SEO is Your eCommerce Startup’s Best Friend

If you are a small business still feeling your way around the internet landscape for the first time, you will find that competing with bigger and more established business will be tough. This is specially true with regards to marketing and advertising, where competition can be downright impossible as small businesses generally do not have the hefty budgets that these larger companies have.

The answer

This is where small business SEO is useful. In a nutshell, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) aims to get an eCommerce website to rank high in the specific keywords and keyphrases that are relevant to their business. By “ranking high”, we refer to the first page of search engine results.

All small businesses which have an Internet presence, or are thinking of developing an online presence through a website, should put SEO services at the top of their list.  The proper use of SEO services can generate a flood of internet customers who are looking for the product or service you sell. These SEO Services accomplish this by getting keyword phrases, targeted to your customers, ranked highly on the various search engines like Google, Yahoo! and Bing.

Ideally, you should be talking to your SEO services provider when you first start thinking about building a website or rebuilding your current website. SEO professionals work in conjunction with webmasters. Simply put, SEO pros can’t do what webmasters do, and quite frankly, webmasters can’t do what SEO pros do.

What’s in it for you

There are some basic SEO services that almost all search engine optimization professionals offer, such as onsite optimization, content building, and link building. There are additional services that are frequently offered, as well, like keyword analysis, competitive landscape research, social media campaigns, YouTube optimization, blogging, and others.

We’ve barely scratched the surface here. SEO has many more benefits that your small eCommerce business can enjoy. Case in point:

• It casts a wider net as more and more people are going online to acquire products and services.

• Your small business website pulls in quality traffic because keywords are targeted, so your visitors are already people who are looking to buy what you have to offer. With that in mind, there is a higher probability of converting these into sales.

• You will spend far less on SEO than traditional advertising as it is technically free. Your only investment here would be in hiring experts to do it for you if you can’t do it yourself. This gives you the option to spend your advertising dollars elsewhere that can help you grow your business.

• SEO works 24/7. Your eCommerce site will constantly be promoted, day in and day out.

• SEO is also long-term. Unless there’s a rise in competition or a change in search engine algorithms, you can stay where you are for the foreseeable future.

• Lastly, SEO is measurable. You will be able to measure your organic traffic, website rankings, conversions, and the likes. This gives you plenty of data to work with.

Your SEO professional of choice matters

Experience teaches us that there is no one-size-fits-all solution that works for every website or every client.  In fact, almost every small business is different, and for best results, SEO services should be tailored to each client specifically. These search engine optimization services should be realistic in terms of budget, leverage existing client assets to their fullest, and follow a strong marketing strategy. They should also be used to working with small businesses.

When contacting an SEO professional, you should be able to understand what they are talking about when they describe the various SEO services they are recommending to you. Sure, SEO can be very technical and specialized in it’s actual application, but the underlying theories behind SEO best practices are fairly easy to convey. If you don’t understand what an SEO consultant is talking about and if it makes no sense to you, why on earth would you pay them money?

The real key for choosing the right professional to provide SEO services for your small business is to find someone who looks beyond his/her computer, has a grasp of your core business, with a marketing background and, most of all, is someone that you can communicate effectively with.

Indeed, SEO services may be the most valuable thing you’ve got going for you if you are a small business trying to make your way around the eCommerce landscape.