Small Business SEO Services
Every small business needs customers, the profit customers create is essential for stability and growth. Yet few small businesses make effective use of the greatest customer resource there has ever been and ever likely to be – the Internet. The problem isn’t that they don’t have a website, the problem is that those websites simply don’t work. Companies are investing large resources developing sites with little thought of the message they broadcast or indeed who they are broadcasting too. In this article we will look at the problems facing SME’s and Micro Businesses online and how Small Business SEO Services can realize a return on your investment.
Investing in a website without investing in SEO is a bit like buying a car without an engine, it might look good but it’s going nowhere. Yet the internet has proven to be a Field of Dreams for many webmasters and it will create many more success stories well into the future. However, those that are successful realize that the maxim “If you build it, he will come” doesn’t work outside of a Hollywood film script. So, before we go any further, rid yourself of any fanciful ideas that simply lunching a website is a license to print money. Success online is the product of hard work, diligence and an in depth understanding of your customers needs and wants.
What Are Your Customers Buying?
When someone visits your site they must be interested in the products or services you sell, right? Well it might sound strange, but that’s almost certainly not the predominant reason for the visit. Your customers have their own motives for buying and those motives are not necessarily rational, intelligent or sensible. When you understand the motivation behind the visit you can tailor your content accordingly. There are six buying motives:
- Security and Protection
- Comfort and Convenience
- Fear of Loss
- Emotional Satisfaction
- Pride of Ownership
- Desire for Gain
If Small Business SEO Services were restricted to simply improving rankings the value of such a service would be limited. SEO is still marketing, all that has changed is the medium. To be successful online you still need to understand your customers needs, empathize with their motivations and help them achieve their goals.
Web Analytics
It’s surprising how many small business web sites don’t have web analytics installed. The problem isn’t price, Google analytics for example is free and provides in-depth reports that help analyze how a website is performing. Analytics are a must for small business website owners that want to protect their investment and grow their online presence. However, some feel that the data is too confusing and have no idea how to implement improvements based on the information provided. Yes, there is a small learning curve but you need to know what customers like and dislike about your site. Analytics provide useful insights such as:
- How many unique visitors come to your website
- Where visitors come from
- What keywords visitors use to get to your site
- How long visitors stay on your site
- What pages they visit
- What are your most popular entrance pages
- What are the top exit pages
- Visitor loyalty
- Shopping cart abandonment
- How many visitors view 1 page and leave (bounce)
If you choose to outsource your SEO, one of the first tasks a small business SEO service provider will want to examine is your web Analytics. Analytics data provides actionable insights that help maximize sales leads, on site conversions and subscriber opt-ins.
Small Business SEO Services
The moral of this story is that there is more to Small Business SEO Services than just gaining rankings. Rankings are important but think of them as the “leading the horse to water” part of the process. You still have to get the horse to drink, and to do that you need to provide the kind information and the resources that immediately have customers shouting out “AT LAST, A WEBSITE THAT UNDERSTANDS EXACTLY WHAT I WANT”.