Benefits of SEO for Small Businesses

SEO stands for search engine optimization. When optimizing a website for search engines, there’s a focus on attracting relevant traffic. But what does SEO entail and what are the benefits of SEO for small businesses? A lot of business owners mistakenly believe that SEO is irrelevant to their marketing. However, a well-optimized website can deliver excellent results for businesses.

Can SEO Help Your Business?

The short answer is yes, definitely.

SEO is all about helping your website rank on search engines like Google. So, if your website is optimized for search, it will show up on the first pages of search engines whenever people search for your product or service.

There are various SEO tactics that digital marketing companies use to help improve website SEO, these include:

  • The use of relevant keywords throughout your website copy
  • Relevant link building tactics to improve your website’s domain authority
  • Skilled SEO web development
  • Regularly updating your website with new content

If your website is properly optimized for SEO, you’ll be able to attract traffic from relevant internet searches.

For instance, if your business is in the construction industry, your website SEO will be focused on attracting traffic from search queries related to building and construction. Better yet, your SEO can focus on attracting traffic from search queries from people looking for construction in your area.

This is the basic principle of how SEO can help your business. But there’s more to SEO than meets the eye. Aside from increased search engine traffic, an SEO website can offer more advantages.

Benefits of SEO for Small Business

Many small business owners view SEO as an advanced marketing technique that requires a big budget. But SEO isn’t a marketing strategy that’s reserved for fortune 500 companies. Small businesses can also benefit from relevant SEO marketing. These some of the benefits of SEO for small businesses.

Increase Organic Website Traffic

If someone visits your website by clicking a non-sponsored listing directly from their search engine, this person is supplying organic traffic to your website. In other words, your website can get organic traffic for free if it’s optimized for search.

Other forms of traffic to your website can include:

  • Paid traffic: This is when someone visits your website by clicking a sponsored listing on Google, or an ad on social media. Basically, any traffic you get through paid online advertising is paid traffic.
  • Social traffic: If you promote your website on social media (i.e. your Facebook page, business Twitter account or Pinterest) and people click your social links to arrive at your website, this is called social traffic.
  • Referral traffic: This is traffic from sources that aren’t search engines or social media sites. If your business is on local business directory and people click a link to your website from the directory, that’s a source of referral traffic.
  • Email traffic: If your business has an email marketing newsletter with links that refer people to your website, that’s a source of email traffic.

Some other traffic sources to your site can also be direct (where people paste your website URL directly into their browsers) or unknown.

Of all the different kinds of web traffic you can get, organic traffic is the best. That’s because organic traffic is free and you won’t need to constantly promote your website on social media or in email newsletters to keep a consistent amount of traffic coming in.

SEO is the only way to improve your website’s indexability in search engines.

User-friendly Websites

An important aspect of a website that’s optimized for search is that it must be user friendly. Search engine crawlers look at critical data such as website loading times when selecting what websites to display in top search results.

A website that’s too slow to load will turn many people off, so it’s important that your business website is optimized for quick loading times.

Another thing to consider is how responsive your website is. Nowadays, so many people are using mobile devices like phones and tablets to browse the internet. Search engines try to give users the best possible experience by only listing websites that display well across all different devices.

Getting a user-friendly website that’s developed specially for search engines is one area where getting professional SEO help is most necessary. Your website’s functionality is at the core of all your other SEO efforts.

SEO Can Be Local or Global

Your website SEO can be focused around attracting traffic from your local area. So if your business operates locally, your SEO can focus on attracting local people who are potential customers to your website.

There are some great options available, like Google My Business and Bing Local to help local businesses even more in attracting customers that are situated in the area.

On the other hand, many businesses can benefit from attracting traffic from all over the world. Hotels, travel companies and software providers don’t need to stick to local SEO because their customers could be anywhere in the world. In such an instance, these businesses can benefit from an SEO strategy that’s will attract relevant traffic from all over the world.

SEO Builds Trust

Any business can have a website or Facebook page, but not any business can rank on the first pages of search engines for industry-specific searches.

