Why Start-Up Businesses Should Consider SEO
4 ways SEO can benefit your new business
SEO can be an invaluable marketing tool for your start-up, helping you to boost brand visibility and stand out from the competition.
Search Engine Optimisation (or SEO) involves optimising websites so that they rank as highly as possible on search engine results pages – and it is a vital marketing tool for many companies, particularly small businesses and start-ups.
As a SEO company in Chelmsford, we believe that investing time in good SEO is one of the most important things that a start-up company can do – and it could mean the difference between success and failure.
Increase brand visibility
One of the biggest advantages of SEO is that it can help you to quickly increase brand visibility – vital for start-ups which need to gain traction and win new business in a relatively short space of time. If you can get your website to appear on the first page of the search engine results, this will massively increase the number of people who come into contact with your brand, helping to boost awareness of your company and its products or services. What’s more, people trust search engines, and securing a good position in the rankings can have a positive impact on how people perceive your business.
Competitive advantage
Even the most niche product or service is likely to have some form of competition, and if you’re not investing time and effort into SEO, you can be sure that your competitors will be – and this could have a negative impact on your business. The higher up you are in the search engine rankings, the more likely you are to get people clicking through to your website. In fact, the first page of Google gets 91% of search traffic, with the top listing receiving a massive 33% of organic search traffic. So, unless you spend time on SEO, you could well find your customers visiting your competitors’ sites rather than your own.
Gain customer insights
One of the fringe benefits of SEO is that it can provide you with valuable insights into your target market. As you see an increase in web traffic, you will be able to access a large amount of data that will tell you about your customers’ behaviour – what they’re searching for, what areas of your website they’re visiting, what products they’re most interested in. This will enable you to adjust your marketing efforts accordingly, as well as potentially further developing your product line to meet customer demand.
Cost effective
Marketing activities can have a big cost implication for start-ups who need to get their product or service in front of a large audience. One of the great things about SEO is that, done well, it offers a really cost-effective way to build brand awareness and drive potential customers to your website. With a user-friendly website that is optimised with the right keywords, your start-up can find itself shooting up the search engine rankings and increasing its reach without spending a fortune on adverts and other marketing materials.
Measurement and evaluation
As with any other marketing tool, it’s vital to measure the success of your SEO activities. There are a number of different metrics you can look at and the ones you choose will depend on your business, but the most useful metrics for small businesses and start-ups tend to be organic traffic, engagement, search engine rankings and, most importantly, conversions. By keeping a close eye on your SEO activity, you can see what is working well and determine where you may need to make improvements.
With good planning and a bit of expert knowledge, you can harness the power of SEO to help take your business to the next level.
