Fort Lauderdale is one of the best places to do business in Florida, especially when it comes to owning your own small businesses. South Florida in general is a popular place for entrepreneurship, with around 10 percent of adults living in the area running their own ship so to speak. In fact, the small business economy of the Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Palm Beach region was ranked 10th in the nation in 2016. Yet being such a popular spot has its own pitfalls: how are you supposed to get your Fort Lauderdale business to stand out in such a crowded field of competitors?
There’s no secret sauce for small business success. Yet there’s one way to claim your piece of the pie, and it’s through a highly effective marketing technique that’s built and bred for the modern day. It’s called search engine optimization, or SEO for short, and it’s pitch-perfect for funneling local traffic to your company’s front door. With almost 3 out of 4 people looking for specific businesses within a five mile radius of them end up visiting that business, SEO is an ideal tool for local companies looking to establish a foothold in a crowded market, expand their share in that market, or both. In that regard, SEO can help move mountains.
How Your Fort Lauderdale Business can Benefit from Local SEO
You face a lot of challenges running a small business or a startup, one of which is finding the resources to devote to marketing. Using local search optimization is one of the best choices for you in this case, as there are few barriers to entry to using SEO to create buzz for your company. Not only that, but the emerging trend of consumers using local search to find the things they need means that you can benefit even further.
Google itself says that their records have seen a 500 percent increase in the number of searches for specific businesses “near me”. Not only that, but there’s been a more than 900 percent jump in local searches that also look for hours of operation as well, featuring language like “open today” or “open now”. What does this mean for local businesses that use local SEO to their advantage? Their company’s info will show up first in local searches. These early birds will get the worm while competitors who haven’t used local SEO techniques are going to be caught napping.
Finding SEO Services You Can Afford
Local SEO services are clearly integral for the success of your Fort Lauderdale-based small business. But your budget is your budget, and nothing will change that — if you can’t afford these services, what good are they? Well, it’s not necessarily as challenging as you might think to find affordable SEO services. In fact, you can find an SEO consultant that won’t charge you an arm and a leg for services like a technical SEO audit, which will identify where you might need help in ranking your business site to drive higher levels engagement. The trick is balancing an affordable SEO expert with one who’s delivering on what they promise you.
So how do you find an SEO provider who isn’t going to charge you an arm and a leg but still knows what they’re doing? Truth is that you’ll need to do a little leg work. Talk to a handful of SEO experts to get price quotes from each of them. Then, compare these estimates — if they’re all around the same price, you can be assured you’re not getting taken for a ride. After that, look through the portfolios of these SEO consultants to see whose work appeals to you the most. Finally, don’t forget to ask for testimonials from former clients. Glowing reviews from happy customers can tell you a lot about a prospective SEO provider.
What Small Business SEO Services can Provide Your Company
What does an SEO consultant actually provide your company? That’s a good question. Remember, the end goal for SEO is to increase how visible your Fort Lauderdale-based business is, all in an effort to increase your market share. Once your SEO professional gathers the information they need about your company’s local search ranking as it exists (which is done with a technical SEO audit), next comes the fun part: determining what steps need to be taken to improve that ranking.
There are a number of effective techniques for improving your local SEO rank. Your SEO partner will know for sure which will be the most appropriate for your business, but you can expect some, or all, of the following recommendations:
- Using Google Maps to your advantage
- Using Yelp and other review directories to drum up visibility
- Leveraging social media channels to showcase your brand
- Updating business data like hours of operation and phone numbers
- Revamping your website with better SEO in mind
- Using a business-themed blog to provide locally-themed relevant content
Work Smarter, Not Harder, and Reap the Rewards
You knew that starting your own business would require a lot of hard work. There’s no other way to get a startup off the ground without putting your nose to the grindstone, and sometimes it pays off. Of course, even the hardest workers aren’t guaranteed success in business. That’s why you’ve got to not just work harder — you’ve got to work smarter. Using SEO to build your business is one of the ways you can use your head without having to break your back, and in a thriving business market like Fort Lauderdale you definitely need the edge if you want to succeed.
Have you been struggling with ways to make your Fort Lauderdale-based business stand out from the crowd? Want to learn more about how local SEO can help supercharge the growth of your small business? We can show you the way. Contact us today and you’ll see how successful your business can be when you’ve got the expert help you need!
