Did you know that whatever the type of business you are running here in the UK, you can grow it significantly if you incorporate search engine optimization? In fact, this is the most cost-effective and efficient way of growing your business.
Before we move forward, we need to draw your attention to some interesting statistics. As a business in the UK, do you know what you are up against by way of competition? If you don’t, do not bother to check because the answer is right here.
As of December 2017, UK had about 5.7 million small businesses. For the avoidance of doubt, by small businesses, we mean businesses that employ less than 250 workers. So, unless your business is a fortune 500 enterprise, you likely fall under this category. You can get more on these stats here.
It does not stop there. A study showed that about 80% of these small businesses crumble within their first year. The reasons given for these failures include among other things bad financial planning and underestimating the competition.
We can, therefore, say that many are crushed by the competition. This reality makes the need to rise above your competition very critical to your success. To do this effectively and efficiently, you need an SEO backed online presence.
What is SEO?
Almost everyone knows that it is an acronym for search engine optimization. These are a set of practices that can be used to optimize both the contents of your website and links pointing to your website to make them favorably disposed to search engines.
All you are doing is ensuring your website meets the specifications that tell the search engine bots that your site has information that visitors searching for certain information will find very helpful. It’s not only about having great content or products but also about packaging the website to show that you indeed have these.
How Can SEO Help Your Local Business?
A lot of people might be wondering what exactly search engine optimization can do for their local business. The truth is that you can decide exactly what results in you want to get from this process. You decide the keywords you target, the demography, and other parameters.
Let’s look at how you can utilize this optimization process to achieve any of two major successes.
Achieving a Global Reach
Can your product or service be marketed to the world? If you have a product that is not really physical or a service that can be offered to anyone across the world, then this is the easiest way to take your business global.
Though you certainly will be up against more competition, if you know what to do or if you work with some of the great SEO services in UK, then you can dominate your niche regardless of the competition.
It Can Help Dominate Your Locality
As a local business, if you do not have a website or your website is more of a place-holder, then you have no idea the amount of money you are losing to the competition. Here are a few statistics that may interest you:
- Every day, Google records about 1.6 billion local searches. These are searches for products or services that can be gotten within a specific locality. They are also called “Near me” searches.
- Google records about 3.5 billion searches daily. 86% of those that carry out these searches perform a local search at least once a week.
- Of all that carried out a local search, almost 70% of them get directions to a store or place a call to one of the search results.
- About 33% of all the people that perform local searches do so before stepping out to go to a store or the place where they need a product or service.
We could go on and on but you can get the picture from there. The stats above show that a huge part of your target audience is actively searching for your product or service through “Near me” searches.
Unless you make yourself visible online, these potential customers will be going to your competition. You most certainly do not want to be among the 80% that go belly up in their first year.
How to Get Started
To get started with your web site’s optimization, your best bet is to find a reputable organization to work with. You can, of course, decide to handle this by yourself but the truth is told, it takes a lot of deep knowledge of the workings of the system, not to mention effort, to hit that mark that you and millions of others are aiming for.
Look for the best SEO service around you and let them help you begin to attract traffic to your business through your website immediately.