This is one of the major benefits of SEO for small businesses. Even small businesses can rank high for popular search terms. Once your website becomes a known source of information for your industry, customers will trust your brand.

SEO Only Gets Better

As mentioned, a lot of marketing tactics to attract website traffic are temporary. You might see a spike in web traffic after sending out a marketing email, or publishing a Facebook post, but the results won’t last.

Long-term SEO strategies such as content marketing, deliver results for longer. In many cases, the traffic you get to your best blog posts will only grow over time, not diminish. The great thing about this is that you still only pay once, but can reap the benefits of a good content piece for years to come.

Similarly, a website that’s designed with SEO and user-friendliness in mind, won’t stop delivering results right after it goes live. On the contrary, your business website should grow over time as a marketing asset for your company.

SEO Is Affordable

Of all the benefits of SEO for small business, this is one you might not have expected. But SEO is a cheaper form of marketing compared to many alternatives.

When you take into consideration that your business can keep enjoying the benefits of SEO long after your first investment, your initial input costs become so much less.

If you compare SEO to placing advertisements in local newspapers, or running ad campaigns on radio or television, SEO delivers a much better ROI.

Another benefit is that an SEO website opens up more marketing opportunities. You can use your website as a hub to direct your social media followers to your sales pages, or to get email subscribers and grow your marketing reach.

How to Do SEO for Your Business

When starting out with SEO for your business, having a website that’s well-optimized should be your first priority. There are various ways to go about getting a website. Some businesses opt for a website builder such as Squarespace. However, building your own website on this kind of platform usually isn’t a good long-term choice.

The best, most reliable platform to build a website is a self-hosted WordPress site. The good thing about WordPress is that it’s reasonably easy to use, even for beginners. There are some premium themes available that allow business owners to build their own websites quite easily at a low cost.

The problem is that even on an easy-to-use website builder, it takes skill to craft a great SEO website. You want your website to look good and be highly functional. Doing everything yourself will require a lot of skills such as graphics design, web design and more.

The easiest way to get a great SEO website is to hire an experienced web design company to handle the project for you.

The great thing about WordPress is that you can start off with a budget website you built yourself, and save for a more sophisticated SEO site while you already have your website up. You won’t need to migrate your website from one platform to another once you’re ready to invest in web development services.

Rozanne WildsBenefits of SEO for Small Businesses
read more

Online vs Offline Marketing ROI Comparison

Most small to medium sized business owners have limited financial resources to allocate to marketing. Sure, fortune 500 companies have seemingly infinite budgets for both on- and offline marketing campaigns, but that’s not how things work in the world of small business. With limited resources, marketing budgets must be spent on campaigns that deliver. ROI is at the front and center of every small business marketing choice. With that in mind, small business owners are usually interested in a comparison between online vs offline marketing ROI. Here’s what you need to know.

The Difference Between Online and Offline Marketing

The difference between online and offline marketing is quite simple, so there’s no need to explain it in detail, but just in case you’re uncertain, they can be defined as follows.

Offline marketing, also called traditional advertising is any marketing campaign or strategy that isn’t on the internet. This could include billboards and posters, as well as ads on the radio, television and in local newspapers and magazines.

Online marketing, also called digital marketing, is any form of marketing on the internet. This could include social media and Google ads, as well as content and email marketing.

The difference is simple, but measuring how ROI differs across various platforms can be more complicated. This is exactly why choosing between digital vs traditional marketing avenues can leave many business owners scratching their heads.

Measuring ROI on Marketing Campaigns

One of the benefits of online marketing vs traditional marketing is that it enables businesses to better measure the ROI from online campaigns. Tracking metrics can tell business owners how much traffic their websites are getting from search engines. As an added benefit, business owners can also see what search phrases people used to find them online.

But measuring the efficacy of campaigns can extend even further. With the right tools, some business owners even track how many website visitors are converted to customers. Not all business owners can track online conversion rates with 100% accuracy, so it’s not always entirely clear-cut. Even so, it’s easy to get feedback consisting of real, hard data from digital marketing efforts.

