WHY IS SEO IMPORTANT?

Having a strong online presence is crucial for small businesses. SEO plays a vital role in ensuring that your business is visible to potential customers who are searching for products or services you offer. By optimizing your website and content, you can improve your search engine rankings, attract more traffic, and ultimately increase sales.

SEO Drives Growth and Increases Visibility in Search

SEO is more than just incorporating keywords into your website; it’s about creating a user-friendly experience that meets the needs of your audience. This includes optimizing website speed, ensuring mobile compatibility, and providing valuable content that addresses your customers’ questions and concerns. By focusing on these elements, you not only improve your search engine rankings but also enhance the overall user experience, leading to higher conversion rates and customer satisfaction.

Listen to this episode below;

Episode Transcript – Why Is SEO Important

Jesse Dolan (00:19)

Hey there and welcome to Luminate Local. I’m Jesse Dolan and I’ve been helping businesses grow through SEO for the last 25 years. If you’re a small or local business owner and you ever asked yourself, do I really need SEO? This is the episode for you. If you’re new to the show, then welcome. This is episode number one, technically, and this is the beginning of the show. So thanks for jumping all the way back and starting at the beginning, however you came upon us.

In these episodes and on our website, you’ll find tips and tricks to get your business found online. These episodes are not in any linear order. You can listen to any topic that seems to resonate with you. And in each episode, I promise you’re going to find some actionable insights and tips that you can apply to your business and your online marketing to help move the needle. Some of these topics are big. Some of these topics are small. You’ll see over time, we’re going to cover all kinds of stuff, not gatekeeping. Not going to talk in any confusing.

Jargon or technical lingo that’s going to scare you away. Quite to the contrary, you’re going to hear real stories, real life situations, things that you can pick apart and apply to your own business in layman’s terms and in simple, simple analogies, right? I mean, who wants to get lost in all the acronyms that come with SEO in this industry. So we’re going to break it down. We’re going to show you how to implement some things on your website or in your digital marketing to help you get found online and grow your business. Right. So.

If you want to provide some value back to the show, if you’ve listened to some previous episodes, again, maybe you’re coming back to the first one to start, however it is. If you like what you’re hearing, if you like what you’re seeing on the show, if you’re on YouTube, we’d love to hear from you. We’d love to get a review. Go to luminatelocal.com click on the link for reviews. You can read reviews from other people who have commented about our teachings or our services. Also, you’ll find links to all the platforms. If you would like to leave us a review, we’d really appreciate it.

Whether it be on Apple podcasts, Google, Facebook, whatever, all the buttons are there. So luminatelocal.com. Go down to the bottom, click the link for reviews. So for today, in this episode, we are answering the simple, but very powerful question. Why is SEO important? And more importantly, what does that actually do for your business? What is SEO, right? Why is it important? What does it do for your business? Why do you need it? Because the truth is if your business isn’t showing up online, it’s practically invisible.

Don’t worry by the end of this episode, you’ll understand what SEO is, where it matters most, how to know if it’s working, what your business looks like when you’re not ranking at the top, what it is looking like when you’re ranking at the top, things like that. So maybe one other quick disclaimer before we dive in. We also love to answer questions and go through your problems on this show. If you’re so inclined to put yourself out there, go to again, luminatelocal.com, go down to the bottom.

Click on the link to submit a question. It’s down on the footer of the website. And if we do use it on the show, we’re going to send you a little swag bag of some local goodies. Pretty cool stuff. If you’re looking for some answers that you haven’t found yet, right? If you have some questions you’re really looking to get some answers for, just send them on in. We can communicate with you, get some more information, things like that, and then address it on the show and help you and everybody else out. Cause if you have that question, other people do too.

All right, so let’s dive into the topic today. Enough of that preamble there. So again, here we’re talking about what is SEO? Why do you need SEO? Why is SEO important? Now let’s talk about you, business owner, marketing manager, whatever your role is, you’re obviously seeking out this content and listening or watching here today because you want to learn more about SEO. Maybe you’ve got a great product, a great service, great business, you’re working hard.

Been putting some sweat equity in right, but you’re not showing up in search results, whether it be on Google being maybe social media searches, ChatGPT, Grok, whatever it is. There’s a lot of outlets nowadays on how we’re finding things, but if you’re tuning into this, you’re needing help to show up more in those search results and you’re not getting the leads that you want for your business. Right. So probably wondering what are you missing? What are you not doing? Right. What’s the secret ingredient here? Things like that. So.

