SMALL BUSINESS SEO SERVICES

There are many different ways for small businesses to scale up their customer base and grow in the direction they envision. Small businesses usually need to be strategic with how they spend their marketing money, so it has the best chance of creating the change they want to see. As one of the most cost-effective customer acquisition methods, this is where SEO comes in. Small business SEO services are one of the most pivotal ventures for companies of this size because it sets their site up to effectively and continuously increase their local visibility and attract new leads.

Local SEO services for a small business are all about understanding the local needs and desires and designing your web pages to target the words they use in their search engine queries. The goals do not have to be limited either; SEO can help you reach a national market, but the key to good service is determining what goals will promote the most business growth for each stage of your journey.

SEO is a complex pattern of activities that requires expert knowledge, research, ongoing analysis, technological tools and the implementation of many facets. But with the correct implementation from an SEO agency who knows what they’re doing, it can quickly become an exciting venture for small businesses that realise their growth potential efficiently.

Vine Digital offers affordable small business SEO services so that our clients can outsource SEO to a diverse and expert team. This way, they can avoid having to build an in-house department with limited capacity or opt for a service that promises them results but can’t deliver meaningful impact. In this article, we’ll explain why small businesses need SEO and how to approach finding the right one for your needs.

Expertise in Small Business SEO at an Affordable Price

Small businesses are usually competing with a high volume of competitors of similar size and capacity. Given that around three-quarters of small and mid-sized businesses are using SEO, this competition means two things. The first is that your small business SEO services need to be above average to make a real impact, so your agency has the expertise to outperform the many other small businesses competing for the same traffic. But it also means that with the right service, SEO provides an exciting avenue to break ahead of the pack and drive more web traffic directly to your site.

Vine Digital has built years of expertise to become one of the best SEO services for small businesses, with outcomes that help our clients outrank their competitors. We manage to do this effectively because of several cornerstones characteristics of our company and our work. The first is our team – they’re selected for their thorough expertise in specific areas and then come from a broad range of SEO knowledge to cover all bases.

If you’ve just started your journey to finding an SEO agency, the offers and services might be a little confusing. We do not make alluring claims or promises or try to be the cheapest; instead, we provide affordable SEO services for small business owners who view each client as an individual case. Our team manages all of the pillars that make our SEO effective and sustainable long-term, including researching your niche, understanding your goals, competitors and market analyses, technical compliance and SEO implementation tasks.

From here, our experience and our clients’ unique position guide a customised plan in our professional SEO service from the beginning. Nothing can be truly guaranteed with SEO, but with this case-by-case approach and regular performance reporting, we can iterate our work until we deliver real results that cheap SEO packages can’t produce.

Why Do Small Businesses Need SEO Services?

SEO Requires Ongoing Work

It can seem like having some SEO is better than having none at all, but without applying SEO on an ongoing basis, the work becomes ineffective quickly. Your SEO strategy needs to ensure your content and different tasks are kept up-to-date to appeal to Google’s changing SERP algorithm and continuously reach new customers. Ongoing SEO services also allow you to consistently deliver new SEO-friendly content at a natural pace that Google loves and keeps your audience engaged.

The SEO landscape changes frequently and new trends emerge all the time. We combat this changing nature through a team that is embedded in and passionate about the industry, and they keep track of recent trends. Our team implements this constantly incoming knowledge into your strategy to keep you performing well once you reach a good position.

Another huge advantage of an ongoing service is that they overcome the challenge of evaluating, auditing, reporting and altering your SEO. Without the ability to evaluate your landscape regularly, you’ll have no idea about your performance, what’s affecting your SEO, what works well and what needs to be changed. So with the ongoing reflection and alteration, a partnership service allows you to improve and reach increasingly new heights constantly. 

Small Business SEO Services Increase Local Web Visibility

A professional SEO service for small businesses focuses on the behaviours and desires of your local market. This market is critical for most businesses of this size because they receive a lot of their business from local residents and companies. The key to targeting your SEO is to learn what they search for when they want the product or service you offer. Research and local understanding will help the agency determine which keywords are the most valuable to target, and from here, they can optimise your web pages for these phrases.