In contrast, measuring ROI from offline marketing can be a bit like an educated guessing game. Imagine you put up a poster. How do you know if potential customers phoning your business saw your poster, or if they got your number off the internet? In most cases, you don’t. The only way you can know for sure is by asking people who phone how they found your business, which will annoy some of your potential customers.

Measurable ≠ Better by Default

Yes, digital marketing success is easier to track, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s better by default.

Tracking metrics aren’t beneficial unless you use them to improve your strategy. Incidentally, that’s where digital stands head and shoulders above traditional. Data collected from digital campaigns can be used to improve them.

Too many business owners are so pleased to have accurate tracking metrics, they forget to apply their results to their marketing! Simply seeing real numbers can be deceiving, and can lead business owners to believe they’re getting a better ROI on their efforts than they actually are.

Conversely, just because you don’t know how many customers you’re getting from offline ads, doesn’t mean you aren’t getting any. For all you know, you’re benefiting more from your offline marketing than your online campaigns.

To get the best out of any marketing campaign, it’s good to have tracking metrics. Having data to analyze will show you what worked, allowing you to improve your strategy.

Online vs Offiline Marketing ROI: Where Should You Invest More?

The best marketing channels to use will differ from one business to another. Some businesses might find that SEO is the absolute best form of online marketing for them, while others might benefit more from simply handing out leaflets.

For local small to medium sized businesses, it’s important to keep the focus of online marketing on attracting a local audience. Offline marketing can also be a great way to get interest from the community.

Investing in at least some online marketing is more essential now than ever before. But establishing the right balance between online vs offline marketing will often yield the best overall results.

Local Marketing Options

When trying to market a business locally (both online and off) the focus should be on marketing to a local audience. Some of the best ways to market a business locally include:

  • A business website that’s optimized for local SEO
  • Using free local SEO services such as Google My Business and Bing Places for Business
  • PPC campaigns
  • Social media
  • Print media, like leaflets, posters and banners

Using a combination of different marketing channels can help to promote your business to a larger audience. Your target market will also influence what marketing channels you can benefit from most.

A Business Website and SEO

Almost any local business can benefit from having their own website. To benefit from a business website, it must be SEO optimized, as this will help to bring in organic traffic from search engines.

Optimizing for local SEO can include methods such as keyword optimization and content marketing through blogging. Another important way to optimize your business website for SEO is to ensure your website is responsive – meaning it displays well on all devices.

Local SEO Services

Making use of services like Google My Business is a great way to get customers online. A lot of internet users will only look at Google My Business profiles before choosing what company to buy from.

The great thing about a listing on Google My Business is that you can link to your own website from the platform. You can add your company contact details to your profile, giving customers an easy way to phone or email you.

PPC Marketing

PPC stands for pay per click. As the name implies, it’s a form of online marketing where your ads are displayed to an audience, but you only pay every time your ad is clicked. PPC advertising is available on various platforms, such as Google, Bing, Facebook, Twitter and Amazon.

One of the best platforms for PPC advertising is Google Adwords. Although ads on other platforms can also offer a good ROI, Adwords is the most logical place to start for most businesses. Google sees a lot of search volume. Seeing as most people who search for businesses online do so using Google, there’s a lot of potential for new customers to find you.

Print Media Marketing

Printed leaflets aren’t ideal for all businesses, but some can benefit. While people are less likely to make big buying choices based on a leaflet (think furniture, cars, houses etc.) local businesses like supermarkets and restaurants can see good ROI if advertising things like opening specials or other promotions through leaflets.

Posters are a popular means of advertising in the entertainment and leisure industry. Events like music concerts, weekend farmer’s markets and even trade shows can benefit from using posters and banners.

Not a lot of people still read local newspapers, but reading the paper is still popular among older demographics. Businesses that typically have older customers (audiologists, health care practitioners etc.) can benefit greatly from advertising promotions in the local newspaper.

