A recent study revealed that only 30% of small businesses have an SEO strategy in place. That means that 70% do not. And that is really good news for anyone competing against those companies.
When you don’t play the SEO game, your competition wins by default. Their reward is a high ranking and all of the clicks, leads, and sales that come with it.
Of course, most small business owners will tell you that they can’t really afford to invest in SEO. At the same time, most SEO professionals will tell you that you can’t afford to.
Your time and your money are incredibly scarce right now, but here is why you need to put a little bit of both aside for your company’s SEO.
Small Things Can Make a Big Difference
In the very early stages, simply knowing some current SEO tactics can get you off to a very strong start. You may be handling all of this yourself, so it would help to know exactly where you should focus your attention when you start building your web presence.
For example, it’s hard to understate the importance of page speed for your SEO value in the eyes of Google. Your load speeds have always been important, and they’re about to be even more important after Google’s Core Web Vitals update in 2021.
You probably have a fairly new website, with a relatively low amount of content. That’s good. If you can develop good habits right now, you can keep your site running as lean as possible, which will ensure you always have optimal load speeds.
You Can Do One Really Important Thing For Free
Have you claimed your Google My Business (GMB) Listing yet? If you haven’t, you need to. Immediately!
More than half of the businesses out there have yet to claim their listing, even though it’s free and incredibly important. That is simply giving away free clicks and calls.
This listing is crucial in building your web presence and growing your brand. In fact, recent data shows that a typical business receives 59 actions from their GMB listing each month.
Take the time to review Google’s guidelines for a complete and properly optimized GMB listing. The only thing that it will cost you is the time it takes to fill in some information and upload some quality pictures.
SEO is a Long-term Investment and You Need to Start Right Now
The sooner you start taking SEO seriously, the more you’re setting yourself up to succeed down the line.
Sustainable SEO success takes time to build. A leading SEO software company called ahrefs recently studied the top 10 ranking results for over 2 million random keywords and found that pages less than 1-year-old:
- Only made up 1% of the #1 organic search results in Google
- Only made the top 10 rankings 22% of the time
Their data also shows that the average page in the #1 rankings spot was over 940 days old. That means that, yes, you could conceivably earn the #1 ranking in under 3 years. But it’s important to know that this means doing all the right things for 3 years.
If that’s where you want to be in 3 years, you need to start right now.
SEO Helps Recruitment
Recruiting quality employees remains a constant challenge for today’s small businesses and start-ups. When you don’t have a lot of reputation or money to offer would-be applicants, it helps to sell the fact that you’re a fast-moving company on the rise.
Telling applicants that you’re a hot up-and-coming company is fine. But a properly managed web presence and SEO strategy will prove it. What do your applicants see when they Google you? If they see that you don’t rank on the first page for your own brand name, or that you don’t even have a GMP listing, they probably won’t take you seriously. Data shows that 64% of candidates will Google a would-be employer. Another 37% will move on to another job offer if they can’t find any information on the company.
Getting a head start in SEO doesn’t have to be as expensive, or as time-consuming, as you might think. Even if you’re handling things all by yourself, you can still find the time to do considerably more than 70% of the small business owners out there.
Make SEO your New Year’s Resolution and own 2021!