The thought of SEO can be both intimidating and frustrating for many small businesses; whether it’s because you don’t fully understand the concept, or it may seem like an impossible task to get found online. Many large and well-known companies are spending endless amounts of money to cement their authority online, making SEO seem quite daunting. With the right knowledge and understanding, getting your business found online, isn’t as impossible as you might of first thought.
When it comes to getting found online, being a small business has several advantages over large companies. To help get your business found better online, you need to know how to use the below advantages to improve your businesses online presence.
Being a smaller business allows you can target more niche and specific markets to help get your business found online. Larger companies are likely to target common search terms and keywords such as ‘home repairs’ or ‘laptops’ to get found online, and will throw countless amounts of money at it to get themselves on the front page of search engines. Being smaller or a local business, gives you the ability to target long-tail and more specific keywords such as ‘professional home repair services’ or ‘affordable Toshiba laptops’; which are less competitive but can allow you to gain better search rankings.
If you're local to a specific area or offer your services to specific local areas, then it allows your business to take advantage of local SEO; this allows you to target specific search areas such as villages or towns that you may cater for. Larger companies might target an area like Manchester or the whole of the UK AS PART OF THEIR seo STRATEGY, whereas being smaller you can take advantage of localised areas to target your SEO, such as ‘Acton’ ADD ANOTHER EXAMPLE.
If you’re a new start-up company or existing small business then that can be an advantage in itself when people see your site on search engines. When people see something that's new, or that is different to what they usually see, they’re more likely to click and take a browse of your site. This can in-turn increase the amount of time a user will spend on your site, exploring the products and services that you offer.
Small businesses can be agile when it comes to search engine optimisation, larger companies spend so much time and money targeting particular keywords and areas, that they can be fearful of change as they don’t want to risk their search engine rankings. A business on a smaller scale can be more agile, experimenting and testing new strategies to see what works best for them; allowing them more flexibility to find the right keywords/phrases to target online.
As a small or local business, this allows you to develop a more personal brand, which your customers can grow to trust and love; this can lead to more offsite content opportunities. Offsite content can come in the form of reviews or postings on various sites and social media, helping to create an all-around greater SEO presence and increased brand awareness
Large companies are well known, but being the underdog also has its benefits. As a smaller business, you can have more appeal, which can often make it easier to get published on valuable offsite sources, such as guest blogging on other sites that are relevant to your industry.