Global Marketing Options

A lot of businesses can benefit from targeting a global audience, even if they operate locally. A good example is businesses involved in tourism. Other businesses operate almost exclusively online and can benefit from attracting an international client base.

Businesses looking to attract an international audience can benefit from having a business website and optimizing for SEO. Other forms of online marketing, such as social media, PPC and even email newsletters can also be beneficial.

Unlike local businesses, however, companies looking to attract customers from all over the world won’t benefit much from local print media. When targeting a global client base, it’s best to keep all your marketing accessible to potential customers the world over.

Conclusion

Online marketing is a better investment for most modern business models. When working with a limited marketing budget, it’s important to focus on online channels that are likely to yield good results.

Free options like Google My Business profiles and Facebook pages allow all local and international businesses the opportunity to get found online at no expense. When looking at paid online marketing, businesses should strongly consider getting their own website, in which case SEO is a worthwhile investment.

Although online marketing is largely taking over more traditional options, a lot of businesses can still benefit from certain forms of traditional advertising.

Rozanne WildsOnline vs Offline Marketing ROI Comparison
read more

Elements Your Website Must Have

Coming up with a website might seem like a piece of cake. Because our lives revolve around the Internet, a website’s layout seems like something we could design in our sleep. We all have a sense of what’s aesthetically pleasing and is also functional. However, some businesses miss these two essential aspects. In the past or maybe even just earlier today, you might have forgotten about the websites you quickly exited out of – the ones where you couldn’t find what you were looking for, the ones that took too long to load, and the ones that just hurt your eyes to look at.

A basic website design needs a few elements to ensure it successfully conveys your business to customers and keeps their clicks (and money!) coming in.

What your business does.
Have you ever gone to a website in hopes of finding out answers and only left with more questions? Ensure your website provides clear information, easy-to-understand content, and error-free copy to create an enjoyable, informational experience for customers. A good way to answer the question “What does your business do?” is an About Us page. Providing simple and accurate product and service descriptions, including pricing, measurements, and features, avoids customers from plaguing your inbox with easily avoidable questions.

Contact Information.
It sounds like a no-brainer, but you’d be surprised how hard it can be to get in touch with a business. Your website should feature easy-to-find contact information on every page to avoid angering customers who may already be frustrated. A reputable web design agency will know to incorporate a “Contact Us” link into the footer of your website so an obvious go-to spot to reach you will be on every page of your site without interrupting each page’s content.

Quick load time.
We’re going to bet that you’ve exited a website because it took so much time to load, and we’re also going to bet that you can’t remember every single website you’ve exited because of this problem. In today’s fast-paced society, your business’s site needs to load quickly to make a great first impression. Talk to your design agency’s developers to ensure that customers won’t be watching the clock tick away the seconds while they wait to see what products or services you offer.

Responsive design.
There are few things more annoying than having to screen-pinch a website in the hopes of resizing it to fit your phone’s display. With so many different ways to get online, you need to be assured by your development agency that your site will always be presented in the best possible format, no matter what the technology it’s pulled up on. Luckily, web designers and developers are now able to program your site to be responsive for any screen size, so you’ll be able to show off your business no matter if it’s being viewed on a smartphone, tablet, or compute

NSchoultzElements Your Website Must Have
read more

The Importance of Establishing a Web Presence

As today’s businesses are able to significantly strive toward attaining more leads through online marketing/advertising, they are provided with an opportunity to market themselves without much effort or cost. Past generations of businesses were required to invest in advertisement placements through newspapers, radio ads, television ads, magazines, brochures, fliers, and simply “word of mouth”. Today’s generation is provided with a platform of marketing that requires minimal expenditures in the advertising department. The world wide web has certainly made a difference in regards to how businesses can expose their products and services for the entire world to see. Why should they resort to anything else when they can simply reach out to millions of people worldwide from their very own location?

The minimal effort that is required for marketing through online platforms is truly remarkable. If businesses were to reach out to millions of people worldwide in the past, they would have to set up appointments to actually travel to those areas or much more. Now, a company can simply set up a website for the whole world to see.

