With more than 30 million small businesses in the United States, one thing is true: the competition is bigger than ever.

In order to stand out from the crowd and to dominate your industry, you need to perfect your marketing efforts. But for a startup or small business, how can you know where to focus your efforts?

One great place to start is SEO. Keep reading to learn about SEO for small business marketing and all the benefits it brings.

Generate More Leads and Sales

First and foremost, one of the best benefits of SEO is the ability to generate more leads and sales. Here’s how that works.

As you rank higher and higher in Google search results, you’ll get more and more traffic to your site. And the more traffic at the top of the funnel, the more leads and sales you’ll get at the bottom of the funnel.

You’ve probably heard about the value of ranking high on Google. This isn’t a lie. It’s completely true.

In fact, the first result on a search result page gets 33% of traffic. And results on page 2, 3, and beyond receive only a minuscule percentage of the clicks.

So as you rank better, your bottom line will improve as well.

SEO Builds Trust & Credibility

Here’s another benefit of SEO for small business marketing: you’ll build trust in your brand.

When it comes to creating a reliable, trustworthy brand, keep this in mind. It takes time. This is not something that happens overnight.

Instead, it’s the result of compounded actions over a long period of time that show Google your website is reliable and credible.

These days, it’s pretty easy to create a website. With so many drag and drop builders out there, it’s getting simpler and simpler to make a site. But the problem here is that many of these builders don’t take SEO into consideration.

And what this means is that although you may have a beautiful site, it may not be optimized for search engine performance.

When you work with an experienced SEO, they’ll make sure you have the strong foundation you need for optimal performance. As you grow your SEO efforts, you’ll incorporate optimized on-page content and high-quality backlinks, both of which convey great authority.

Looking for help with your website? Consider the option to outsource your IT department.

It’s Relatively Cheap

As a startup, cashflow is always on your mind. Where big brands can drop thousands of dollars on ad campaigns (or millions if you’re advertising in the Super Bowl), small businesses are looking for ways to generate sales without spending an arm and a leg.

Here’s another reason SEO is great: it’s cheap. You don’t have to pay for ad space.

Running Facebook ads? Have a billboard? Advertising with PPC ads?

These all come with a cost.

SEO, on the other hand, is essentially free. Sure, you’ll have to pay someone to develop your site correctly and to optimize your pages for SEO, but there’s no cost to display your pages in Google search results.

This means that a single webpage that’s well-optimized can bring you qualified traffic for years to come without a continuous advertising cost.

Say you’re advertising with PPC ads on Google. You’ll be paying per click, which can range from $2 to $5 a click. This can add up quickly.

With SEO, you’ll need to invest in creating a strong foundation for your pages. But once this is in place, it’s just a little maintenance here and there without the constant cost of other marketing channels.

Great SEO = Better User Experience

Another benefit of SEO? It makes for a better experience for your users.

Google is constantly working on their website analysis tools. And because of this, they can now note signals that indicate a good or bad user experience.

For example, let’s say you sell basketball shoes. You’ve optimized your page to rank for the keyword men’s basketball shoes and it’s ranking well.

But once a user gets to your site, your page takes 15 seconds to load, and the product organization is terrible. It’s nearly impossible to find what you’re looking for.

If this the case, people are going to leave your site quickly. And when this is the case, Google will penalize you.

What this means is that the top results in any Google search have proven to provide users with the information they’re looking for.

So as you’re optimizing your site for SEO, you’ll also be improving the experience that users have when on your pages. It’s a win-win.

Increases Brand Awareness

Last of all, focusing on SEO will increase awareness about your brand. And what startup doesn’t want more visibility?

Think about it. The top results in Google searches receive a significant amount of impressions every week. Depending on the popularity of a given search term, this can easily be thousands of eyeballs seeing your brand name.

Basically, the better your site ranks in Google results, the more people will see your brand name. And when they’re looking for related products or services in the future, they’ll have a higher chance of thinking about your company.