These might include location-specific words, so if you sell outdoor furniture in Wollongong, your agency might optimise one of your web pages for ‘outdoor umbrella’s Wollongong’. Ideally, this will mean that people looking to buy something that you offer, and are near you, can find your site easily. Here, the intent – searchers wanting to buy an umbrella from a local shop – is considered as well as the value of the keyword, which is one of the best ways to both increase web traffic and conversations.

With enough time for Google to register the SEO, your site can climb the ranks locally for these words. This has the obvious benefit of driving more searchers to your website because you become one of the first sites they see. Another benefit is that the local visibility gained from these SERP positions increases your brand recognition. 

SEO is Complex

To get a glimpse into how complex SEO is, let’s break it down a little bit. There are first the techniques and tasks that appeal to search engine algorithms; these include content writing and optimisation, on-page SEO, link building, and technical SEO, among others. These all influence each other, too, so combining them appropriately is also essential. Then we have the research, analysis and reporting needed for feedback information that helps plan how to execute the techniques effectively.

This complex landscape then has to be performed in a constantly changing landscape while appealing to a search engine algorithm outside of the control of any SEO agency. Hence, trends and updates need to be considered and adhered to. Finally, this high-level, complex and ongoing work needs the aid of powerful tools that deliver insights and execute tactics.

There is always a lot going on in a proper application, so attempting to perform any SEO on your own or opting for a cheap service that cuts these corners just can’t deliver results in this demanding field of work. A well-established SEO agency will already have all the resources and knowledge in place and apply it to your website uniquely.

SEO Requires Expertise and Tools

In practice, applying SEO is like a whole machine with many cogs working together. This machine needs different components with expertise in various areas, so each part is performed effectively and creates consistently high work that delivers real results. Powerful tools also aid SEO and the human knowledge to know how and when to use the tools and extract the critical insights from them.

The best SEO services for small business owners are like a well-oiled SEO machine – they have the specialists, tools and experience to manage such a complex operation. While approaching your business as a unique case, the tools and expertise that come with SEO will mean your strategy is executed in a way other types of services can’t.

Some SMEs attempt to build an in-house team to manage their SEO. This is usually a much more expensive venture because it can take multiple people to apply even a basic strategy, and the team still won’t have the expertise and capabilities of an outsourced SEO service. Instead, working with a specialist agency with the resources and time will always have the best return on investment and make the whole process simpler.

Small Business SEO Builds Brand Awareness

Website visibility is built through effective, long-term SEO implementation. Higher rankings generate more searchers visiting your site. While increased conversation from more web traffic is definitely a huge benefit, other great positive impacts come with it. Even if searchers don’t go to your website or visitors don’t become customers initially, the visibility helps you become a brand remembered locally, shared with others and saved for future purchases.

While this brand recognition is a powerful outcome, it’s often neglected in conversations around local SEO services for small business owners because it’s hard to measure the exact impact. This visibility is powerful for competing against the other SMEs in your area and helps explain why small businesses need SEO services.

Another bonus of strong brand awareness is becoming trusted among Google and other search engines as an authority in your field. This delivers a strong feedback loop for SEO and increases your position further because of a feature called E-A-T (expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness). E-A-T is Google’s way of ensuring users get the best experience and find content they can trust. A proper SEO service will be able to build your brand awareness and help you become a trusted name, which makes other SEO ventures easier to achieve.

More Customers and More Conversions

SEO embeds your site into different corners of the internet and helps it pop up in front of an audience at just the right time. One of the primary advantages of using a small business SEO service is that it results in business growth gold – more customers and conversions.

When performed strategically and with a long-term approach, your SEO service provides returns long into the future as your site increases its position and more potential customers visit your site. Choosing this service will help you stay up-to-date with Google trends and keep your content relevant, so these results won’t fade either. While many websites find an immediate increase in conversions with an increase in traffic, more visitors also sets you up for future success by becoming a brand they remember.

How Local SEO Can Help Small Businesses

Local SEO is an approach to optimising your site for search engines that makes it more visible to a local audience and appears early on Google’s Local Pack. As you’re probably aware, consumers are very convenience-focused these days. They can decide to search for a product, service or experience in a second and have the closest options shown to them instantly. In fact, 46% of searches entered into Google are trying to find a local business.

This is the power of local SEO – becoming one of the first names that your audience sees whenever they search for what you offer. Small businesses also generally sell to their community, which is why local SEO can be one of the most potent ventures for business growth.

