Why You Need SEO for Your Website
A small business website should be made up of a number of features to attract potential clients. Good design, fast page loading times, good content and a clear message regarding what you are selling or offering. Is that enough? No!! You need SEO.
You need to be found by the right clients online in order to make a sale. This means being found in a Google online search.
Google is the most popular search engine with a market share of around 67% in 2015, Bing is next with 15.6%*. For this reason, I will focus on Google search for the purposes of this article.
So what is SEO?
It is the process of attempting to improve your website ranking in the free or organic search results in a search engine such as Google. Google uses a large number of factors to rank websites according to a closely guarded algorithm. Some of the factors are well know though and are employed by individuals and SEO companies to improve rankings.
The more relevant and authoritative your website is considered according to Google’s algorithm, the higher your website ranking in Google. Therefore, the first website on the first page of Google for a particular search term, is considered to be the most relevant and most authoritative by Google for that search term.
To me, SEO is like having a trusted friend who knows a large amount of potential clients, recommending you and your business all day, everyday.
Good SEO involves content with words that grab the attention of your target audience, earn their trust and help to persuade them to buy your products or services. So why wouldn’t you want SEO to help you increase your client base and ultimately allow you to make more money? Of course you do, that’s what business is about for most of us.
So, how do I get to be #1 in Google? Answer = hard work. You can employ someone to do this for you or you can do it yourself.
If you already have a business email address and/or website, you probably receive lots of spam – emails that promise to deliver your website to number one ranking on the first page of Google. What should you do about these emails? Delete them! Don’t waste time reading them or opening them. They are rubbish and 99.9% are from a Gmail or Yahoo email address. Who runs a successful business with a Gmail or Yahoo email address?
Should you aim to be #1 or is being on the first page of Google good enough?
That’s up to you. How much time and/or money do you have to spend? An expert in the SEO field is founder and former CEO of moz.com – Rand Fishkin. In a 2014 study on search results, Moz published the information below **. This information is still highly relevant today and may help to answer the question regarding where you should aim to be on page one of Google.
On average, 71.33% of searches result in a page one organic click. Page two and three get only 5.59% of the clicks. On the first page alone, the first 5 results account for 67.60% of all the clicks and the results from 6 to 10 account for only 3.73%.
How much will it cost to improve my Google ranking with SEO? That depends on your existing website and whether you employ someone else to do the work or whether you have the time to do it yourself.
The do it yourself option SEO option. There are thousands of online courses, blog posts, podcasts, You Tube videos, books, face to face courses, seminars etc. to teach yourself SEO. It is time consuming and you will need to invest the hours in learning the SEO craft and then the hours in employing these skills. This may also involve learning to navigate and master the backend of your website.
If you are time poor or have no interest in SEO, employ someone else to do it for you. But how do you choose the right SEO person or company? Ask friends or business contacts for referrals if they have had good results from an SEO person or company. Look at the who ranks in the first five free/organic results on the first page on Google for SEO services or for their main service (if they also provide SEO services) e.g. SEO for small business Geelong or Inner West Sydney website design Look at their websites and view the results they have achieved. They need to be able to deliver the results you need and within your budget.
How much will SEO services cost? If you do it yourself – the cost is your time.
If you employ someone else the cost will depend on what you hope to achieve and how much work they need to do to achieve your goal. They may need to re-write all of your content to correctly target your intended audience, red-do all of your images (sizing and alt tags etc.), add call to action buttons across the site, add links across your site, add an SEO plugin and fill in meta description etc. for each page and many more tasks. Essentially re-do your whole website but in a much more detailed and target manner than the original website build. It may cost more than your original website build.
So should you spend money on SEO for small business website? In my opinion, yes!
If your current website is not delivering all the results you need it is worth spending money on SEO to bring in new clients and more money to your business. Choose your SEO person carefully based on their results and whether you can work well with them. Good SEO results will improve your rankings in Google, enable more clients to find you in Google, bring better clients your way and overall, increase your business revenue. Who doesn’t want that?
Need some help with SEO? Contact Simone on 0490 140 079 or via this link.
* https://www.netmarketshare.com/search-engine-market-share.aspx?qprid=4&qpcustomd=0
** https://moz.com/blog/google-organic-click-through-rates-in-2014