Are You Leaving Money on the Table?

You’re not alone! The newest digital marketing must-have tool is SEO, or search engine optimization, but what does it mean? (This article is updated from a version previously published in 2014.)

With more and more businesses launching websites, more websites aiming for page one of search engine results, and with search engines attempting to be all things to all people with blended results, the internet is becoming more competitive each day. Statistics confirm that searchers seldom look beyond the first page of search engine results, and often no further than the first 3 or 4 listings. How does a business, especially a small or mid-size business, compete in such a limited space? The answer is simple, yet most smaller businesses completely ignore this basic step. In 2016, optimizing your website and your entire online presence for search is key to your success.

What is Onsite SEO?

Remember when websites were optional? For local businesses, yellow pages worked just fine-until they didn’t. Then it became important to have a website. Users, especially savvy young users, looked for businesses on the internet and found your website in search results. By 2015, mobile search, i.e. users searching for you on their cellphones, actually exceeded desktop search for the first time. Earlier this year, Google made it imperative that businesses who want to rank on mobile have a mobile-ready version of their website or face a downgrade in ranking. And today, it isn’t enough to have a desktop and a mobile version of your website. To stay competitive, you must continually update and optimize your website content for the keyword phrases your customers are using to search for you. Onsite SEO is the process of placing the best search-optimized content on your website in the locations where search engines expect to find them. Then your website pages can potentially be returned in search results when your customers are using those search terms.

What About Offsite SEO?

Is there more you can do to make sure that your website content is shown to your prospect in search results more often than your competitors’? Yes, there is. Besides onsite SEO, there is much more you can do to optimize your entire website footprint for search engines. Every one of your social media accounts, blog posts, press releases, directory listings and much more, can be optimized for search. We call this offsite SEO and it’s a little bit art and a little bit science. Keeping a handle on monitoring and steadily improving your SEO efforts is a time-consuming job, but one that marketers should be doing on an ongoing basis. in 2016, it’s one of the most important things you can do to increase sales and leads from the internet.

Free SEO Audit and Consultation

As important as SEO is to your business, this is one area that is not usually a DIY project for the average business owner. And we’d like to help. How is it going for you? Need some knowledgeable assistance? We offer a free SEO Audit of your website and your entire digital footprint along with a free 1 hour consultation. We’ll help you work out the potential return on investment that good SEO can bring. Helping small to mid-size businesses succeed on the internet is our only business. Call today.

Questions? Comments? We’d love to hear from you in the Comments section.