The Importance of SEO for Small to Medium Sized Business

This article focuses on the importance of SEO for small and medium-sized companies and presents a simple SEO program most business can and should implement to improve their website results with search engines.

Current research and surveys indicate that more and more people are going on line to find local information. It also shows that the big yellow book and newspaper classifieds are being used less often.

A recent study - Nielsen//NetRating WebVisible Study: Measuring a Website's Ability to Drive Offline Purchases for Small Businesses - indicates that more local business are experiencing offline conversions due to local search. This is the first Internet survey of its kind designed to measure the ability to drive offline conversions for local service advertisers.

Accordingly to this survey, the most commonly searched sites are:

• 36% medical services
  
• 32% automotive services
  
• 26% home or office repair services
  
• 23% financial services
  
• 9% landscaping services

Other studies and surveys have also indicated that local intent is driving up to 40% of all on line queries, even if the searcher doesn't explicitly indicate location. When you combine this increasing Internet user behavior and the fact that Google, Yahoo, and other sites now offer local search in their main page results, local/regional businesses and nation wide chains can, and should take advantage of the search for local information on-line trend.

A Different Path in Advertising

With the increasing importance of SEO and its ability to drive qualified traffic to your website and your local store, it's regrettable the most local business owners are unaware of it and not taking fully advantage of its advertising potential.

While every business person is aware of conventional advertising - yellow pages and newspaper print ads - SEO is an altogether different path, involving new marketing methods and specialized knowledge.

Different search engines use different criteria for local searches. Most marketing experts readily admit they don't know quite as much about search engine marketing, not to mention geo target search marketing -- mostly because they don’t have experience with SEO/SEM.

Local Search Drives Phone Calls and Store Visits

It is common for businesses that operate locally not to sell on line. However, if you want more customer traffic, a well-designed Web site can help. Web site calls to action will prompt customers to make a phone inquiry, faxed order, or in-store visit.

Specific, geo-target searches will drive new customers right to your door, regardless of branding. For example, if you're a Kelowna based landscaping company, a search for "landscaping design Kelowna" represents a much more qualified inquiry than a generic, search for "landscaping." However you encourage new business, SEO should be part of your marketing strategy
Your next customer might be searching on line right now.

Next month, we'll cover more specifics to help you create a successful local SEO campaign.

Recommended Local SEO Program

There are three key steps every local business can take to improve search results:
1. Develop or update the website
2. Optimize Web pages for local queries
3. Increase local Web site popularity

Develop or Update Web Site

To set up a web site you need a domain name, hosting company and a Web site design company to develop a professional (and hopefully) a search engine friendly site. Your logo is very important at this step, so take advantage of the Web site design to give your company’s logo a face lift. Don’t forget that your site should be user friendly with good Call to Action placement.

Optimize Web Pages

Geo target SEO follows basic optimization principles. This means the company or person in charge of your SEO must understand basic optimization and ensure these words and phrases are included in the page content, titles, meta tags, links, and other key places.

Increase Local Popularity

Web site popularity involves building incoming links from important, qualified sites, such as chambers of commerce, industry verticals, local directories and local professional organizations.