Search Engine Optimization

SEO: Laying the groundwork for success.

We’re well into the digital age now, so I doubt very much that there’s any local business owner out there with a website, that’s never heard of SEO. Everyone knows they should be investing adequate time and resources into their SEO efforts, but few do.

Why is that?

Simple, because it’s a nebulous task of indeterminate length.

If something seems vague and takes a long time to show any results (good or bad), most people will say, “why bother?”.

For most small business owners without a marketing team or an agency, that want to give SEO a shot on their own, it’s hard to know if they’re doing it right. In fact, for many, it’s hard to even know where to start because they themselves are not sure what’s working and what’s not.

And since most people won’t invest time, energy, resources into something they don’t fully understand, it just gets ignored. Which often leads to paying for expensive leads.

Reasons you should invest in SEO

The first place most people go to look for anything they need is Google. Be it a roofer, an accountant, a realtor, or any other local business, ranking higher on Google and other search engines means more high value traffic and conversions.

In most cases, SEO is far less expensive than paid ads. The value in paid ads is that you’re targeting leads ready to buy now. The problem with that is so is everyone else. That’s why it’s expensive. Simple supply and demand. More people paying for warm leads, drives up the price. However, because most local business owners invest little to nothing into their SEO, it produces a far better return.

People tend to trust organic search results over the paid ads that show up at the top.

Why?

Probably because everyone knows how hard it is to rank so well, so whoever is there already must really be doing a lot of things consistently well.

Having strong SEO elevates your brand. It generates quality traffic to where it will find the most value. Value is what creates a strong brand.

Clicks are useful for many things. Obviously, they can lead to sales, but almost as importantly, they can give you a lot of information about your customers. Information that can be used to provider better goods and services, and increase marketing effectiveness.

One of the first things that Google and other search engines take into account when ranking a page is how well the information is organized. Organizing information on a website well makes for good SEO, and a good user experience.

Unlike most forms of traditional marketing, SEO is working to elevate your brand 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

No matter how well it’s done, one message will not resonate with everyone equally. SEO allows a brand to craft its message equally well to customers at the beginning, middle and end of their decision cycle.

PPC prices aren’t flat. Companies pay more or less based on how good of a fit Google (and other search engines) believes a website to be for a particular set of keywords. The better the fit, the lower the cost of paid ads. SEO helps the algorithm and their customers know what they can expect to find on a page.