Most business owners have finally accepted the fact that they need a website to promote their products and/or services. It doesn’t matter if they sell sneakers, soda pop, or pizza pies, an online presence can help them attract new customers and keep existing ones updated about special offers and events. About half of the small businesses in America have a website, which isn’t bad when we consider that almost none of them did decade ago. However, only about half of them regularly update their listings online. What does this tell us?
With the help of website building tools and software, nearly anyone can create a basic, functional website in a matter of minutes. A simple web search should return hundreds, even thousands of viable
options. Best of all, many of them can be used for free! But once created, most small business owners fail to update their websites, which defeats the primary purpose of a website, i.e., to keep customers in the loop! According to a recent survey from an online marketing firm, most small business owners with websites (51 percent) never update their online listings or information. And when asked why they ignore such a valuable and versatile resource, most respondents answered that they have little or no knowledge of even basic online marketing. This truly is a waste of energy and options in a world that is growing increasingly dependent on ecommerce. Acronyms can be confusing, especially when they involve technology. Search Engine Optimization (or SEO) is a method that is critical to your online success. Unfortunately, most small business owners either ignore or avoid it because they incorrectly assume it’s either too complicated or expensive for them to have done. What is it?
The simplest definition of SEO is a method that can be utilized to improve a website’s rankings on popular search engines like Yahoo, Bing, and Google. That way, when potential customers perform a search that is related to your business, it is far more likely that your website will appear on the results page, thereby increasing traffic to your site. A website that has been SEO optimized will be featured prominently on web results pages, while those that are not will be virtually (pun intended) invisible. It is for this reason that SEO is arguably the most important online marketing activity. How can a SEO marketing agency help? For starters, they can make your website much easier to find. At present, there are hundreds of millions of active websites on the internet and most fail to attract new guests because their owners did not hire a SEO marketing agency after they created their sites. By the way, with the help of SEO, you can promote not only sites, but also various mobile applications: game, video chat, social networks and much more. An apropos analogy of this common mistake would be if someone were to put up a shiny new billboard in the middle of a ghost town. It might be nice, new, and attractive, but no one will ever know that because they’ll never see it!
A SEO marketing agency can change all that by helping you stand out from your competition. Numerous customer surveys have also found that potential customers have a much higher opinion of companies that have operational and up-to-date websites. In general, they tend to see them as more trustworthy and legitimate. It is also important to note that websites, even if they’re for local business, can help establish a broader reach. A small Italian restaurant, for example, can easily attract customers from several towns over if they have a functioning website that is linked to popular reviews sites, such as tripadvisor.com. All of these options and actions can be completed for a reasonable fee by a reputable SEO marketing agency. And once in place, the website owner or the pay-per-click agency can complete regular updates in no time. There’s more to online marketing than simply setting up a website and hoping people stop by. A leading SEO marketing agency, Exults can help you optimize your website, which will ensure that it will discovered by popular search engines like Google and Bing. For more information on our pay-per-click agency services, please visit us at