The answer is YES!
SEO is very important for any business, regardless of its age. Far from simply being the icing on the cake, SEO is one of the more important ingredients in any good marketing strategy.
Why should I give SEO a chance?
Do you want to miss out on free traffic? Is your website popular enough in its own right to draw in visitors from all over the globe, and from every major search engine? While it’s true that different search engines place different values on different aspects of your site, you can still get some overall benefit by making sure your site has all of the information it needs to attract visitors and that you are presenting it in the right way.
Curious? Need more reasons why your business needs SEO? Check out these posts:
- The Ultimate List of Reasons Why You Need Search Engine Optimization – by Trond Lyngbø
- Do You Need SEO if You are a Small Business? – by Kelly Wilson
- Do I really Need SEO for My Company? – by Valentina Valesco
- Where’s Your Website? Why Every Online Business Needs SEO – by Erica Nicole
- Why Does My Business Need SEO? – by Jim
New business SEO matters
Video: 12 Reasons Why You Need SEO For Your Business
In the most basic terms, SEO should be seen as an investment, not a cost. Thinking of SEO as a cost makes it seems like an expense that can be left alone for now and revisited later when your business gets off the ground. This kind of thinking takes the potential benefits of SEO out of the equation before it even gets a chance to prove its worth in your growing business’ future! SEO should be thought of as an investment because it is something that can help your business really take off; you invested in a logo and other branding elements, a website, and likely many other things to help you reach your market and persuade them to buy from you… so why should SEO be any different?
As we have already mentioned, SEO is part of any good marketing strategy. It can help your website attract more visitors, it can help bring more awareness to your brand, and it can even help you spread the word about new products and services as your business grows. SEO is no miracle cure by far; instead it is part of a solid foundation that can support your business for many years to come.
More and more people are taking to the internet for all of their information gathering needs; putting it another way, physical libraries are seeing a lot less traffic than they used to, and phone books are becoming less and less essential to people searching for local businesses. Instead a majority of internet-capable households are relying on search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing to bring them the information they need. This is where SEO comes in, ready to help your business fight for the attention of potential customers!
Why SEO deserves your trust
It’s very common for new business owners to question the need for SEO. If by chance a new business owner were to ask an SEO professional why their business needs SEO, there is a good chance the business owner’s eyes would be crossing after thirty seconds or less! The world of SEO is full of complicated language and enough jargon and acronyms to last a lifetime, something that turns away new business owners in droves. This is truly unfortunate because in reality it is the small business, the new business, that needs SEO the most!
Top bloggers weigh in on even more reasons to trust SEO to help grow your business:
- SEO Industry Trust is Very Complicated – by Nick Stamoulis
- SEO – Search Engine Optimization and Marketing – by KER Communications
- Business Must Learn to Trust SEO – by Keith Fraley
Bigger companies and more established brands can handle SEO; they set it up as a part of their marketing budget and that’s that. They are just not as invested in the outcome of their SEO as a smaller business would be, and a new business needs all of the help it can get. Faced with an ever-tightening budget and constant pressure to grow their business by leaps and bounds, many new business owners are seeking a solution that SEO can offer without even knowing that SEO is the answer to their questions.
The top 3 reasons why business owners mistrust SEO:
- Rules, what rules?
SEO is full of rules, and they seem to be changing a lot more often than they used to (Panda & Penguin anyone?)
- ROI can be hard to calculate
Not impossible mind you, but more difficult than more traditional methods such as the Yellow Pages.
- Fear of Google’s wrath
Many new business owners don’t trust SEO because they think it might get them in trouble with Google.
Search engines (especially Google) are constantly updating and changing their algorithms to serve up better and better results (at least that’s the plan) to the people who use their service. Naturally you would think that they have a vested interest in how people are building their sites and spreading the word about their businesses because these activities can affect how that business ranks in their search results. In the past year alone there have been several updates to Google’s algorithm that have made many new business owners question if SEO is going to do their site any good, or if it will simply plunge it into obscurity because Google saw something it didn’t like and buried the site in the double digits of the search results pages. Add that in with the lack of “Because of X action we made Y money” rock-solid ROI figuring and it is easy to see why it might be more difficult to present SEO in a positive light to the owner of a new business.
Put SEO to work for your business!
(click on this graphic for a larger version!) – The SEO Pyramid, an Infographic by Linchpin SEO
Even businesses with “traditional” physical storefronts and locations, SEO can bring a host of benefits including increased awareness surrounding the business. SEO can help bring in more local traffic and also draw in visitors from further afield, all thanks to the power of the internet.
SEO also doesn’t have to cost a fortune; while some companies will charge up front for their services, there are just as many pay-for-performance companies (like RankPop) out there that are committed to delivering quality results before you have to pay out a dime. This can take a lot of the risk out of the decision to give SEO a chance to prove its worth and give new business owners a chance to see what SEO can do for them.
Did/Do you use SEO to give your new business a boost? If so, how? If no, why not?
Please leave us a comment, we love to hear your feedback!
