I am a huge proponent of the importance of websites and solid SEO for any business. I speak with a lot of small businesses, such as dental practices, that mention the fact that they do not see the overall value in a website or investing in a solid SEO plan. In fact, many say that their website is simply an online brochure for their business and doesn’t serve many purposes at all.
I have also had the pleasure to work with a number of small, or even “micro”, businesses. These businesses may be soloproneurs (one person) or a handful of employees. However, they see the value in creating a website and investing in SEO to help their business thrive.
The Case Study
I had the unique opportunity to work with a new business owner when they were first beginning their business journey. We got together over the phone and spoke for a while and I expressed the importance of investing in a website and SEO to help get their business off the ground. The business is a local service based beauty company.
Like most website projects, we created a solid game plan in order to get their website launched and optimized.
I put together a quick list of items I would need from them in order to get started. Below is a list of items I needed from them (condensed for reading purposes):
- Website content
- Images for the website
- Competitors (for keyword research)
I knew I needed to get their website online ASAP, but also take the time to properly set up and optimize the website properly. Here is a condensed list of the items I needed to get done for them:
- Design & develop website from the content provided
- Perform keyword research and competitive analysis for their business
- Optimize the website with the proper page titles, meta descriptions, and interlinking on the website
- Setup Google Analytics & Search Console
- Setup Google My Business for their local business
- Once the website was launched, submit the website to Google for indexing
- Monitor rankings & make necessary adjustments
Successful SEO takes time
I made sure that I informed the client that organic SEO would take time to achieve results. Sometimes it takes weeks, sometimes months and sometimes even longer than that. There are a number of external factors that come into play, including competition, the age of the domain, and more.
I knew that this client was in a moderately competitive industry. There were two main competitors that we had to deal with, and while they were actively pursuing SEO (as best as I could tell), I knew we could change a few things to outrank them. One thing I told my client to do was to make sure that they were actively asking customers for reviews after their service appointment was completed. To this date, they have almost 40, 5-star reviews (more than any of their competitors).
Since the website was launched in December of 2015, I assumed we would have decent results towards the middle to end of 2016, with better results in 2017.
The results
Fast forward to today, and they have just surpassed their two year business anniversary. Thanks to their generosity, they went back through two years of records and calculated the total percentage of clients who found them online. Before I get there, I will mention something we did implement from the start. We made sure that every single customer that came in told them where they found the business (online, referral, vendor, etc.). This made it possible for us to track the results and find out where the new clients were coming from.
The results were staggering:
2016 – 61.53% OF THEIR REVENUE WAS GENERATED FROM PEOPLE WHO FOUND THEM ONLINE.
2017 – 79.67% OF THEIR REVENUE WAS GENERATED FROM PEOPLE WHO FOUND THEM ONLINE.
Please, not that the above numbers were achieved only from organic SEO. No paid traffic was driven to the website.
I wrote this article to explain the importance of a website for any business, at any level. This client could have easily decided not to create a website, but it’s safe to say that they would not still be in business without their website + SEO. If you removed 62 – 80% of your business, would your business still exist?
Highly unlikely.
What are you doing to make sure that your business can be found online?