultimately, send buying customers to your store or local business. SEO has changed in the past months as Google continually define and tweak their algorithm so that some of the old strategies of getting your website to rank high in the search results with keywords your customers are searching for will not work anymore.