SEO for small business growth
Search Engine Optimisation sometimes gets a bad wrap especially when you mention it to someone who’s been ‘burnt’ by so-called SEO agencies in the past. But despite that SEO is becoming a larger focus for most successful businesses who want to continue their growth.
The typical aim with SEO for businesses is to place higher in the search rankings, get more traffic, then turn that traffic into new business!
Yes, that is the core aim of all SEO, but there are other ways you can utilise site optimisation to grow your business which you may not have considered before.
Let’s explore 3 ways to grow your business by optimising your site for the search engines…
1. Increase traffic to your existing website offerings
We’ll breeze over this since I mentioned this above already but as a core growth strategy SEO itself is one of the most effective ways to grow your business.
Whether you invest in an SEO agency service or decide to tackle it in-house, improving your websites presence in the search rankings is nearly guaranteed to grow your bottom line regardless of your industry.
Without changing anything about your businesses offering just driving more potential customers to your website is a smart way of getting more new customers. That’s obvious, right?
The reason I’ve included this method first is that if you haven’t started investing in driving more traffic to your website as it is, then you should hold off on the following 2 methods.
Unless you already have a significant level of traffic to your business website or feel that you’ve plateaued in terms of the level of traffic attainable in your market, then your first focus should be on optimising your website for your existing offerings.
Bonus tip: This include optimising your existing Google business listing to ensure you appear in the map pack when people are searching in your area.
2. Expand into other locations
This might be an age old business growth strategy, but back in the day expanding into other locations usually meant actually opening offices or new shops in different areas.
Fast forward to now and by using SEO for a small business you’re able to quite literally ‘open’ up your new location and offer your services in that area without any physical moving. Although this can be done by simply adding a few location names to your website stating that you now operate there, it’s unlikely that anyone in those new areas will find you.
Now instead of only appearing when people search for ‘Recruitment agencies Hertfordshire’, you can focus on also appearing when they search ‘Recruitment agencies Buckinghamshire’. Most businesses can service clients outside of their immediate area, but they just aren’t visible to people within that area.
Which is where SEO comes in.
Without going too in-depth into the process of optimising your website to appear in a new location, there are a few basic steps to doing so:
Create a new Google My Business listing with an address listed in your new target area. This means your business will appear in the map section within this area.
Create new pages on your website dedicated to these new areas.
This lets Google know that you now offer your services in these areas, so they should start showing you in the search results.
Add your business to some local directories within these new areas. Remember to enter the link back to your new website pages relating to that location for maximum results.
This is a method that we’ve executed for a number of our clients who after a while working with us had dominated the search ranking for their local service areas and then wanted to expand further afield.
The method above and the method below are both equally as effective in growing your business, but unless you are working with a reliable SEO agency then we recommend you select one and not both. As with anything, focussing on one thing will bring faster results than spreading your focus too thinly.
3. Introducing new services and ranking
As far as business growth goes, this method is another of the core strategies that most businesses aim toward but few reach.
After working with some great businesses both as a consultant before Brick, and now full clients with the Brick agency; we’ve used this strategy to grow and literally create new revenue streams for a number of clients.
But how exactly does SEO play a part in this?
Let’s use an example here…
Let’s say you own a specialist gas company fitting boilers in commercial properties. You already have a website which has been optimised for your main services, and you gain a good flow of new business through your website.
However now that your business has been successful in this market, you’d like to expand your offering and gain domestic work installing underfloor heating systems and bathrooms.
As your website is already ranking highly for your existing keywords, you have enough authority in the eyes of Google to also rank for your new services. By carefully adding new content pages selling your newer services, within a properly optimised structure, your website will start to rank for these keywords faster than your original services.
Driving more traffic to your existing service pages is a great way to grow your business, however, this should all be a part of the long-term SEO strategy for your business. By investing in optimising your website you’re able to unlock new growth tactics, like selling new services, that will help further your growth.
Rounding up SEO for small business growth
As a specialist SEO agency owner I’ve seen first hand the power that an airtight optimisation strategy can have for both a website and the business behind it.
Something that always intrigued me before I became an optimisation evangelist was that whenever you visited the top 3 websites on any Google search, you always seemed to see the most successful businesses on top.
It’s worth noting that Google doesn’t know how successful your business… Which is where I first noticed the correlation between a perfectly optimised business website and overall success that the business had.
That’s why at Brick Digital we’re dedicated to helping our clients grow their businesses using the power of SEO and paid search advertising. We stay ahead of trends so that your business doesn’t get left behind in a rapidly changing digital world.
