Today, SEO is becoming equally important as content marketing. Without one, there’s no point in doing the other.
Search engine optimization is your key to winning new business and maximizing your investment in digital marketing. Whether you have one retail location or 100, you need the best organic SEO services.
Organic search traffic accounts for more than 50% of all traffic, according to a report published by Search Engine Land. Meanwhile, page traffic only accounts for 50% of site traffic.
To learn more about local SEO versus organic SEO services, continue reading.
What Are Organic SEO Services?
If you own a business, you need customers to visit your website. Today, a website is one of the top ways to advertise your business. There, consumers can learn about your products or services and your brand.
However, what do you do when you’re not getting enough traffic? The answer is that you need to start leveraging organic search engine optimization (SEO) practices.
SEO doesn’t guarantee that customers will come beating down your door. However, it can help you get closer to the top of search engine results pages (SERPs), where customers can find your business.
When more customers see your listing on Google, for instance, more people will visit your website. In turn, more people will eventually make a purchase. That’s SEO.
Organic SEO is composed of several practices. Two of those practices, for instance, are keyword research and link building. SEO practices help your website rank at or near the top of search engines organically with unpaid listings.
Organic SEO optimization is highly important. According to the Search Engine Land report, 75% of internet users will not look past the first page of search results.
Accordingly, if you don’t rank on the first page, you might as well not even have a website. A poor SERP ranking will make it difficult for you to attract new business.
Learning the Digital Lay of the Land
If you own a business, you must understand organic search engine optimization. Most consumers find information about companies using organic search results. 90% of online experiences start when somebody Googles information about a business.
This fact highlights the importance of SEO optimization. If you’re not near the top of search engine rankings, you’re missing out on a lot of business.
Also, organic searches are 40% more likely to yield click through’s compared to paid advertising. More importantly, however, website engagement that starts with an organic search is eight times more likely to result in a sale.
Organic Traffic versus Paid Advertising
SEO optimization is a must for online stores. For e-commerce businesses, it’s the most effective way to advertise.
However, a website is also essential for today’s brick-and-mortar businesses. Today, consumers research goods and services before they buy.
If consumers can’t find information about a business online, they’ll simply keep looking until they find something informative and patronize that business instead. Nevertheless, most brick-and-mortar retailers aren’t aware of the difference between organic traffic and local advertising.
Whether you have an online business, a retail store or a combination of both, you need a website and you need traffic. However, it’s not easy getting web traffic.
You could simply mosey on over to Google Ads and by advertising. However, Google Ads is a competitive environment. In other words, the more an ad placement is worth, the more that it’s going to cost you to buy impressions.
Still, paid advertising is beneficial in that you can yield immediate results. More often, however, it will take a few days for you to see results from a paid advertising campaign.
Of course, there’s a downside. When you run out of advertising money, that wonderful surge of traffic comes to a grinding halt.
There’s a Better Way to Advertise Your Brand
On the other hand, organic SEO practices enable you to build sustainable traffic. Just as you build a reputation for your brick-and-mortar store and attract loyal customers, organic traffic allows you to create a loyal online following. Winning at organic SEO online is the equivalent of getting a great location in a high foot traffic mall in the real world.
By partnering with an organic SEO service provider, you can give your budget and your team a break. If, for instance, you invested in SEO for a few months and decided to stop, your traffic will not decrease. It’s fair to say, however, that both organic SEO and paid advertising will increase brand awareness.
As an aside, paid advertising also provides some continuous traffic. However, it pales in comparison to that of organic SEO. Ultimately, what you need is the right balance between paid and organic marketing.
What Are Your Goals?
If you own a brick-and-mortar store, you need to get local with your SEO optimization. In other words, you need to follow SEO practices that will help people in your community find your local business online.
Most consumers perform a local search before patronizing a new business. A visit to a local retail store these days begins with a quick search on Google. Many customers perform the search right on their smartphones.
However, local SEO is about more than ranking high in SERPs. It’s about promoting your business online where people can find you.
For example, local SEO involves making sure your listing with directories such as Google Maps, Yelp and Facebook are up-to-date. By keeping these kinds of business listings current, you’ll rank better in local search engine results pages.
Many brands overlook local optimization if they’re already diligent in performing SEO. However, neglecting local SEO is a big mistake if you own a retail store. This circumstance applies to any business operating anywhere that serves the local community.
Local SEO is a subset of search engine optimization. It drives traffic to your website, which in turn drives paying customers to your physical store. More than a third of local SEO searches result in a same-day, in-store purchase.
Now, you should start to see the value of local SEO. It’s just as valuable – if not more valuable – than search engine optimization in general.
