Advantages & Disadvantages of SEO for Small Businesses

On major advantage of SEO is that it is undoubtedly one of the best ways to get traffic and visitors to your website. Not only that, you can kick start your completely new business with the help of SEO as well.

However, instead of thinking that everything is all sunshine and rainbows about SEO, it is time to look at the advantages and disadvantages of SEO.

Only when you are aware of the pros and cons of SEO can you decide whether it is a good idea to go ahead with it and whether or not if its a good fit for your business. Today I will cover these pros and cons of SEO:

Advantages of SEO:

Firstly, let us look at the advantages so that you can understand why using seo makes sense.

1. More Website Visitors:

The main advantage of SEO is that it can bring more visitors to your website. More visitors can potentially mean more sales. The advantage of these visitors is that you can target the right kind of visitors. Then, when it happens, you’re sure to kick-start the revenue of your company.

When a visitor visits your website from the search engine, it does not matter whether your website is just a few months old or a few years old. When you target the right profitable keywords, SEO can be such a game changer for your business. SEO can help you attract the right website traffic into your website.

2. Higher Conversions:

Merely gaining visitors to your website will not help you sell more products and services. The advantage of SEO, however, is that you get relevant visitors (that is if you target the right keywords).

It means that the visitors searching for your products and services are likely to land on your website. When you have good SEO, the conversion rate on your website will inevitable rise.

Another reason the conversion rate is so high when users find you through Google or other search engines is that those users are already looking for the product or service that you are selling. You’re already halfway down the sales funnel with SEO!

The relevancy of the traffic is another reason you should opt for SEO rather than any other marketing method.

3. SEO Provides Greater Brand Recognition

When you start ranking for a few keywords in your niche, you will likely start ranking for more longtail keywords as well. It means that when someone is searching for the relevant information or product in your niche, your website will most likely show up repeatedly.

Who is a visitor going to trust? A website they are visiting for the first time or a website that ranks for numerous terms on the search engine.

Of course, they are going to trust the website with good SEO and is ranking for numerous terms on the search engine. It means that you can get higher brand recognition as well.

You can convert this higher brand recognition into higher revenue as well. Not only that, if you plan to sell your business down the line, such brand recognition can increase the value of your business.

In short, the brand recognition which you can achieve from SEO is undoubtedly worth it.

4. SEO can Provide You With the Right Data

In today’s age, knowing the keywords which convert the best and the behavior of the visitors who search for those keywords is priceless. Usually, when you need to get such data, you do need to run paid advertisements.

The problem with paid advertising is that you will most likely need to spend hundreds or even thousands of dollars just to get the right data on your website. This is impractical for almost every small business.

On the other hand with SEO, once you start ranking your website, you will know which keywords are sending you the most traffic. You can monitor the conversion rate for traffic from each of those keywords as well on a free tool called Google Analytics.

You can monitor the devices and operating systems along with the geography of the website visitors as well. In a nutshell, you will know right away which visitors are converting the best and which visitors aren’t converting at all.

You can plan your future content in the direction of your website accordingly. It means that in the future, you can increase your conversion rate even more. Most importantly, you will have access to this data throughout your lifetime.

Consequently, it will become easier to grow your business in the right direction as well. The data which SEO provides access to is undoubtedly a major advantage and pro reason why you need to opt for it.

5. SEO Produces a High Return on Investment

When you’re trying to rank your website, of course, you have to invest a decent amount of money into backlinks and content. However, once you start ranking your website, you will get consistent visitors.

Therefore, the number of backlinks and content which you will need after that will reduce as well. As long as you are creating some backlinks and content, it will consistently rank. It means that your workload decreases, but the number of visitors you get is consistent and even increasing.

When that happens, the return on investment which you will get will be exponentially high.

When you compare this with other avenues of traffic like social media, paid advertisements, you will realize that SEO provides much higher ROI. This is another advantage of SEO.

6. Helps You Attract the Visitors you Want:

With the help of SEO, you can attract the visitors you want to your website. If you plan the content and the website right, you can get the visitors you want. You can target visitors according to various parameters like:

• Geography: In the Google Webmasters tool, you can select the country of your website. Once you do so, it will become easier for you to get visitors from that country. It means that you can get the visitors who are most likely to buy your product or service.

• Keywords: Similarly, with the help of keywords, you can target the visitors already looking for a similar product or service. Consequently, it will become easier for you to convert them and make them buy your product or service.

• Buyers intent: Do you need visitors who are looking to buy a product or service? If so, you can easily target the keywords with buyer intent.

For example, the keyword “drones for sale” will get you visitors looking to buy a drone right away.

On the other hand, if you target drone specifications, you will get visitors who are just looking for information.

Once you target the keywords with drone sale, it is easy for you to get the kind of traffic which is ready to buy. Once you receive that traffic, you can get conversions easily.

As you can see, with the help of SEO, you can get the right kind of visitors to your website. So that is another reason why you need to go with SEO.

7. SEO Forces you to Improve your Website:

If you’re serious about are getting stepping up your SEO game, you need to provide your visitors with valuable content.

The website should be easier to load.

The navigation should be simple as well.

In a nutshell, when you want to rank your website, you need to improve your website consistently.

Only when your website is engaging and provides valuable information to the visitors can it rank. SEO forces you to improve your website consistently is another reason you need to go with it. As you can see, there are numerous advantages of SEO.

Disadvantages of SEO:

Now that I have discussed the advantages of SEO, there are also some disadvantages of SEO that you need to keep in mind so that you can make the right decision on what marketing channel is best for your small business.

1. SEO Takes Time

The number 1 disadvantage of SEO is that it takes time.

Don’t expect to rank at the top of Google within the first month of the SEO campaign, especially if you’re targeting keywords in a competitive niche.

If you’re willing to wait 6-12 months for SEO results to really kick in, SEO is undoubtedly a good source of obtaining new customers for your small business. Other than that, however, if you need quick results, SEO may not be the best option for you.

2. Negative SEO is Possible:

In most cases, if your SEO has been done correctly, you will get consistent traffic and customers. However, once you start ranking, your competitors can start to get a little jealous of you.

In today’s world, negative SEO is possible. Negative SEO refers to your competitors building spam backlinks to your website. Search engines are not able to decipher whether you have built of those links or whether your competitors.

That is why, once the search engine recognizes spammy backlinks, it could penalize your website. The fact that negative SEO is possible is one of the main disadvantages of SEO.

However, there is a solution. You have to monitor your backlinks, and once you notice spammy backlinks, you have to collect them and put them in the disavow tool.

After you do so, Google will ignore those backlinks and will not penalize you for the same. Nevertheless, this is a disadvantage of SEO which you need to be aware of.

Final Thoughts on SEO Marketing

Now that you are aware of the advantages and disadvantages of SEO, you are more informed about SEO and are able to make the decision whether or not SEO is the best fit for your small business.

The advantages of SEO far outweigh the disadvantages. SEO single-handedly can help you grow your business and help you gain new customers and visitors. All in all, SEO is well worth it, despite the disadvantages.

If you ever need a helping hand in getting your company or home service business at the top of Google, look no further and book a call with BizcaBOOM, an SEO Company in Houston, so that you can get more calls coming in.