Building trust with your customers can be difficult if your brand has not already established credibility in your city. SEO will help boost your customer's confidence in your business since your site will be listed highly within Google, which is a huge trust signal.
While Google is not the only search engine available, it does account for 86 percent of the search market as of April 2020. Your customers are using Google daily, and they would not be doing so if they did not trust their results. Due to your customer's loyalty to Google, it is best to follow SEO's best practices to get in front of your market.
SEO will also help give your users a better experience on your website. A good SEO company will perform a website audit to find any broken links or 404 pages that customers could find annoying and leave your site altogether.
Google is also very good at determining which sites offer a great experience to their users and use that data they gather to demote or promote your brand. One of the factors that Google uses to determine a positive user experience is the bounce rate. The bounce rate is determined by how many pages were viewed on your site before they return to Google.
Local SEO is an important marketing tool for any small business with a website. Users are continually using their cell phones to find solutions to their problems. Customers are looking for home services, legal advice, etc on a daily basis within their city, which is why local search is on the rise.
When it comes to local SEO, users are typing in the business industry plus their city or state. For example, someone who wants their house painted in Oak Brook, will most likely type in "painter in Oak Brook, IL" while searching for painting companies.
These types of keywords are also buyer keywords(keywords customers use later in the buying cycle), which means they will convert higher than traditional marketing tactics.
The average monthly retainer for SEO in the Chicago area will vary for each business, but companies usually see a high return on their investment. The best way to determine if SEO is affordable and beneficial is to determine the customer's lifetime customer value.
For example, a dentist may have a patient for five years who pays $1,633 per year for cleanings, exams, and significant cases. With this scenario, each new patient to your business is worth on an average of $8,165. This does not even include the referrals that you could receive from this patient or their family, deciding to join your practice.
The running joke in the SEO world is if you are playing a game of hide and seek, go to the second page of Google. The reason for this is because your customers rarely, if ever, go to the second page of Google to find a solution to their problem.
The majority of the search traffic will go to the top three positions, roughly 40 percent. So it is not good enough to have your website live on the internet, it also needs to be found on the first page of the search results.
Ensuring your company website has a strong online presence is key to bringing your business to the next level. Be sure to read my blogs for tips on improving your digital footprint and feel free to connect with me about your business needs.
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Founder and Owner of Chicago SEO Scholar. Kenny has over 10 years of experience in keyword research, conversion rate optimization, and ranking service based & enterprise businesses for their top keywords on Google.
He has worked at some of the top well known SEO agencies in the industry such as Alpha Dog Agency, The HOTH, and Linkbuilder.io. When he is not working, he is cooking at home or taking part of a cooking class to learn a new Italian dish.
The Chicago SEO Scholar is a trusted digital marketing consultancy that specializes in generating more traffic to Chicago businesses.
The founder, is committed to providing an excellent experience for his clients. He does this by providing excellent communication with clients, getting them a fantastic return on investment, and treating their business as if it was his own.