Increase Local Web Presence

When 63% of all shopping starts online, most of your target audience is searching for you online, whatever industry you’re in. It’s hard for small businesses to get away with not having an internet presence these days, save being an already well-established cornerstone of a community, and even these businesses would miss out on major growth without it.

Communities no longer look just like brick-and-mortar stores on the streets. They also involve a digital landscape, where local businesses can communicate to their audience, share important news and updates and maintain a consistent awareness that helps embed the brand into the community. Implementing effective SEO long-term will mean that your brand becomes part of the digital landscape when visitors or locals have a new need they want to meet. 

Local SEO provides one of the most cost-effective ways to increase your web presence and maintain this vital position in your local digital landscape, as well as increase your SERP position, so your site’s web traffic grows. Becoming more findable allows locals to discover what you have to offer and read your story, maximising your opportunities to connect to more potential customers.

Local SEO Agencies Know the Local Market

As Google continues to get smarter, it uses increasingly better ways to determine what’s relevant for each user. In the context of local SEO, businesses within the area are prioritised and placed high in the rankings for each user, depending on their location. Optimising your website content around general topics can pull in a broad range of users, but a local SEO service for small business owners can tweak the content to make it locally relevant and appeal to an audience ready to make a purchase.

Becoming a local authority might include industry updates, educational content or local news on your web pages. This requires a high level of understanding of the local market to prove to Google that your content is relevant to the community. It also involves understanding exactly what local users are searching for when they’re on the go and getting out their phones to find a business like yours and then targeting those words in the optimisation.

Local SEO agencies know this information and can create a customised strategy that not only focuses on helping you rank high on specific SERPs for keywords but also includes location-relevant SEO that makes you a key player in local searchers.

Outrank Local Competition

Local SEO allows your site to meet warm leads when they’re ready to buy from a business nearby, and at this later stage in the purchasing funnel, the value of being high on their list cannot be overstated. Becoming one of the leading local businesses within your niche can have massive positive effects on your business growth. 

Each spot your jump up for a search term has transformative increases in web traffic. Affordable SEO services for small businesses can quickly help you outrank your local competition, who may not be applying any techniques. Some of your competitors probably know the value in your local market, so while a basic service will help you outrank others not using any SEO, it might not be enough to get you to your desired business growth.

This is why it’s essential to ensure the agency you work with has location knowledge as well as proven expertise in planning and implementing a local SEO strategy, so they can give you the competitive advantage that comes with real experience.

Increase Customers and Conversions

We mentioned earlier that SEO services for small businesses have the power to deliver a massive increase in your customer base and conversions from visitors to your site. In the local market, many SMEs find the growth is shockingly large.

Out of the enormous numbers of people who make a local search daily, 80% of these queries turn into a sale. That is a massive amount of revenue up for grabs, and with just the right amount of optimisation for the local market, these ready-to-buy searchers can easily find and buy from you. The other 20% is not entirely lost either. Think about how often you perform a Google search just to check something and return to it later and either consciously or unconsciously remember the first names that popped up.

In addition to the local aspect, the right agency will encourage you to apply SEO as an ongoing process. This will mean that all the initial work in building your foundation and outranking your competition creates a powerful position that, with a long-term application, can help you reach the very top ranks. These positions attract a whopping amount of traffic and produce conversion rates and customer increases that generate stable growth.

How to Choose Small Business SEO Services

Experience and Expertise

As you now know, expertise with a range of different parts within SEO and experience long-term implementation are the foundations on which your SEO success is built. When looking for the right small business SEO service, try to keep these factors at the front of your mind because if the agency is inexperienced in helping small businesses, they can’t ensure the value of their service.

During your search, ask service providers to explain the experiences they’ve had working with businesses similar to yours. Try to evaluate if they’ve had success with local SEO implementation and what the outcome was for the small businesses. Their experience doesn’t have to be identical to your industry or niche, but it should be broad, extensive and delivered on an ongoing basis. It’s also a must to have experience working in your local market as they’ll come in with a strong understanding of your audience.

You can also ask about their team and if they have professionals specialising in various SEO areas. This variety of expertise is vital for the whole operation, as many parts need to be executed well for overall success.

