According to respected marketer and VUDU Marketing CEO Sam Roberts, search engine optimisation has evolved into more of a branding play, which means businesses should not see it as a marketing play only. Additionally, both small and large businesses should invest in SEO to ensure they rank highly on search engine results pages (SERPs). With that in mind, here are four benefits of SEO for local business.

1. Ramp up Sales

According to a study carried out by Google in collaboration with Ipsos MediaCT and Purchased, 56% of smartphone users search for local information while on the go. In addition, 18% of local searches originating from smartphones lead to a purchase within 24 hours. In comparison, only 7% of smartphone-based non-local searches translate to sales within the same period. In general, 50% and 34% of people who perform local searches on smartphones and tablets respectively tend to visit local stores within a day. The eCommerce industry in North America is set to experience double-digit growth through 2020, according to data from eMarketer. For these reasons, developing and implementing a solid search engine optimisation strategy would be vital for the success for your business.

2. Reach a Captive Audience

Contrary to popular belief, 72% of tablet/PC owners and 67% of smartphone owners want brands to show them ads customised to their location (city/zip code). This is in addition to 70% of PC/tablet owners and 61% of smartphone owners who want to see marketing content customised to suit their surroundings. Nevertheless, identifying the right local audience is tricky because a consumer demographic such as millennials could be sub-segmented based on factors such as income, education qualifications and gender. By investing in search engine optimisation, you would be able to deliver your marketing message to the right audience.

3. Boost Brand Reach

A market forecast published by eMarketer shows that global eCommerce sales are on pace to hit $4 trillion or 14.6% of all retail sales by 2020. Most of this growth will be experienced in China, which eMarketer reckons accounted for 47% of global eCommerce sales in 2016 alone. Fortunately, you, too, can get a piece of this action by developing a SEO strategy that is hinged on enhancing brand visibility online via social media marketing, site UI optimisation, as well as content creation and publishing. Overall, if your brand shuns search engine optimisation, it will likely lose to more tech savvy competitors.

4. Cost Effective

Compared to other forms of marketing such as search engine marketing, SEO is generally more cost effective because it tends to focus on organic growth. This is according to an article published by Forbes. What’s more, SEO is much cheaper than traditional marketing solutions such as television ads.

Conclusion

What are the benefits of SEO – How can a company start to do this themselves? Search engine marketing is beneficial to local businesses because it is cost effective, boosts brand reach, improves sales and enables brands to identify and reach the right consumer demographic. Smaller companies may want to start reaching out to other business in your local area and ask for some kind of exchange whereby you link to one of their articles that fits into the geo-location of your business and in return they could link back to one of your articles as a kind of mention of your relationship with them in business. This can be frowned upon by Google just like anything else whereby a business tries to improve its rank but in this business we all know these things work and Google are just scaremongering as pointed out in this article here about a reciprocal link exchange experiment.