There are more businesses in Philadelphia than ever before. In fact, 99.7% of Philadelphia’s economy comprises small businesses. While this means more choices for the consumer, it also means that businesses in Philadelphia have to face an ever greater number of competitors. As a result, businesses in Philadelphia have been employing more and more digital marketing strategies in an effort to gain an edge over their competitors.

Digital marketing is an enormous world consisting of hundreds of different marketing tactics, with search engine optimization (SEO) being one of the most important ones. As a matter of fact, the effectiveness of a large number of marketing strategies largely depends on how good your SEO writing is.

Furthermore, the quality of your SEO can likely be the deciding factor between the succeeding or failing of your business in Philadelphia. Knowing this, it is difficult to describe the importance of SEO for a business in Philadelphia, but we’ll try to do it regardless.

Search Engine Optimization Philadelphia – What Does It Entail?

Search engine optimization, more commonly known by its abbreviation “SEO,” is a digital marketing tactic that involves optimizing your business website and the content published on it in an attempt to make your website more visible to search engines and hence consumers when they search for your business-related services or products.

Making your website more visible to search engines means improving your business website’s Search Engine Results Page (SERP) ranking. This is done so that when someone searches for a product or service related to your business, your website is among the first results the person is presented with. This helps direct more organic traffic to your website, which directly leads to better conversion rates and profitability.

SEO for a Business in Philadelphia – How Does It Work?

The search algorithms are designed to present the users with only authoritative, relevant pages and offer them an efficient search experience. Therefore, search engines such as Bing and Google use complex algorithms, also called bots or spiders, to go from one website to another and evaluate the content published on them to determine if they are relevant to the keyword entered by the user.

All the relevant website links are then compiled in an index which can be perceived as a virtual library that holds website links instead of books. Thereafter, the algorithm uses various ranking factors to establish a SERP rank for each website in the index and then lists them on the results page in the order of their SERP ranks.

SEO essentially focuses on improving these rank determining attributes of your website, which a search engine factors in when allocating ranks to websites in the index. Following are some of the ranking factors used by search engines to determine a SERP rank for a website:

• How secure and accessible is your website.
• How quick is the loading speed of your website. This includes page loading speeds on cellphones as well.
• Whether or not your website is compatible with a cellphone, as most of the online searches are made through cellphones. In fact, 61%of organic searches are made through cell phones.
• Domain Age, URL, and Authority.
• Is the content well optimized with relevant keywords naturally integrated into it.
• Technical SEO.
• How fluid is the user experience.
• Links to other relevant and authoritative sources of information.

Unlike search engine marketing (SEM), Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising, or any other form of paid marketing strategy, with SEO, you can’t pay the search engines to get a higher SERP ranking, and that is why SEO is known as an organic way of marketing.

This means that in order to get your website in the top result ranks, optimizing your website and its content is your only viable option. Doing so can help your website rank higher in the search results and allow you to reap the many benefits of SEO.

Benefits of SEO for Businesses in Philadelphia

Makes Your Business in Philadelphia Look More Credible

Consumers have this preprogrammed persona that compels them to believe that any website and hence business that ranks high on the results page of a search engine is more credible, authoritative, and therefore reliable.

This helps you earn the trust of your potential customers allowing you to not only get more organic traffic to your website but also retain users. This essentially means that the next time the user needs services, products, or even just information related to your business’s niche, they’ll search specifically for your business instead of doing a general search.

It Is a Highly Cost-Effective Approach

Cost-effectiveness is one of the most significant benefits of SEO for businesses in Philadelphia. As discussed above, a majority of Philadelphia’s economy comes from small businesses that, as knowledge and experience tell us, do not have a considerable marketing budget. As such, paid marketing strategies such as social media marketing or PPC are not always a possibility for many of the small businesses in Philadelphia.

Fortunately, SEO is an immensely cost-effective marketing tactic and can even be free if you do it yourself. As discussed above, SEO largely relies on the quality of your website, which includes everything from the content published on it to its compatibility on cellphones. Provided that you have the required skills and knowledge, you can optimize your website yourself to get it a higher rank on the search engine results page without incurring any cost.

To take fully exploit the potential of your SEO strategy, first, spend some time assessing the content on higher-ranking websites in your field of business and then try to create even better content. However, it is important to note that SEO writing can be a very time-consuming task and is far from being as straightforward as it sounds. Therefore, to effectively execute SEO for a business in Philadelphia, it is recommended to seek professional assistance.

It Supports Content Marketing

The content on your website is a major element of your SEO strategy. As we know, SEO marketing involves optimizing your website’s content in an attempt to make it more discoverable to your target audience through search engines. As such, it is your content into which your SEO writing gets integrated, so this marketing strategy cannot exist without relevant content.

It is clear that content marketing and SEO work hand-in-hand, but how does SEO for a business in Philadelphia support its content? In order to have an effective SEO strategy, having well-written and refined content is mandatory. This means that you cannot improve one without the other, and so your SEO strategy also helps you improve your content marketing strategy. Having good content, in turn, can offer more benefits to your business in Philadelphia.