Reviews, Testimonies and Case Studies

Open communication is a great sign of a trusted service provider, but given the SEO industry comes with some providers who use shady tactics, it’s best to find evidence to back up their claims. The best evidence you can usually find freely on the agency’s website is their reviews and testimonials. These are first-hand pieces of information from previous clients that were once in your current position, so they understand your concerns.

You can read through their Google reviews as well and try to evaluate if there are any small businesses of similar size to yours and what the outcome of the service was for them. This can help you build confidence in the agency before moving forward and committing to a long-term SEO service.

After this, you can dig even deeper and look for case studies on their website. These are more extended pieces of information about a specific project and will give you an idea of how the firm operates, including how they overcome challenges to arrive at the desired result for their clients. Case studies can also provide transparency into their customer service and willingness to challenge your ideas to give you the best advice you may not have considered.

Customised Approaches and Alignment of Goals

A final cheat code to determine if you can trust an agency to handle your ongoing SEO work is if they approach you as a unique business and need your own strategy. Some cheap SEO packages will use a template plan to implement SEO and then centralise your business into their schedule. This approach completely neglects the fact that SEO isn’t a one-size-fits-all system, so while the template might suit one business well, for everyone else, it’ll fail dismally.

A good SEO agency will work hard to understand each small business’s intricacies, including their business goals, current position within their market and the competitive landscape in their niche. From here, they’ll conduct further research, identify which keywords will be the most powerful to target for the goals, and create a customised plan to produce the most tangible results.

In the early stages, they should listen to your website goals and also communicate what goals they think are important – after all, they’re the experts. Together you can arrive at an alignment of goals that suit your business and make the most SEO impact.

Small Business SEO Services with Vine Digital

As a leading SEO agency on a mission to demystify the offers of the industry, we make sure our whole process, from clients’ first visit to our site and throughout the SEO process, offers complete transparency. While the team at Vine Digital have a diverse SEO background and years of experience under their belt, don’t just take our word for it. You can find ample reviews, testimonials and case studies on our website that showcase how we work with our clients and the results this experience delivered them.

We usually work on a partnership basis with our clients. This relationship allows us to plug our expertise into your SEO needs, so you can focus on their core competencies while we deliver world-class small business SEO that offers cost-effective customer acquisition. You can read more about the intricacies of our service below or contact us today to find out more.

Our Small Business SEO Services

SEO Audit

Vine Digital regularly performs SEO audit’s on each of your web pages to ensure that they’re all optimised seamlessly for the most profitable keywords. We’ll also identify any errors and reprimand anything blocking your pages from ranking at their peak potential.

Keyword Research

Knowing what phrases to rank for is pivotal to your SEO success because it facilitates reaching the most relevant traffic while ensuring they’re relevant and have a high conversion rate. Vine Digital’s team are specialists at balancing keyword intent, volume and competition to optimise your whole website.

Competitor Analysis

Understanding your competitor’s websites and the keywords they’re optimised for provides powerful goalposts and helps channel resources for your service effectively. Vine Digital performs regular competitive analysis to determine how you place against your competition and extract insights that help you outrank them efficiently.

Content Creation

Vine Digital has some of the best content creators in its team. We can consistently deliver insightful and relevant information on your pages that makes you a trusted authority in your field, as well as optimising the text for the ideal keywords – so our content creation first drives traffic and then builds trust.

On-Page SEO

You need to optimise many different aspects of each web page to provide real results for its search engine ranking – and on-page SEO is the management of these facets. Vine Digital’s diverse team can execute all of these requirements for optimised web pages built to compete.

Outreach

Outreach is the process of creating a backlink profile for your website. Vine Digital has a strong network of trusted websites that include links to your site, so your outreach will not only be extensive but powerful in its authority and help your site become one that Google values.

Long-Term Content Strategy

Google places a lot of value on content regularly provided at a natural pace because it shows that it’s being written thoughtfully and has value for readers. Vine Digital can establish long-term content strategies that consistently deliver optimised, informative and trust-building content to deliver sustainable search engine results.

Monthly Reporting

You can’t make the right changes towards success without accurate feedback. Vine Digital place emphasises our monthly reporting and analysis. It provides critical information about what’s working well, how our work has influenced your site’s performance and what we need to change for better results.