8 reasons why SEO is still important for Small Businesses

As more small businesses go digital, remaining visible in a sea of competitors can be difficult if you don’t know what marketing strategy to use. If you’re certain your customers start their buying journey with a single search (which is usually the case for small businesses), then your best bet might be Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

Aside from helping your potential customers find you organically, SEO builds brand authority, leads your customers through your sales funnel and can give your business a competitive edge—as long as you’re doing it right.

This article covers 8 benefits of SEO for small businesses and why you need an SEO strategy in 2024.

 8 benefits of SEO to Small Businesses

Does your business still need SEO? The short answer is yes. Shiny tactics and marketing trends will come and go, but SEO has been with us for decades and its business benefits aren’t going away anytime soon. 

To help you decide, here are 8 ways SEO can grow your small business.

1. Discoverability 

With emerging trends in AI and predictive search, discoverability remains the most important benefit of SEO. SEO widens the reach of your products or services and keeps you visible in search results.

At Duowork, we build websites with best SEO practices in mind so our clients can be easily found by potential customers, even as search evolves.

2. Amplify offline sales with round-the-clock promotion

Want to wake up to sale notifications? Invest in SEO. An optimized online presence not only translates into increased foot traffic at your physical location (if you have one) but also queues orders while you sleep.

3. Lead generation

A good slice of the 8.5 billion daily searches made on Google is made up of people ready to buy your product or service. SEO helps you gain your share of search traffic when potential customers search for keywords that will make you money.

4. Build trust and authority

Trust is the currency of successful businesses, and potential customers often associate websites that rank high in search with high industry authority. SEO keeps your business prominent in search results to establish trust and in turn, prospects feel confident buying from you.

5. Enhance User Experience (UX)

A perfectly done SEO strategy will give your website visitors a smooth experience and prime them for conversion. SEO also helps you anticipate visitors’ needs and provide answers to their pain points, right where they landed on your site.

6. Seize opportunities for growth

In SEO, the most visible is the most profitable. If your niche has an untapped online market, SEO attracts targeted traffic and gains you a large share of traffic before your competitors catch up.

You can also use SEO to spot and close content gaps, increase your traffic share and outrank your competitors.

 7. Boost paid efforts

One of our favourite benefits of SEO is that it maximizes the success of your paid ads campaigns to boost ROI. Why focus on paid search traffic when you can get two SERP results instead of just one? Done right, your organic traffic flow can eventually lower your customer acquisition cost and reduce your paid ad spend.

8. Long-term success

Compared to other marketing strategies, the long-term benefits of SEO outweigh the initial investment. It drives traffic and lead generation to create a sustainable growth trajectory for long-term visibility.

How to grow your small business with SEO in 2024

Integrating SEO into your marketing blueprint is a strategic necessity. At Duowork, we’ve consistently seen the impact of solid SEO strategies on small businesses, and we highly recommend one if you’re growing a business online.

An SEO strategy is a roadmap to boost visibility in search and drive traffic to your website. It involves several processes that build on already existing content, not to copy, but to create better, data-driven, and high-quality content with unique angles.

What should my SEO strategy contain?

If you’re a busy small business owner still trying to figure SEO out, this next section might be a tad overwhelming. We can save you time with a personalized strategy but if you like to DIY, here are 8 things your SEO strategy should contain.

1. Local SEO plan

A staggering 74% of people who visit a physical store first start their journey with an online search. If you have a physical location, neglecting local SEO can limit your growth.

Setting up a Google Business Profile is a low-effort, high-yield opportunity to leverage local search traffic. You can add your operating hours, product photos, contact details and even reviews to stay top of mind (and the SERPs) when people search for your products or services in your area.

2. Website structure

Website structure enhances user experience and SEO. It involves organizing and classifying pages to make sure visitors can navigate effectively across your site, remain on it, and take desired actions.

Things like how fast your website loads to how far your primary pages are from the home page can affect your SEO. Speak to an expert to build a clean foundation for your SEO efforts.

 3. Audience research

To target an audience, you must first understand them enough to anticipate their needs. This knowledge then guides your keyword research, content creation and SEO, and can even inform your branding and pricing.

Some business-critical questions to ask during audience research are:

You can use qualitative data (reviews, surveys, customer interviews, FAQs, etc.) or quantitative data (demographic and psychographic information) to inform your audience research.

 4. Keyword research and optimization

Keyword research outlines relevant terms and phrases you’re likely to be discovered for in search so your website can rank for them. It also considers search intent—why people are searching for those terms—to inform your SEO and content production.

When researching keywords, we go the extra mile to optimize the metadata of our clients’ websites by strategically placing target keywords in page titles, alt tags and metadata to boost ranking.

 5. Analytics monitoring

Want to separate your winning content from the also-rans? Analyze what’s working (and what’s not) so you can double down on what’s already driving results. To monitor your SEO wins, hook your website up to Google Analytics and Google Search Console (or ping us to do it for you!).

SEO analysis ultimately informs your content strategy and keeps your idea backlog filled with data-backed content.

 6. Content plan

Content drives SEO. To improve and maintain ranking, your small business website should become a treasure trove for valuable niche content. Content written with SEO in mind not only makes you finable in search but also builds brand authority.

One-off posts won’t do much good for SEO. That’s why your content plan should include a content calendar (or “editorial calendar”) for consistency. To build authority and sustain website traffic, brainstorm and bulk-create niche content around your product or service.

7. Distribution plan

After you’ve nailed the basics of SEO and written quality content, next on the list should be maximizing reach by distributing your content. A content distribution plan outlines where else to disseminate your published content to boost your SEO efforts and drive traffic back to your website.

One benefit of audience research is knowing where your potential customers hang out so you can pick a distribution channel strategically. For example, we built a custom web app for a content creator that made Spotify and YouTube their secondary traffic drivers.

8. Repurposing plan

Unlike content distribution which drives traffic to your main platform (in this case, your website) from your secondary channels, a content repurposing plan adapts your content as standalone pieces for other channels. Repurposing means taking the meat of your content and reusing it in other formats to build authority across your active channels.

For example, the section of this article on the ‘8 Benefits of SEO for Small Businesses’ can be made into at least two Twitter (X) threads if we simply spotlight the subheadings. We can also turn another subheading into an infographic (as seen below) for Instagram and other visual-based channels.

Final thoughts: Why SEO is important for your Small Business

If you’ve concluded SEO is important for your business, your next question will be how long it will take to see tangible results. Our answer? The earlier you invest in SEO, the faster you’ll reap the benefits. And it’s just like planting, the more you sow, the more bountiful your harvest will be.

Want to kick off your organic marketing efforts and make your mark online? Book a free call with our experts and we’ll get you started with a personalized website and SEO strategy.