SEO for Small Businesses: Launching Your Own Campaigns

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a cornerstone of online marketing. It’s a content-focused process that pushes your website higher in the search engines, giving your small business more exposure, driving more traffic, and providing countless more benefits.

But it’s not easy.

Many small business owners prefer to focus on paid ads and social media, assuming that SEO either isn’t needed right now or is too expensive.

We’re here to tell you that it is needed, and it’s not as expensive as you might think.

Why Small Businesses Need SEO

Search engine rankings closely correlate to brand reputation. The fact that you’re at the bottom of the fifth page doesn’t mean you’re not a legitimate company and don’t have a good product or service, but as those lower rankings are more likely to contain scam sites and sites that are completely irrelevant or inactive, customers will trust you less.

So, not only will conversions be lower, but few customers will delve that deep.

You could bid for your keywords on pay-per-click programs, but it’s not the same.

Sure, you will get a good ranking and may even sit above the top organic results, but..

Many customers skip straight past sponsored ads
You have to bid high to get a good ranking
You pay for every click/conversion

SEO also increases brand exposure while cementing your position as a trusted, knowledgeable source.

Put yourself in a customer’s shoes for a moment. Let’s say that you sell CBD products, and Customer A is on a journey of discovery.

They begin by looking for the benefits of CBD before searching for the risks, doses, and complementary supplements.

Every time they search, they see your articles and guides at the top of the rankings. They might not click, but your brand then becomes associated with the product in their eyes.

At the end of their journey, they decide to buy and start searching for terms like “buy CBD”. Again, they see your brand at the top of the rankings.

By this time, Customer A has seen your site several times. They have read your articles. In their mind, you are a trusted source of information and a legitimate brand, so they are more likely to click and buy.

Do You Have to Pay for SEO as a Small Business?

SEO is often mistakenly considered a free source of marketing.

That’s because you don’t pay for all of those clicks and conversions. A sponsored PPC click could cost you several dollars or even tens of dollars for every sale, but the organic listing below will never charge you for impressions, clicks, or conversions.

However, you need to consider the initial costs and maintenance costs. The best SEO services are worth their weight in gold, and they can pay for themselves 100x over, but you’ll need to cover those initial costs.

Can I Do SEO Myself as a Small Business Owner?

SEO experts employ a series of strategies to improve a website’s ranking.

At a basic level, however, search engines like Google care most about the user experience.

They want to provide the best possible experience for every searcher, and if you have the skills and time, you can create your own strategy with this in mind.

The problem is that you’ll need to do all of the following, and for the best results, these things must be completed to the highest standard:

Guides, articles, and product/service descriptions
A fast, optimized website with easy navigation
Links from relevant websites
Promote your site on social networks and third-party sites
Embed images/video and implement tags

It’s a lot of work for a busy small business owner, and that’s why they often reach out to the experts.

Fortunately, SEO is scalable. It can cost a fortune, but not if you’re a small business with limited resources and requirements and modest goals.

Small Business SEO Myths

If you decide to tackle your own SEO campaigns, whether by creating the content yourself or outsourcing, don’t fall for these myths:

SEO is a One-Time Thing

A lot of work goes into those initial stages, but you need ongoing work (new content, updates for old content, link acquisition) to keep your rankings high.

Paid Ads Boost Rankings

There are benefits to running paid ads alongside SEO, as it creates brand saturation, but paid ads will not boost organic rankings.

Links are Everything

Links can help, but they are not as important as many people seem to believe. An excellent backlink portfolio can’t make up for terrible content and a slow, poorly maintained website.

Keywords Need to Appear as Often as Possible

Google is very adept at spotting genuine, helpful content, and it knows an article that uses the same keyword phrase in every paragraph is more likely to be spam.

It Takes X Time to Get Results

SEO is not instant; that much is true, but it’s impossible to say for sure how long it takes to get results. It could be weeks, it could be months.

Long Content is Best

A good article is one that takes as long as it needs to get its point across, as opposed to one that exceeds a specific word count.

All SEO Experts are the Same

Unfortunately, there are so-called “experts” out there who will employ black hat methods to boost your rankings, collect their money, and leave.

They rely on the fact that those results occur quickly, and it takes search engines longer to penalize the sites. This means that you could be happy enough to tip and recommend them, but may eventually suffer severe penalties when Google realizes which techniques were used.

Examples of Successful SEO Campaigns for Small Businesses

Another common misunderstanding about SEO is that all SEO is the same, and it doesn’t matter whether you’re growing a small business, launching an agency, or running campaigns for a global organization.

There are small differences that necessitate hiring SEO experts—or following SEO techniques—that are specific to small businesses. We have used many of these techniques ourselves to achieve excellent rankings for all of the following clients:

Nelson Recruiting: A family business that has provided market research recruitment since the 1980s and has experienced massive growth since 2016, partly due to its investment in SEO.
Secured Signing: A secure document signing service used by businesses and professionals. It primarily targets medium and large businesses and requires a highly tailored SEO strategy.
Treasure Listings: The largest network of listing websites focusing on garage/yard and estate sales.
Create Me: A world leader in apparel manufacturing on a mission to revolutionize the industry using automation.
Factor Group: The Factor Group is a waste management service with a presence across New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania.
Car Registration, Inc: A DMV-licensed vehicle registration service based in California.

Conclusion: Get Started with Your Small Business SEO

SEO can be complicated. It can also be expensive. But if you hand the reins over to us, it doesn’t need to be either of those things.

Optics In is an experienced, established SEO service that has worked with small businesses across an array of industries and in numerous countries. We can help with local and general SEO, and provide services to suit any budget.