In the second of my SEO series, (see: What is SEO?), I’m going to look at the way small businesses approach SEO, and why your business should be marketing online.
Increased Traffic
The obvious benefit to search engine optimisation is increased traffic. If you can appear on page 1 for a keyword, that really is great! However, if you can get to position 1, you can see huge benefits in the amount of clickthrough’s from the search engine to your site.
Search engine optimisation is not only about where your site appears, but also how your site appears. If the wording of both the title and description is appealing to users then you will easily entice a user into clicking your link.
I've been optimising my own site for some geo specifc keywords like "web design Hereford" and "web design London".
Increased Exposure
Along with getting found for keywords you want to rank for, increasing your authority with the relevant search engines has additional benefits. If your blog has good quality content, you’ll see traffic starting to come for long tail keywords and questions, which can directly lead to more visitors and potential customers.
Give Your Content an Audience
Many businesses share really good quality and invaluable information online, which deserves to get found. Investing in SEO on your site means your content can get read, seen and shared to create brand awareness and giving your business the chance to go viral, or shared across social media.
Change in User Habits
In recent years, more and more users are grabbing their smartphones to search for local businesses rather than other methods and mediums. How many times have you been out and needed a particular service or business, and entered a search engine to find a business who will offer the service? Making sure your site is ranked locally can increase to a big influx of leads and enquiries. Making small changes and making sure your site is submitted and optimised for Google My Business, along with using newer techniques like Schema can help with increased local geo-specific keyword targeting.
Enter Chirp
Chirp SEO app is included with all my projects. It offers a complete suite of tools to help you with all on-site SEO aspects. It helps you optimise titles, keywords, descriptions and content to rank for a keyword and offers a rich preview of what your site would look like in a Google ranking to help analyse if your site is enticing enough for that clickthrough. It’s available to buy for all Perch users & developers and has proven popular within the Perch community.