It is important that the content is interesting, educational, relevant, and not too obvious in its purpose to advertise your business. Some common forms of content include:

• Social media posts
• Videos
• Podcasts
• How-to guides
• Blogs
• eBooks

SEO Offers Incredible ROI

Return on investment (ROI) is typically a top criterion, if not the most essential when evaluating the feasibility of any digital marketing strategy. While SEO strategy can take some time to generate results, a high-quality plan and execution will eventually pay off handsomely.

Leads originating from search engines have a close rate of 14.6%. In contrast, traditional marketing strategies such as cold calling and direct mailing only offer a 1.7% close rate, nearly 12% lower than SEO marketing. However, note that if your website is listed on the second page or after, leads will be scarce.

The first Google result, on the other hand, obtains 33% of all search engine traffic. Greater online traffic and revenue are directly dependent on increased search engines visibility, making ROI one of the most important benefits of SEO for your business in Philadelphia.

SEO Offers High-Quality Web Traffic and Increases Organic Discovery

SEO provides enhanced organic visibility for your business website. This results in greater web traffic and hence increased leads, making it one of the biggest benefits of SEO. SEO marketing is Customer-centric and hyper-targeted strategy. This means that a well-developed SEO strategy will help deliver your website and content to the relevant audience segment.

Organic exposure drives high-quality traffic to your website without having to charm or persuade the user because the customer is already looking for what you have to offer. This means better lead conversion rates and, therefore, greater revenues and profits.

It Maximizes PPC Campaigns

SEO and Paid (PPC) marketing tactics complement each other perfectly. PPC campaigns help your website rank higher among the paid ad search results. Meanwhile, SEO helps your website rank among the top organic search results.

Having your website appear among the top search engine results in both the paid and unpaid categories strengthens your brand’s image and testifies that you aren’t just paying your way to the top. Additionally, using an SEO strategy can help reinforce your PPC strategy as well. For instance, if your PPC campaigns have already placed you among the top ranks of a search engines results page, backing your PPC campaign with SEO may get you to rank even higher.

SEO Provides 24/7 Promotion

Your search engine optimization strategy does not have any specified working hours only during which it will be active. Nor does your website and content stop competing for a high SERP rank when your marketing budget is exhausted, as it does with paid marketing.

On the contrary, SEO rankings advertise your business 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, taking full advantage of the 60,000 or more Google searches that are made every second. This is especially beneficial for businesses in Philadelphia that are aiming to build a global customer base or community. Once again, SEO is unique in that it allows your business to reach users while they are looking for you, rather than on a billboard on the way in or out of town.

It Helps You Rank Better in Local Searches

With the advent of smart home systems such as Google Home and Amazon Alexa, as well as with the integration of smart assistants into cellphones, local searches such as “locksmiths near me” are becoming increasingly common. According to a report, nearly 60% of searches are made through smartphones, with more than half being local searches.

Furthermore, nearly 80% of local searches made through smartphones result in successful lead conversions. Employing local SEO tactics can assist you in reeling these ready-to-buy consumers. Creating a Google My Business (GMB) account is the first step in implementing a local SEO strategy. Thereafter, request your existing customers and clients to give feedback on your services and products.

Make sure you have the correct name, phone number, and address in your listings. Also, make sure your listing is optimized for voice search, which requires composing rich and interesting content tailored around a conversational tone that answers the typical questions a user might have. Other stages include thinking about your local keywords and creating entries in local company directories.

SEO Optimizes User Experience

User experience is an important part of SEO and a key ranking factor used by search engines. According to the Search Engine Journal, Google acquired the ability to identify a good or unpleasant user experience.

A user expects a quick and concise response to their search. If met with a poorly optimized website, such as never-ending popups or mobile incompatibility, the user is likely to depart from the site within moments. High bounce rates implicate that the website does not provide value to the viewer, leading to a lower SERP rank.

Implementing an SEO strategy requires you to optimize your website’s user experience, which means better value for the viewers, which often leads to better lead conversion rates.

Search Engine Optimization Philadelphia – Call a Professional

The dominance of digital technology in this day and age is irrefutable. Businesses in Philadelphia that want to build a solid brand image must have a prominent online presence. If you’re not on the first page of a search engine’s results page, you’re not winning any clicks and are losing out on a great portion of your market. The benefits of SEO make it an essential element for establishing a brand identity. As such, your business in Philadelphia should employ this tactic at all costs.

However, digital marketing, especially SEO, is a complicated world to navigate without the guidance of experts. There are numerous things that go into an effective SEO strategy, and getting each of them right can be quite difficult, especially for small businesses in Philadelphia. Therefore, you should seek the assistance of Philly Online Marketing they have years of experience serving the industry and therefore have the skillset and expertise to execute a flawless SEO strategy for your business in Philadelphia. Need more info on SEO Click Here