Even if your financial situation is lean, it doesn’t mean you can’t invest in SEO (search engine optimization). While hiring professional small business SEO services may be ideal, getting started is not required. 

In fact, you can learn how to boost local SEO yourself and once your results start paying off, invest in SEO marketing services. 

If you aren’t sure that SEO is necessary for your startups, keep reading. Here you can learn more about why all startups should invest in SEO. 

SEO Provides Customer Behavior Data 

Investing in SEO gives your startup access to important data. The more SEO research you do, the more data you will acquire regarding what your target audience or potential customers are looking for. 

When you are first starting your business, you won’t have much information about your audience. With SEO, you can gather this data as time passes. You can also continue to benefit from these SEO efforts long after you have launched. 

You will find all types of SEO tools to help you boost your Google ranking, and many offer free trials. With these tools, you can find the keywords your target audience uses to search. You can also conduct a custom Google search and use words related to your business. 

SEO Helps Improve User Experience 

UX or user experience is an important part of digital marketing. The UX of your website can positively or negatively impact your brand and business. It’s important to take steps to improve UX, which can increase engagement and establish customer trust. Creating content with SEO in mind will improve your brand visibility and rank well in search engines. 

Quick Tip: When you optimize your content for SEO, it requires both keyword research and image optimization. 

Improving user experience also requires you to create a user-friendly website with easy navigation that is simple to understand. It will also follow Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act to ensure people with disabilities can access it. To ensure a good UX, your web pages load quickly, and your site can be viewed on various devices. You also need to use relevant keywords to create high-quality SEO content. 

Organic Search Is the Main Source of Web Traffic (Get Ranked Organically with SEO)

Organic search is a huge part of your website performance. It’s also an important part of your buyer funnel and getting users to convert and engage. 

If you hire professional SEO marketing services, they will know that Google owns most of the search market – much more than the competition. That doesn’t mean that other search engines don’t contribute to your brand’s visibility; however, Google just tops the list regarding the total search market. 

Since it is the leader, it’s important to make sure your website meets the guidelines Google has set. 

While this is true, you shouldn’t forget the other parts of the market that are owned by other search engines. These are valuable to brands, too. This is especially the case for brands in a niche vertical where visual, vertical, and voice search engines matter. 

Since Google is the most visited site in the U.S. and world, it makes sense it’s the most popular email provider, too. Currently, there are over one billion users. YouTube is the second largest search engine, with over two billion people using it a minimum of once per month. It’s clear that people in parts of the world with access to the internet visit Google a minimum of once per day to find information. 

It will work in your business’s favor if you are highly visible in Google SERPs and viewed as a trusted resource. Investing in SEO and ensuring you have a high-quality website will help you achieve this goal.  

SEO Increases Traffic and Conversions

SEO will help your startup business get more traffic that will help provide more conversions and revenue. 

Rather than spending money on advertising on social media and other types of online marketing, take steps to build SEO. Make sure you remain current with Google’s best practices, too. 

When it comes to learning how to boost local SEO for your startup, you need to focus on tactics that include longocia-tail keywords that aren’t extremely competitive. It has been shown that organic traffic, which comes from Google searches, will convert around 400% better than other traffic sources (email marketing excluded). 

SEO Helps Establish a Brand Image for Your Startup

Establishing a smart SEO strategy (whether it is with professional small business SEO services, or not) will help you achieve a higher ranking in SERPs and increase your organic traffic. Webpages that appear higher in search results are considered informative and reliable. The more an audience can see your content, the more it will be seen as trustworthy and reliable to them. This results in improved brand image and value. 

SEO Helps Build Credibility and Trust 

You must create a foundation for a quality, aesthetic website that offers a good UX when establishing a business and website. It should also be easy to find in search. When all these elements are present, it will help your audience develop trust in your brand and make you seem more credible. 

Several elements go into ensuring your site is seen as an authority. It is also something that happens over time. Some of the elements that must be present include:

  • The presence of natural links
  • Optimized on-page content and elements
  • Machine-learning signals
  • Positive user behavior

However, establishing your website as an authority will do more for your brand than other methods of optimization. The issue here is that you can’t establish credibility or trust overnight. It’s something you build and earn as time passes. 

Establishing your startup brand as an authority requires commitment, effort, and patience. This relies on providing quality and valuable content that ensures customers can trust your brand. 

SEO Is Free 

SEO can be completely free. Many of the tools you need to do this are free, including Google Search Console and Google Analytics. Once you get results with your own SEO efforts, you can use some of the money you are making to improve it further by hiring professional small business SEO services. 

You can see what people are doing on your platform or website when you use Google Analytics. With Google Search Console, you can see what someone searched to land on your website. Broken links can also be found so you can fix them. 

With SEO, you have to invest time rather than money. As a startup company, you have time. You can utilize Google’s free tools and learn how to establish the entire process. This is true no matter what platform you use. 

If you want professional SEO marketing services to help, you can keep costs low by getting to know all the available options. 

Get to Know Your Target Audience’s Voice 

SEO will let you know what your customers (and potential customers) need and want. It provides insight on everything from macro market shifts to consumer intent in great detail. 

SEO formats and data provide you with clear signals of user behavior and intent. 

This occurs in many ways:

  • Analytics data and AI insights
  • Search query data
  • SERP analysis

Make Informed Decisions for Your Startup Company

The data you collect regarding customer behavior can also be used for other important actions for your startup company. You can apply it to your entire business strategy to help shape the decisions you make. Doing this will help ensure a successful launch and better growth stages. 

After you determine who your consumer is, you can figure out the best way to convert them. After that, you can start vertically integrating by building click funnels that are designed for specific users. 

The SEO data you collect will provide information to guide other business decisions, too. 

If you have a keyword that’s doing well, you can create other keywords from that with lower search volumes. There could also be other long-tail keywords you can target to help you drive other traffic and increase conversions. 

Investing in Small Business SEO Services to Help Your Startup Achieve Success

Working with professional SEO marketing services means you have someone working on your behalf to improve your SEO strategy. However, if you don’t yet have the marketing dollars to invest in professional services, you can learn how to boost local SEO yourself and begin generating results. 

Your startup may have a lean financial profile at first, but as you work on SEO and take steps to continue improving it, you can begin to change this and achieve the online marketing goals you have set. The fact is, in today’s competitive landscape, you can’t afford not to have an SEO marketing plan in place. At Small Business SEO, we are ready to help you with your SEO needs. Get in touch with our marketing team today so we can discuss your goals and needs. We will help you with each step of the SEO process.