That is the question that I get asked a lot, and I couldn’t really wrap my head around it because I thought this is one of those questions that sound nice as a title for an article, but in fact is rather a rhetorical question because the answer is pretty much self-explanatory. Oh, boy was I wrong!
Then I thought about it, and I realized that people don’t really understand what that means. So I usually tell them that they basically asked me how local businesses can profit from more leads. Or should I say, more free leads, because if you are ranked organically high on google, you’re getting free leads. In most cases you do need to pay to a search engine optimization (SEO) expert to do search engine optimization for you, so you might say that those are not free leads, but that depends on the way you look at it. Those leads are free, but the way you get them is something that costs you money.
This is not a rather philosophical question, and in some other article we’ll explain you the difference, but it is important to understand that difference because there are some differences between different types of traffic you get to your website.
If after rephrasing that question you still don’t understand how local businesses can profit from more leads, let me be blunt about it. More quality leads mean more sales which mean more profit (if you have a healthy business, needless to say).
Search engine optimization basically means optimizing your website so that search engines love it, and reward it with higher position (hopefully #1 spot) when people search for your keywords.
How many times you went on Google, Yahoo, Bing or any other search engine and searched for some local business in your area, because you needed their service? Unless you’ve been living under the rock, your answer would more than few times. Well, join the club, because in 2012. the survey showed that 85% of consumers use Internet to find local businesses. As the time goes by, that number will only increase.
Times, when you could’ve run a successful local business without an online presence are long gone, so you either have to adapt or go out of business, but you can’t succeed in this day and age with old marketing tactics.
When you read all this you might ask yourself (or us) is the search engine optimization (SEO) only, or at least, the most important way to market your local business? Well, short answers are: “No”, and “Not always”, but we cover more of that in the “Is search engine optimization (SEO) the most important way of getting new leads for your local business?” article.
And if you’re looking for an SEO expert, at this moment we are ranking for: