SEO for Business Owners: Boosting Your Online Visibility

In today’s digital age, having a solid online presence is pivotal for any business striving for success. With millions of websites competing for attention, guaranteeing your website achieves a top position in search engine listings is paramount. Search Engine Optimization is about more than climbing the ranks of search engine results; it’s about strategically attracting the right audience and converting them into loyal customers.

As a business owner, you likely understand the significance of SEO in enhancing your online visibility and attracting potential customers. However, navigating the complex SEO world can be intimidating, particularly for those unfamiliar with the concept.

In this comprehensive guide, we’ll discuss SEO’s essential components and provide actionable methods for enhancing your online presence and attracting more website visitors.

What is Search Engine Optimization?

Search Engine Optimization is at the heart of any successful online presence. It involves refining your website and its pages to rank better positions in Google and other search engine listings. Put plainly, SEO ensures that when individuals search for keywords relevant to their business or industry, their website stands out prominently among the top results.

Think of SEO as a digital roadmap guiding users to your website amid the vast online content. By strategically optimizing your website’s content, structure, and performance, you make it easier for search engines like Google to understand and rank your site based on its relevance and authority. It’s a dynamic and ever-evolving field that requires ongoing attention and optimization to maintain and improve your online visibility.

SEO is crucial for any business thriving in the competitive digital landscape. Whether someone is looking for a local restaurant, a digital marketing agency, or a pet grooming service, SEO ensures that your business is front and center.

Why SEO Is Important for Business Owners

As a business owner, understanding SEO’s pivotal role in enhancing your online visibility and driving business growth is essential for staying ahead in today’s competitive landscape. 

As the digital marketplace evolves rapidly, embracing effective SEO strategies empowers business owners to adapt and thrive amidst ever-changing consumer behaviors and technological advancements. It’s not just about being found; it’s about staying relevant and engaging in a digital ecosystem that demands continuous innovation and optimization.

SEO is pivotal in bridging your brand’s online presence with your target audience, influencing website design and content development. There’s no one-size-fits-all solution to SEO; instead, it requires a dynamic approach tailored to your industry, market segments, and brand identity.

  1. Increase Visibility and Exposure

Among the millions of websites competing for attention online, distinguishing yourself from the crowd can be challenging. SEO provides the means to enhance your visibility and capture the interest of your desired audience amidst this expansive online competition.

SEO ensures that your business appears prominently in search engine results when users seek information, products, or services related to your industry. Through strategic keyword optimization, content development, and technical enhancements, SEO magnifies your website’s visibility and exposure, allowing it to attract organic traffic effectively.

Think of SEO as your digital beacon, guiding users directly to your doorstep. Investing in SEO will enhance your visibility and establish the groundwork for long-term growth and success in the digital world.

  1. Target Specific Audiences

Reaching the right audience at the right time is crucial for driving conversions effectively. With SEO, you have the precision tools to target specific demographics, geographic locations, and user behaviors, ensuring your message resonates with those most likely to convert.

SEO enables you to tailor your online presence to perfectly align with your target audience’s interests, preferences, and needs. By leveraging techniques such as keyword research, audience segmentation, and content optimization, you can develop tailored strategies that directly resonate with the hearts and minds of your ideal customers.

By knowing the needs of your audience and providing valuable content that tackles their challenges, you can attract a higher volume of qualified traffic to your website and nurture long-lasting relationships with your customers.

  1. Build Credibility and Trust

Credibility and trust are invaluable assets in digital marketing. They can significantly influence consumer behavior and purchasing decisions. SEO is a powerful tool for building credibility and trust for your business by establishing your website as a dependable and authoritative source within your field.

One method through which SEO increases credibility is by elevating your website’s visibility and ranking in search engine results. When users encounter your website listed among the top results for relevant search queries, they are inclined to view your business as trustworthy and dependable. Furthermore, SEO fosters the development of top-notch, informative content that highlights your proficiency and caters to the requirements of your audience.

You can position yourself as a trusted advisor and thought leader in your industry by consistently delivering valuable content that educates and informs your audience. SEO enhances credibility and fosters more profound connections with your audience, ultimately increasing trust and loyalty.

  1. Cost-Effective

One of the remarkable aspects of SEO is its cost-effectiveness compared to traditional marketing methods. While avenues like print advertising or television commercials can quickly drain your marketing budget, SEO offers a more sustainable and budget-friendly alternative.

Investing in SEO allows you to reach a broader audience without breaking the bank. Unlike paid advertising, where you must continuously allocate funds to maintain visibility, SEO provides long-term benefits with less investment. Enhancing your website and content to rank organically in search engine results allows you to attract quality traffic without incurring additional costs per click or impression.

SEO allows you to focus on specific keywords and demographics, ensuring that your marketing endeavors target those most likely to convert into customers. Investing in SEO boosts your online visibility and optimizes your marketing budget for maximum impact and efficiency.

Steps to Boost Your Online Visibility

In today’s fiercely competitive digital landscape, businesses that aim to enhance their online visibility and extend their reach to a broader audience must adopt effective SEO strategies. These strategies are designed to improve search engine rankings, increase organic traffic, and broaden digital footprints.

  1. Keyword Research and Strategy

Meticulous keyword research is at the heart of every successful SEO campaign. This crucial process involves delving deep into your target audience’s mindset to uncover their specific terms when searching for products or services like yours. 

Crafting a comprehensive keyword strategy goes beyond simply selecting popular keywords. It requires a keen understanding of user intent and using long-tail keywords tailored to address specific queries. Although these keywords may show lower search volumes, they frequently enhance conversion rates by targeting users closer to making a purchase.

By understanding user intent, you can align your keyword strategy with your audience’s needs and desires, ensuring that your content resonates effectively.

  1. On-Page Optimization

On-page optimization is like fine-tuning your website’s engine to operate at its peak on search engine result pages. It involves meticulously adjusting various elements directly on your website to make it more appealing and relevant to search engines. This includes optimizing meta tags, headings, and internal links to ensure they align seamlessly with search engines like Google’s algorithms.

Integrating strategic keywords organically within your content enhances your search ranking and the value you provide to your audience. By incorporating these keywords thoughtfully, you improve visibility and offer valuable information that resonates with your target audience.

Focusing on on-page optimization allows you to refine critical elements like website loading speed, mobile responsiveness, and user-friendly navigation.

  1. Content Creation

In the digital realm, content marketing is the cornerstone of boosting online visibility and driving traffic. It’s more than just words on a page; it’s about crafting valuable, engaging content that resonates with your target audience. Every content you produce, from blog posts to videos, should be strategically designed to attract and retain your audience’s attention.

Effective content creation begins with understanding your audience’s needs, interests, and pain points. Thorough research and keyword analysis help you identify relevant topics and themes to focus on. By addressing your audience’s queries and providing solutions to their problems, you can position yourself as a trusted authority in your industry.

Whether educational articles, entertaining videos, or insightful infographics, delivering valuable content builds credibility and trust with your audience. This ultimately drives organic traffic and fosters business growth.

  1. Link Building Techniques

Link building involves acquiring backlinks from external websites to improve your site’s authority and credibility in the eyes of search engines. By acquiring backlinks from authoritative external sources, businesses can enhance their website’s credibility and establish themselves as industry leaders.

An effective link building technique is outreach, which allows you to contact other website owners or bloggers in your industry to request backlinks. Another link-building technique is crafting compelling, shareable content, which lies at the heart of effective link building. You can naturally attract backlinks from reputable websites seeking to reference and endorse your valuable content by producing high-quality articles, infographics, and resources that resonate with your target audience.

Businesses can harness the transformative power of link building to propel their digital success to new heights.

  1. Mobile Optimization

Optimizing your website for mobile devices is not merely an option but a necessity in the current mobile-focused landscape. With a substantial portion of internet traffic originating from smartphones and tablets, ensuring a flawless mobile experience is crucial for improving your online presence and effectively interacting with your audience.

Mobile optimization involves more than responsive design; it’s about creating a tailored experience that caters to mobile users’ unique needs and behaviors. From fast loading times to intuitive navigation and touch-friendly interfaces, every aspect of your mobile site should be optimized to deliver a frictionless browsing experience.

You can enhance engagement, decrease bounce rates, and ultimately facilitate more business conversions by guaranteeing a seamless and user-friendly mobile platform.

  1. Local SEO Strategies

Local SEO strategies help businesses connect with their target audience in specific locations. Whether you operate a brick-and-mortar store or offer services to local customers, optimizing your online presence for local search is essential for generating leads.

Local SEO strategies enhance your website and online listings to prominently feature in local search outcomes. One of the most effective local SEO strategies is optimizing your website’s content with location-specific keywords and phrases. By incorporating city names, neighborhoods, and other geographic identifiers into your website’s content, you can indicate to search engines the relevance of your business to local queries in your area.

Implementing these local SEO strategies can increase your business’s visibility in local search results, attract a larger local customer base, and propel growth and success within your target market.

Tracking Your SEO Success

Tracking SEO success is crucial for business owners who want to gauge the effectiveness of their online visibility efforts. By monitoring key performance metrics, you can acquire valuable insights and make informed decisions about optimizing your digital presence.

One essential metric to track is organic traffic, which reflects the number of visitors visiting your website through search engine results. Observing fluctuations in organic traffic across periods can help you assess the effectiveness of your keyword targeting and content optimization efforts. 

Tracking keyword rankings allows you to evaluate your website’s visibility in search engine results pages. By monitoring the rankings of your chosen keywords, you can discern patterns and adapt your SEO approach accordingly to maintain or improve your rankings. Other metrics, such as conversion and bounce rates, provide insights into user engagement and your website’s overall effectiveness in converting visitors into customers.

Conclusion

In digital business, achieving and sustaining online visibility demands continuous innovation and adaptability. It’s a journey shaped by creativity, data-driven strategies, and a relentless pursuit of excellence.

At AVINTIV, we recognize the critical importance of SEO and staying ahead in this dynamic landscape. With a history of over 12 years and a portfolio boasting the growth of more than 400 brands, our agency stands ready to empower your business for success in 2024 and beyond.

If you are ready to elevate your business to new heights and exceed your goals, our team of strategists is here to help. Reach out to us today, and let’s collaborate to drive innovation, growth, and success for your brand in the fast-paced and continuously changing world of digital marketing.

After all, brands choose to partner with AVINTIV when they want to do one thing: GROW!

AVINTIV Gets Awarded Top SEO Firm in Arizona By Clutch

There are plenty of ways on how to be successful online. From PPC to SEO, the number of strategies and digital techniques are seemingly endless. On the other hand, not all companies have the experience and expertise to push through with such projects. As a top SEO firm and award-winning brand, Avintiv Media, can help you with this problem! 

We solve problems for high-end clients, turning them into industry dominators. We offer award-winning web design, branding, and SEO services, yes, but we’re much more than that. Our team is filled with hustlers, visionaries, creators, and designers that get the job done right! 

Speaking of an award-winning agency, today we are adding another title to our name as Clutch awarded us with Top SEO firm in Arizona. You guessed it right, according to Clutch’s 2021 B2B research our team is one of the leaders in this category. We are humbled and honored to be recognized as a forefront of the digital marketing industry in our own state. 

Although we don’t allow our awards or accolades to define us, they truly do help us when business owners are looking for a credible marketing partner or agency to work with. Here is what our team has to say about this award:

“We are beyond grateful for the recognition of our hard work amongst so many other great companies in Arizona. It’s an honor to work with so many phenomenal clients on such impactful projects that are truly making a difference in the world we live in.”

In case this is the first time you are hearing about Clutch, Clutch is a B2B ratings and reviews platform based in Washington, DC. They evaluate technology service and solutions companies based on the quality of work, thought leadership, and client reviews. 

Looking for an award-winning company for your next project? Don’t hesitate to drop us a line! Our team is looking forward to hearing from you.

Medical Practices Should Utilize Google’s New Search Feature For Virtual Healthcare

Due to the high risk of spreading COVID-19, many businesses, and healthcare providers have reduced or stopped seeing patients in person altogether. Social distancing is extremely smart right now, but what happens to patients that truly need to see a doctor or medical professional? People still need a way to continue to get medical care and treatment, especially from the safety and comfort of their own homes, which is why virtual healthcare is the new norm.

Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, we have seen the needs for telehealth, telemedicine, and virtual healthcare massively skyrocket for people around the world. March 2020 alone had a 50% increase in telehealth visits due to the coronavirus pandemic. Analysts are also expecting that medical care visits will be over 200 million this year, which is way up from their original expectation of 36 million visits for all of 2002.

Virtual Healthcare, telehealth

Now is the time to offer telemedicine for your practice as many people are still in need of medical treatments. We are going to be going over Google’s new search feature for virtual healthcare and how you can do the same.

Google Connecting People to Virtual Doctors

Google has decided to help people connect with their health care providers much more easily. Google’s main priority is to provide people with access to high-quality and authoritative information for their healthcare needs.

Google is currently rolling out new features in Google Search and Google Maps that will make it easier for people to connect to virtual doctors much easier. This feature will apply for any size medical practice that can offer telehealth services.

This new search feature will decrease the amount of stress and time when looking for help online. You won’t have to click on a medical provider’s name and then go to their website to see if they offer virtual healthcare options. Searching Google can be a daunting task, let alone for someone who needs medical attention. 

Google My Business Profile Displaying Virtual Healthcare Options

This new virtual care feature is for healthcare providers like doctors, hospitals, and mental health professionals. Someone searching for medical assistance might see a “get virtual healthcare” link on their search results or maps. The person searching will be able to click on their link where it will bring them to the healthcare providers’ website for more information. You will see later on what we recommend doing for that landing page.

Virtual Healthcare, Telemedicine, Source of Health

Due to every state having its own rules and regulations about what is currently open or closed, we’d recommend updating your information in your Google My Business profile. Google is automatically putting a link directly to healthcare providers’ COVID-19 information page on Google Search and Google Maps, so make sure to update yours. If you haven’t done so already, we recommend reading Google’s best practices on how healthcare providers should update their websites with the latest COVID-19 information. 

Landing Page For Your Telemedicine Options

If you want to do this correctly, we would highly recommend building out a telemedicine or telehealth landing page that is built specifically for virtual healthcare. The last thing you want to do is have someone click your virtual healthcare link, but your website says nothing about virtual healthcare options. Here is an example of a telemedicine landing page that we just built for a local Scottsdale, AZ medical provider.

Virtual Healthcare, Telemedicine, Source of Health

Make sure that your telemedicine landing page is straightforward and clear to understand. The whole goal of this page is to ensure confidence in the visitor that they know who you are, what you offer, and how they can make an appointment.

Treat the page as if the visitor has never heard of telehealth or telemedicine. We recommend listing out, “What is Telemedicine?” and then explaining the specifics on why telemedicine or virtual healthcare is important and what the benefits are. Remember, virtual healthcare is brand new to a lot of people that haven’t experienced it yet.

Next, list out the virtual healthcare services that you offer, so the visitor understands what you do provide and what you don’t provide. The last thing you’ll want is having to turn down a person who truly needs medical attention for services that you don’t provide.

Last but not least, list out how to become a new patient, what they should expect, and a call to action to either call now or book an appointment.

Virtual Healthcare Options in Search Results

This new virtual healthcare feature is beginning as a pilot for search results in the U.S.

Google gave an example of someone searching for “immediate care,” and the search results showed available virtual care options and related information about the visit. Some of this information would be on out-of-pocket costs charged for a visit (for those that don’t have health insurance). This will be an easy way for people to directly connect with a virtual healthcare provider without ever having to leave their homes. Virtual visits should take place on the healthcare provider’s platform of choice.

Someone searching for healthcare will be able to directly see in the results what virtual healthcare options are available and what the out-of-pocket costs are for a visit.

In Conclusion

The world is changing every day at a rate that most of us aren’t used to. Being in the medical and healthcare industry, now is your chance to step it up a notch and provide that extra level of care for patients that need virtual healthcare. If you need any help with optimizing your website for COVID-19, setting up your Google My Business profile for virtual healthcare options, or building telemedicine landing pages, contact us today. We are ready to help our community just as much as you are.

Why Local SEO Is Important for Your Marketing Strategy

March and April 2020 have been a whirlwind of uncertainty, confusion, fear, confidence, and a mixture of everything in-between. Every person and business in the world has been affected by COVID-19. It’s how we allow COVID-19 to affect our business that dictates our future journey. We’re writing an article on why local SEO is important for your 2020 marketing strategy because we chose to be the positive light helping businesses get through this difficult time.

You have a choice as a business owner. You can fold your arms, play the victim, and wonder why this has happened to your business and you. Or, you can take a step back, breathe, and plan how you’re not just going to survive, but figure out how your business can thrive. What can you do right now to bounce back 10x stronger than before?

We work with a variety of different industries, both online and local businesses, and thankfully they’re all doing well. We’ve helped every one of our clients pivot their business during these uncertain times, and it’s paying off for them. We’ve also had an influx of companies reach out to us to rebuild their branding, websites, and SEO as before COVID-19, they didn’t have the time to start these types of projects.

We have great sympathy for the entire world right now, especially business owners as this is not an easy time. If you haven’t already optimized your business for COVID-19, start with this article on What Your Business Should be Doing to Fight the Impact of Coronavirus (COVID-19).

Businesses Affected by COVID-19

Businesses all over have been drastically affected by COVID-19. Right now is the time for smaller companies to go head to head against their much larger competitor. If you own a local medspa with 3-4 employees and a 3,000sq ft office space, you have an amazing chance of surviving COVID-19 as you may not have the same challenges as the medspa with 20 employees, 10,000 sq ft office space and a $30,000 per month marketing expense.

We can speak on this topic as we have medical clients in that space right now who are planning on even financially helping or buying the other medspas that can’t weather the storm as it’s a smart play right now.

Now, before we go too far off track, we wanted to give you an example of businesses that are getting hurt from being closed, yet still keeping a positive outlook on life and doing whatever they can to grow their business during COVID-19.

Local SEO and Why It’s Important During and After COVID-19

We are going to go over why local SEO is so important now more than ever for businesses in the following industries: salons, spas, health and wellness, plastic surgery, medical, restaurants, massage, and cleaning services. It’s April 14th, 2020, as we write this article, and the State of Arizona, along with the rest of the country, is in complete lockdown.

Right now, most cities and shopping centers look like ghost towns, and that’s okay. Do you know how busy it’s going to be when everyone can leave the house and resume their normal lifestyle? We’re afraid most businesses won’t even know how to deal with the increase in demand for their restaurant, salon, spa, or shopping center.

Think about it. Everyone has been cooped up at home for two to three months with their spouse, pets, kids, etc. They want out, and they want to get back to their normal life of eating out, going to the gym, watching a movie, etc.

This exact reason is why local SEO is so essential for your business. You should want your business popping up on the first page of Google and #1 in the local 3-pack Google map when searching for your type of business. We are going to go over what local SEO is and five reasons why local SEO is important for your business right now.

What is Local SEO?

Local SEO (search engine optimization) is a way to optimize your business and its website to be visible and populate for location-based searches on Google. Local SEO is a strategy that can be incorporated into your marketing campaign to drive more organic traffic to your website, to give the user directions, and for the ability to call your phone number to visit you or set an appointment.

When a user is searching for specific keywords with the city, state, zip code, or near me searches added, your business should populate. Local search optimization is one of the best marketing tactics and strategies to grow your local business.

Below is an example of searches 

  • Restaurants near me
  • Bars near me
  • Scottsdale Medspas
  • Medical clinics in Phoenix

Avintiv Media has our proprietary process on how we get our local clients ranking on the first page of Google and in the 3-pack map. Some standard strategies can include content creation, on-page optimization, and off-page optimization with an emphasis on local directory listings.

5 Reasons Why Local SEO Is Important and Should be Your Main Marketing Focus for 2020

 

1. When COVID-19 is over, traveling, eating out, and shopping will be busier than ever.

One of the biggest misconceptions when wanting to grow your business is building your marketing around current events. That is slightly true but mostly false. True SEO campaigns and strategies take 60-90 days before Google fully processes all of the changes and starts sending you more organic traffic. If you started local SEO today, you would start to see results around June 14th, 2020. June 14th, 2020, which would be weeks after the U.S. has lifted its lockdown policies, and people would slowly going back out and looking at places to eat and shop.

Not only that, I can attest to this, but most of us do not look like our best selves right now, whether it’s from nails or hair not being done or gyms being closed down. Gyms, medspas, hair salons, and any type of medical or health enhancement company are going to be booming with customers wanting to enhance their look. Is your medspa going to pop up #1 on Google when a user searches, or will your competitor take that spot?

A lot of your competitors are probably doing worse than you due to their company being larger with much more expenses. They are more than likely taking their foot off the gas, which is the perfect time to catch up to them before they even notice. We love working with the Davids of the world as we take down the Goliaths of the world. We genuinely want everyone to win, so we say that half kidding, but the other half being dead serious.

2. Local SEO stats you should know.

We can sit here and tell you why local SEO is so important for your business right now and in the near future, but we’d much rather you see real research and data. 

These stats can be found on our recent blog 5 Need to Know SEO Tips for Dentists and Periodontists for 2020.

3. Getting Your Business Listed on the Google 3-Pack Map

You, along with everyone else, have searched for something on Google and have clicked a business listed in Google’s 3-pack map. Most people never even go past the 3-pack map since Google launched it. 

Ironically, Moz completed a study where over 44% of the people who performed a local search, then clicked on the 3-pack listing. Only 8% of those people chose to press “load more” to see the rest of the results. Do you want to be a part of the 8% group of businesses?

The Google 3-pack map has made it extremely easy for people to find a business’s website, address, or phone number with just a few clicks. If you’re using a new smartphone, which is highly likely, your phone will give you turn-by-turn directions to that business within seconds.

Below is an example of one of our clients, who is a local dentist and periodontist. We’ve been grateful to have been working with them for almost two years now. We rebuilt their brand, website, and completed local SEO with ongoing SEO support. Within just a few short months, her business was on page one of Google and the Google 3-pack map for competitive keywords within her industry.

Local SEO, SEO, Dental SEO, Search results

4. Tourists and people that are traveling are going to use Google to find businesses near them.

Although it’s hard to imagine people traveling right now with everything going on with COVID-19, there will be a time in the near future when the world resumes back to how it was. When tourists travel to different places, they search Google for what’s around them. Odds are if you haven’t invested in optimizing your business for local SEO, they will not be finding your business.

As you can see in the image below, search engines (SEO) is the number one online used source for travel planning by leisure travelers and the second source for business travelers.

Make sure that you have a nicely designed website that will give your visitors a phenomenal experience; otherwise, Google won’t want to rank you towards the top.

 

Local SEO, SEO, Travel and vacation search results

5. Local SEO has the highest conversion rates out of all local advertising channels.

This reason is probably one of the most important because as a fellow business owner, we all understand ROI and revenue is much more important than analytics in a monthly report. There are many parts of SEO, but the two most significant elements are: getting your website more organic traffic and then having that organic traffic convert into paying customers.

There was a recent study done that showed an astounding 78% conversion of offline sales through local SEO, with almost 90% of those purchases being a physical store or location. Out of those local searches, 76% of the offline sales happened the same day, and 63% within just a few hours. I don’t know about you, but those are some pretty fantastic conversion rates.

When people are searching on Google through their mobile devices, chances are they are ready to buy something or come to your business within the next 24 hours. 

In Conclusion

With the addition of Local SEO, you’ll also be one of those businesses that can proudly say we not only survived COVID-19, but we also set our business up for future success and it’s now doing better than ever. Are you going to be that person? If so, schedule a FREE SEO audit with us today to see how well your local SEO is performing.