Is SEO Important For A Local Business

Is SEO (search engine optimization) important to your local business? 

You better believe it!  Anyone in business knows that advertising is a major expense.  The Internet is much better than it’s offline counterpart, but not if you don’t understand at least a little bit about the patterns of the way people "shop" online.

Search engine marketing in Reno local businesses, or any local business market can save huge amounts of money.  Imagine getting all the local leads you can handle, enough to keep you busy until Christmas for free.  Do you think that would help your bottom line? Of course, especially if you were prepared to spend $5 - 10K on a local media blitz for the next month.

That’s not even the half of it.  When you advertise anywhere, on the radio, on TV, in the paper, phone book, etc.  Your pouring money by the bucket into what’s called a horizontal market. 

A market that is not targeted to what you are selling.  The media you’re putting out is hitting all the markets, including ones who won’t be interested in what you’re selling at all. That’s different than advertising in a vertical market.  A market that’s specific to your product or service. 

What if you could only spend money on 100% targeted advertising.  Meaning, your information only goes in front of consumers that are already looking for what you’re selling?  Think that would help your conversions?  Your cost per customer? You bet.

It gets even better.  You only need to "pay" for advertising if you can’t wait for your search engine marketing to get you some decent rankings in Google. 

After that, all you have to do is stay there. Can every local business get into Google’s top ten? With the right SEO, probably.  Some niches and markets are more competitive than others, but local markets are still very soft.  "Web Design" should be the most difficult keyword to win, because it’s filled with designers and people who should know how to get top ten rankings.  So it will be much more competitive than "Labrador training".

I got this website on Google’s first page for my main keyword "web design reno" within 2 weeks.  Feel free to check Google, and check the age of my site.  I’m not going to say that everyone can enjoy such results, and I’ve only just started.  My site isn’t 3 weeks old yet, and I’m beating designers and companies who have been on that page for a long time.

Being able to make a website is great.  Being able to make a "real pretty" website is cool, but only if customers can still figure out how to find what they need. But more important, is being able to make a website that people will actually find, and that will actually make you some money. Is search engine marketing important?  It’s everything!