In the past, many entrepreneurs ignored search engine optimization, believing they have no need for it.

Fast forward to today, and SEO is now an integral component of the digital marketing strategies of countless businesses.

In the beginning, entrepreneurs, in general, weren’t big fans of SEO, but they eventually saw that it does work. It was only a matter of time before business owners started taking an interest in optimizing their websites for search engines. Today, SEO is no longer optional for businesses to get the word out about their products and services.

If you’re an entrepreneur and you still haven’t given SEO for small businesses a try, here are seven reasons why you should.

Everyone Is Using Search Engines

Google alone processes an average of 40,000 search queries every second. That’s 3.5 billion searches per day. Add Yahoo, Bing, and other search engines to the mix, and the number of searches climbs even higher.

With focused optimization efforts on your part, your pages stand a good chance of landing on the first page of the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) to answer some of those queries.

Once you land the top positions in the SERPs, your pages become more visible and more likely to be clicked on by search engine users, leading to increased traffic to your website and potential conversions for your business.

SEO Results Are Highly Trackable

Unlike traditional marketing approaches, tracking and quantifying SEO results is easier and more comprehensive.

When you do SEO, you will have at your disposal both free and paid tools that will help monitor how your website is doing in terms of rankings, traffic, conversions, and many other aspects.

With your analytics tools, you should also be able to see all sorts of engagement metrics for the people who have accessed your website. You’ll see which pages your audience has clicked the most, and find out what they like, among other things.

SEO Is More Cost-Effective

Of the many marketing strategies out there, SEO has the reputation of being more cost-effective than most.

As long as you have the right strategies and team in place, SEO will help you save money because you will be targeting people who are already actively looking for your offerings on the Internet.

Compare that to the random and untargeted nature of traditional marketing approaches like TV and radio ads, and you’ll see the edge that SEO strategies offer.

The Benefits of Local Search

For a small or medium-sized business, paying more attention to local SEO could be the key to success.

When optimizing for local search, you will be, in effect, focusing on specific towns, cities, regions, and states where your business operates.

By ranking well on searches for products or services similar to yours within a specific vicinity, people are bound to find you more quickly and easily, and that increases your chances of them doing business with you in the end.

You can start boosting your local SEO by creating or claiming online listings, like the one offered by Google My Business. As long as you provide accurate information about your business, you can improve your chances of ranking high on local search. Create listings on Yahoo Local, Yelp, Foursquare, and other platforms to further strengthen your location signals.

Depending on your industry, user reviews on Home Advisor, Angie’s List, and similar platforms also help your local SEO.

Most Shoppers Do Research Before Buying

A study says 81% of consumers do online research before giving any given business their, well, business.

Let’s assume that your website has quality content that provides the information people need about your products. That would be great, except that without good SEO work, consumers won’t be able to see your pages in the SERPs. Unoptimized web pages have zero chances of making it to Page 1, and won’t be visible to people searching for what you have to offer.

Your Competitors Are Doing SEO 

If you’re not doing SEO for your business yet, you’ll find little comfort in the idea that your competitors may just be ahead of you in that regard.

As mentioned early on, many businesses are now optimizing their websites. If you still aren’t, then it’s safe to assume that you are already missing out on leads. The fact that those leads you’re missing are being snapped up by your optimizing competition can make you feel even more left behind.

Then again, it’s never too late. For all you know, your competitors are going about their SEO the wrong way. Start your optimization efforts now with the help of a reputable SEO agency, and you can catch up and even outrank your competition in time.

SEO Is Here To Stay

Many articles talk about SEO as if it’s already dead or dying. 

However, as long as Google, the other search engines, and the Internet exist, SEO will be here to stay and continue to contribute to any given business’s success.

What will happen to SEO is that it will evolve over time, and so will the best SEO practices. In its early days, SEO results were easy to manipulate using black hat techniques. Google made the necessary algorithm adjustments through the years and is now rewarding sites that create quality content while penalizing those who still depend on dirty tricks to get a leg up on everyone. Expect to see even more significant changes in the coming years.

It would be great if you can learn and implement SEO strategy by yourself. However, going solo on your initial foray into search engine optimization will mostly be a trial-and-error thing, which can delay results even further.

If you have the budget for it, it’s best to go ahead and partner up with a reputable SEO firm. That way, you get to skip that phase and go straight to implementing a sound SEO strategy that will yield your desired results for your business within a reasonable time frame.

By Stephanie Salud