Although businesses are provided with a platform that enables them to reach out to millions of people, there are still some challenges and obstacles for them to overcome. There is quite a bit of competition among businesses on the web. Therefore, it is an imperative necessity for a business to implement the best strategies of advertising in their operations.

A Miami web design specialist can create a set of webpages that truly exemplify perfection for a company. A proficient web developer is really all a company needs to have their company come out on top. As there are a multitude of routes a company can take in regards to their marketing strategies, a digital marketing agency that has a good grasp on knowledge in the field of web development can assist a company towards outshining their competitors.

NSchoultzThe Importance of Establishing a Web Presence
read more

2015 Website Design Trends

This year is playing host to some huge changes in web design. If you are trying to choose a Miami digital marketing agency, you should pick the company that can perform all of the following things for you.Big Card Backgrounds
Massive background images will serve as the backdrop for many of your favorite websites in 2015, along with subtle parallax effects (made popular by an iPhone software update) and rich topography. This technique has already been used by Google Nexus and Apple, who are definitely tastemakers in the field.

Card-based Design
With a continued shift to the mobile platform, a web developer must understand how to make content fit on different types and sizes of screens. Card-based design is a proven way to make content look good on a laptop screen, as well as on a smartphone and a tablet.

Scaled Logos
Because many companies will be adopting a digital first branding strategy, logos will need to be more responsive to fit mobile platforms. This will result in scaled logo sizes, so expect to see some fluctuating in your favorite brand’s sizing as they figure out what works best.Responsive Design
This may seem like a no-brainer based upon the changes above, but responsive design’s impact goes deeper than you may think. Many of the top designers in the world believe that the website design industry will move toward a structure that is fully customized for different devices, so a simpler layout that fits on all platforms is necessary for any site.

Increased Privacy
In 2015, websites will be designed to maintain the privacy of its user base. Expect to see changes from its policy and terms of service to the way that these crucial legalities are presented to an audience.

Adaptive Design
Adaptive design takes responsive design one step further. Adaptive design gives the user the ability to create an on-demand look for a web design by uploading preferences to a web designer’s layout and receiving those preferences back in real time. Essentially, adaptive design helps take out the middleman when it comes to updating a website.

NSchoultz2015 Website Design Trends
read more

Five Tax Tips for Small Business Owners

If you own a small business, tax season remains one of the most important times of the year. Here are five essential tax tips for small business owners.

Keep tabs on all business expenses

In regards to business expenses, it is critical that you track every single payment. However, business expenses should never be placed on your personal account. For instance, you may need to purchase paper for a fax machine. This is the perfect example of a business expense. Remember, small purchases are just as important as the larger ones.

Home office deductions

If you have transformed an unused bedroom or storage building into a home office, you are likely eligible to receive extra deductions. However, keep in mind that the IRS takes home office deductions very seriously. The home office should always be used for business purposes only. Some of the typical home office deductions include computers, printers, office supplies, electricity, and even furniture.

Remember all of the critical deadlines

While most people understand that the deadline to file annual returns is April 15th, some small business owners forget to pay their estimated taxes. Basically, every small business owner who expects to owe at least $1,000 in taxes will need to make quarterly payments. If you fail to pay your estimated taxes on time, the IRS may charge you a penalty.

Business-related trips

When it comes time to file your taxes, do not forget to include your business-related trips. If you are traveling via car, you will be able to deduct the cost of your fuel. Some of the other business-related deductions include food, interstate highway tolls, cab fees, and the expense of a hotel room. Even short trips to the local post office count. Nevertheless, you still need to keep detailed records of everything.

Never leave money on the table

As a small business owner, you should seek to get as much money as possible from your tax return. According to Choice Accounting Solutions Miami tax accountants, thousands of business owners forget to account for all of their out-of-pocket expenses. After making a purchase, the receipt should be promptly scanned and stored in a fire-proof safe.

There is no overlooking the fact that taxes can have a major impact on the success of a small business. Be sure that you are always prepared for the upcoming tax season.


Victor GonzalezFive Tax Tips for Small Business Owners
read more