As a small business, you probably have a small budget for online marketing. This is a good thing because small business SEO prevents you from wasting money on poorly thought out, poorly executed campaigns. There are several ways in which you can use your money smartly here.
Pay-Per-Click Advertising
One form of advertising that’s proven quite cost-effective when it comes to small business SEO is pay-per-click (PPC) advertising. This is because you can start and stop them quickly. As such, your precise budget can be controlled and measured easily. This allows you to spend more money on local SEO campaigns that work while immediately shutting off those that aren’t working. Don’t use these for lead generation though as it’s too hard to manage. Additionally, be ready to spend more than a few hundred dollars per month because you’ll need a lot of clicks to generate enough conversions to pay for the campaign.
SEO
It’s important to understand that Search engine optimization (SEO) is different from PPC. This is mainly because SEO takes years of steady work and a significant budget to see results. Small business SEO works best here if you don’t have a lot of competition and you can find high volume keywords that are relevant.
A local SEO campaign can be very cost-effective for local businesses. This is because a lot of people who conduct Google searches today use their mobile phone to do so, which demonstrates their intent to buy something soon instead of waiting for it. Clearly, this type of campaign is a great way to get your business in front of these highly qualified prospects.
Another type of campaign that your small business shouldn’t overlook is email. This is a very flexible campaign which is why it’s so important to engage in when working on your small business SEO. You can use it to generate leads and sales, build customer loyalty, introduce new products and services, and get customer feedback all for a minimal investment. In fact, this will require more time than money. The reason being is that you need to focus on quality since people are overwhelmed by the amount of spam they receive today. As such, customers only read high-value email that isn’t sent too often.
Social Media
Since social media doesn’t require a lot of investment to get started it’s another part of your small business SEO that you shouldn’t overlook. However, being active on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest does require a big investment of your time. This is especially true if you’re using for local SEO since you want to generate money or leads that can actually visit your physical business.
Don’t let social media turn into a major time suck though. While you’ll need to spend between 1 – 4 hours to run a successful social media campaign, you don’t want to get sidetracked while there.
For businesses that are really visual in nature, you’ll also want to create a local SEO campaign for social media sites like Instagram and Pinterest. You can attract a lot of attention on these sites even though you may need to add a few more hours to the time you invest in social media each week. This will pay off though because visual consumer businesses do better than the average social media campaign.
Proceed Systematically
You won’t know how cost-effective small business SEO is until you try it. When you’re ready to do so, reach out to Local SEO Company. They can help you create a valid test without breaking your budget. From there you can ramp your local SEO campaign up or down quite easily depending on your budget.