Is SEO Still Worth it for Small Businesses? 

Before investing in SEO, you must assess whether you have the necessary resources to maintain and implement an SEO strategy because it involves time, skills, budget and technology. That is when you can decide whether to employ an in-house or outsource some SEO tasks.

You can utilize keyword research tools like SEMrush, Ahrefs, and Keyword Planner to identify relevant keywords or phrases. 

Finding relevant, pertinent keywords for your business will increase your brand awareness and visibility once your target audience searches for that particular keyword or phrase.

Assess whether you have the skills and expertise to implement an SEO strategy. Although you have complete control and it will cost you less, it can still be time–consuming on your part. 

If you hire an SEO professional, you may have some free time to focus on essential areas in your business, but it can be expensive. Before investing in his expertise, you must research and learn more about that individual. 

When you decide to work with an SEO agency in the future, get thorough research about that particular agency by looking at their reviews and testimonials from their clients, case studies, and reputation. Check the services and packages they offer, too.

Small businesses like yours can get a long – term benefits from using SEO as a marketing strategy. Here are the following benefits your business can take advantage of in the long run:

Investing in SEO can have a meaningful benefit because it will drive more organic search traffic to your site. That’s why successful keyword research is necessary to optimize your website using relevant keywords for your target audience and turn them into potential customers or clients.

Once your business website is well-optimized and ranked higher in SERPs, it will increase brand awareness and visibility. Searchers become your website visitors, and they will be more exposed to your business. Thus, you will gain recognition and trust from your potential customers.

When marketing your small business, there are different ways to do it. One way is through paid advertising, where you pay each time users click your ads. Another way is through SEO, where you optimize your website to rank higher in search engine results without paying for each click or image.

SEO can be a more budget-friendly option for small businesses because, although it requires time and resources upfront, the long-term benefits can outweigh the costs. Once your website is optimized, you can continue attracting organic traffic and leads without paying for each click or impression.

Nowadays, having an online presence is needed for your business to thrive. A strong SEO strategy can give your small business a competitive advantage to get noticed and attract potential customers. Since many companies compete online for attention, you can focus on targeting keywords that your competitors don’t have to rank higher in SERPs.

When you optimize your website, you also optimize it for people. SEO can help you optimize texts and images and guide you in creating page titles and meta descriptions that are clear and relevant. Users stay on more relevant, engaging websites, easy to browse and mobile-friendly. Doing so may raise engagement levels, lower bounce rates, and ultimately enhance conversion rates.

When you want people to know your business online, whether small or start-up, choosing SEO as a marketing strategy is a good choice once you already have the necessary resources to implement and maintain an SEO strategy.

Make sure you have already built a business website, but if you don’t have one, you can make yourself one or hire an expert. Ensure that before creating your content for your website, you have already conducted keyword research and understood your target audience.

Here are some quick guides you can take to get started with SEO:

Once you have a business website, you need to gather all data, and to do that, is to install analytics to check your site’s visitors and their behavior. You can use Google Analytics 4 (GA4) as it is free and widely used in marketing departments. 

Next, you need to register the website with search engines as it will help you gain insights into keywords your site is ranking for. It also provides you with some insights into how your website is crawled. 

Once it is registered, you can run a crawl to see whether some issues may affect your site’s accessibility, visibility and user experience. You can use Screaming Frog to do it for you.

Perform a search with Google to see if your site is being indexed. It means that Google has crawled and analyzed your website and stored it in its database.

There are some factors if your site is not indexed yet:

• Is it a brand-new website? Then, it will take time to be indexed by search engines immediately. You can check it using a URL inspection tool like GSC or Google Search Console.

• Check if you include unique valuable content on your site. Google excludes content that is spammy and low-value content.

• Is your site crawlable and indexable? Use Google Search Console (GSC) to evaluate it.

• Is the page listed in the sitemap file?

• Is the page duplicate content?

See which keywords your website is already ranking for before you begin optimizing for new keywords. To do that, you can use Keyword Explorer to check all your top-ranking keywords by search volume and pair it with the GSC performance report.

Next, find keywords related to your topic and incorporate them onto your page. Include your important keywords in the title tag, meta description, headline, subheadings and body text, but do just what is necessary to avoid keyword stuffing.

Title tags are essential for your search appearance, so you must write a unique and accurate title for each page. Include keywords in your title and ensure you aim for 50 – 60 characters.

Meta descriptions can also increase the number of clicks you receive. You must create a unique and compelling narrative and include the keywords you want to target.

Creating optimized content is more than just putting keywords into your piece. The content should be relevant and fresh and satisfies the user intent, too. You can use optimized images to make your content visually appealing and use alt text.

Backlinks are also known as inbound links. These are links coming from one website points to your website. This is important for SEO because it tells search engines like Google or Bing that your website is valuable and worth linking to. 

Request backlinks from other websites or create valuable and relevant content that others will want to link to. Ensure to request backlinks from high-quality and relevant websites, not unrelated low-quality ones.

SEO remains a worthwhile investment for your small business because it can gain long-term benefits such as increased brand awareness, visibility, and customer lifetime value. 

When you have a budget and resources, get help from the best SEO specialist in the Philippines so you can focus on some areas of your business. Investing in SEO can help your business get more exposure and attract potential customers, contributing to the growth of your business in the long run.