Introduction

As a small business owner you will already be familiar with various marketing companies pestering you to invest in their services.

Whether they cold call you, e-mail you or simply send a sharply dressed salesperson to your business  sometimes it can just be all too much.

The reason being is that small businesses share the same problem as much larger businesses, that is there is only a finite amount of money that can be spent on advertising- so this beggars the question, is it a good idea to invest in SEO?

And from a business perspective many business owners decide not to, and with good reason, and that’s because most digital marketing agencies do not guarantee that your website will be on page one of Google by a certain date.

And a lot of business owners don’t like vague promises, they simply want cast iron guarantees that they will be getting something tangible for their money.

So there’s the dilemma, yet on the flipside there’s also the other aspect to take into consideration.

That is, the businesses which are investing in seo, and are partnering with respected agencies, well they may just have one serious competitive advantage over the competition.

Because let’s face it, most people are using smart phones and search engines to find what they want. Whether that be a years supply of dog food, or a new tv.

So let’s have a look at why you as a business owner should invest in seo.

Quality SEO work = quality results

Sure your always going to have the businesses that think seo is a piece of cake, that’s to say they do everything themselves.

And that’s all well and good, yet if the person implementing the seo hasn’t got the foggiest as to which methods are white hat, well the website may just incur a penalty.

Now a penalty can mean that the website has its rankings drop, sometimes quite severely, it can also mean that a business sees its company listing removed altogether.

So if you are thinking about investing in local seo, its worth employing a top quality agency. That way they will be able to optimise things like:

·        Business citations

·        Ensuring that businesses NAP signals are all consistent

·        Updating the companies Google My Business account

·        Updating the businesses social media

·        Producing content marketing

·        Building backlinks

·        Writing meta titles, meta descriptions and alt tags

 

These are just some of the areas that your seo company should be optimising. Also another nugget of advice, do ensure that you only invest in top quality white hat work.

Cost effective

It’s fair to say that some forms of advertising can cost an absolute arm and a leg, yet good quality seo need not cost the earth.

Sure, there’s always going to be those agencies that only work for top dollar, yet throughout the U.K there are many agencies that offer good quality work at a reasonable price.

Yet as a business owner you do have to be careful, the reason being is there are also so many agencies that do not offer good quality work. This means as the Google Panda and Google Penguin updates rolled out, many websites were hit by a penalty.

And there are so many other penalties that a website could incur, so you really do have to choose your seo agency carefully.

 

Expand

Sometimes its easy for a small business to get drowned out by the competition, and we are not talking about on a national level, we mean locally as well.

That’s to say you may run a small business in one part of the city, and you see most of your customers only arrive at your business because it is local.

However with seo you could receive more customers coming to your business from across the city.

The reason being is that seo when implemented correctly allows you to stand out from the crowd, this way you can expand the marketing reach of your business.

Then as you experience that seo is working for your business, you may even wish to expand the businesses reach into neighbouring cities.

White hat

You may have read previously within this article that we mentioned the term “white hat”, and a lot of you may now be wondering what on earth that means.

But here’s the thing, to implement good quality seo, well it takes a lot of time, so naturally there’s always going to be those annoying agencies that decide to cut a corner or two.

Now, as earlier mentioned cutting corners often leads to a penalty being incurred, so that’s why you must partner with a white hat agency.

Yet with that said don’t take an agencies word for it that they are white hat, that’s because some advertise that they only use white hat methods, when they do not.

If your business requires help with its local seo, why not give us a ring?