Like a lot of things, local SEO starts with baby steps. For instance, you can begin by claiming your business listings on directories such as Google and Yelp.
What If I Have More Than One Store?
Historically, companies with multiple locations are brutal at local SEO. Unfortunately, many businesses make the mistake of thinking that if they do a great job at SEO, local customers will find them anyway. What’s also unfortunate is the fact that this isn’t always the case.
A business that does practice local SEO will most certainly outperform you in this area if you do nothing at all. Resultantly, you’re passing up valuable business if you don’t optimize your local SEO assets.
Also, the digital landscape is changing. As a result, it’s getting harder for multi-property businesses to rank locally – however, it’s not impossible.
Often, you can remedy the problem by covering the basics of SEO. However, you must treat each location as a separate entity as far as optimization for local SEO.
You could create one web page to cover a region to save time and money. However, this will not make it easy for local customers to find your page.
For example, a lot of customers use branch finders. It’s a huge mistake, however, to think that a branch finder is going to help you rank well in local SEO.
Keep the Googlebot Happy
Googlebot doesn’t like branch finders. In other words, it can’t read them. It has no idea that you have five great locations in your area.
Accordingly, you need a separate local page for each retail location. Each page should have details about that specific location.
For instance, your listing should have the opening hours of that store and other specific information, for example, the name of the store manager. The more information you provide for each property, the better you will rank for local SEO.
Again, stay away from shortcuts. Don’t make a page for each location and just change minor details. Make each page unique as possible for each property.
Also, don’t forget the basics of SEO. Each site needs quality content for customers.
Furthermore, each site needs unique content. If you have five stores, don’t write an article and post the same material on all five websites.
Doing this will not only hurt your local ranking, but it will also hurt your SEO ranking. In the eyes of Googlebot, all five of your sites will have plagiarized content. Googlebot doesn’t like copied content – at all.
Gearing up for Local SEO
In essence, each of your physical properties needs its own identity. Of course, you’d include the name, address and phone number for each website. However, information such as customer reviews, news and testimonials should remain specific for each property.
You must also install an embedded Google map on each site. The map should show customers how to get to your business.
You should include points of interest in your directions that Googlebot can associate with your location. Also, you should publish images from inside the store as well as pictures of your staff members and customers. Again, these are pictures of staff members and customers at each location, not shared across all of your digital properties.
Still, you must also mind the technical aspects of SEO. It helps to set up microsites to distinguish your properties. You must also create location-specific title tags and meta descriptions.
Also, you must make sure that Google can index your sites. Once you have created your microsites, submit a site map to Google.
Submitting a site map makes it easier for Google to find and index your pages. Once Googlebot can see your web pages, it can keep up with updates and award you accordingly.
Finding the Right SEO Agency Near Me
The marketing agency that you choose will affect the outcome of your SEO initiative greatly. The right marketing agency can mean a difference between a huge surge in organic traffic or a deep dive into the Google search results badlands. If you’re wondering about the location of the Google search badlands, they’re any page that isn’t the first page of rankings.
Alternatively, you could enjoy great success by partnering with the right digital marketing agency. A search engine optimization specialist can help you increase sales while exhausting less money and resources for marketing. At the same time, an expert marketing agency can help you improve the buyer journey for your customers.
Before you buy organic SEO services, figure out what it is you want to accomplish. For instance, know if you wish to increase sales, increase traffic or build your mailing list before talking to an agency.
Also, ask other noncompeting business owners about effective digital marketing agencies. A trusted referral is an ideal way to find the best organic SEO services.
Of course, a direct competitor will not share this information with you. However, if you can find someone in a similar industry, it’s beneficial because their recommended agency will already have experience in helping businesses like yours.
Now You’re Getting Somewhere
Once you’ve established your goals and identified potential marketing partners, it’s time to start asking questions. For instance, a competent marketing agency can tell you how they will prove the results of their work. Furthermore, they’ll explain it to you in a way that you can understand without using confusing technical jargon.
In this regard, you should also ask what tools a potential marketing partner will use to track the success of your organic SEO campaign. A good marketing agency will give you access to these tools. They’ll also help you to understand the results.
Partner With a Proven Winner
Organic search engine optimization is a long-term endeavor. Accordingly, you must partner with the right digital marketing agency for organic SEO services. It’s important to find a professional relationship that’s going to last.
Riserr is a best-in-class search engine optimization agency. We understand that making it to the top of search engine results is a mission-critical task for your business.
For us, search engine optimization isn’t a fancy buzz word or a practice with an unclear outcome. We know the importance of delivering clear and quantifiable results.
Contact us today for a free consultation and get started with rising to the top of search engine results!