At the end of the day though, really what you want is pretty simple, right? You want to get found online. You want to bring in more customers. You want to get more leads. You want to grow your business, whether that means a business that you’re launching, maybe a business you’re trying to reinvigorate, whatever it is. Right. You want to grow and you know that you need to get found online. Maybe your problem is visibility. Maybe you’re not ranking in Google. Maybe people can’t find your website. You know, if they’re looking for products, looking for services, maybe even if they’re looking for your brand.

Depends on your situation, but it’s probably something like that. Probably have some confusion internally. Maybe you or people on your staff don’t know about SEO. Maybe you’ve used SEO from another agency and been burned. Maybe you’re wasting money and not seeing those results. Not even sure if it matters if you need it. Situations like that are pretty common, right? We run into that all the time. Maybe you’re still relying on just referrals, networking, phone calls.

That kind of stuff, which is great. Really there’s no better lead than a referral, right? I think we all know that as business owners, but the world has changed. You need to adapt, you need to pivot and get found online. Right? So if you’re working hard in your business, if you’re trying to invest your time and energy into the business, you deserve to be seen online just as much as your competitors do. Hopefully you’re going to learn some of the tips and tricks for that here in today’s episode. Now I get it. I’ve worked.

In businesses for a long time myself as a business owner over 25 years also helped hundreds of businesses, whether they be again, starting up or maybe revamping what they’re doing for their digital marketing. It can be overwhelming. It’s SEO and getting found online. It’s an industry and it’s an area of business and marketing that’s always changing. So even if you were familiar with some of the stuff a few years back, there’s probably new things today that you need to learn, right? And implement. I’ve been there.

I’ve been doing it and I feel like you’re going to get some of this explained very clearly again in layman’s terms, helping you with the strategies that work, helping you go from invisible to the top of search results and getting found, trying to illuminate your business, right? See what I did there with the kitchen name. All right. So if you’re feeling lost when it comes to your digital visibility, no problem. You’re not alone. We got you. And we’re going to figure this out here together. So.

Here is how to think about SEO and where it applies in your business. First, your website, right? I always call this the glue. This is the foundation for your online marketing. You need a website that’s fast, of course, right? If somebody’s visiting your website, whether it be directly typing it in or going through search results and then clicking on your page and it pops up, right? If it’s not fast, if it’s not loading quickly, we’re gonna back out. We don’t have the patience for that.

Nowadays, right? So your website has to be fast. It also has to be mobile friendly. Most searches for most businesses and niches are done on mobile devices. So your website has to be mobile friendly. And I’d even say you’ll hear a lot in other episodes. In addition to this one, we say mobile first, right? You should be designing for that mobile first experiences for most products and services that are out there.

And of course your website needs to be structured so that Google can crawl it or AI agents can crawl it, find out what they need to find out about you and that it represents you accurately. That means your keywords that you’re using, the phrases that you’re using, the titles that you’re using, right? Not just for the pages, but like the headlines, you know, sub headlines, the actual content on the page, the links that you’re doing, all of these things help people find you.

When they’re searching for the products or services that you have. So we have to optimize your website. The next thing that you need to do is extend SEO beyond your website in your overall digital footprint. And by the way, in this episode and in future episodes, we’ll dive deeper into how to optimize your website, right? There’s a ton of things that do, very granular. So when I say that, just to back up.

You know, I’m not sharing here today how to optimize your website, but what I am saying is the number one thing that you need to do is optimize your website for your online presence. The second thing that you need to do is extend your SEO again, beyond your website in your overall digital footprint. SEO is not just about your website, your Google business profile or your GBP, as we refer to it is extremely important. You’re going to want to claim that, get that set up, optimize that just like your website. But then even further, your social media listings.

The about sections of your social media, the profiles themselves, the slug, you know, for the name, what you’re calling it. All of that stuff matters a ton. If you don’t think that Google or AI agents are aware of all of your online presence, you’re definitely mistaken. And we want to make sure that we’re optimizing all of our digital assets in that same way of our website, right? The keywords, what we’re saying, things like that. And then…

In addition to your social listings, all these, we call them like directory listings or citations. Easy way to think of that as like Yelp or maybe MapQuest. These third party websites, if you will, that aren’t yours, but your business is listed in them. We also want to make sure that we’re optimizing those just like your website. Because all of these things affect how and where you’re going to show up in search, whatever thing people are searching in. All those matter because…

Be it Google, Google bots, or again, AI agents, they’re gonna be aware of all of these listings. And if we’re not optimizing these together and making them kind of get glued together with the same names, the same keywords, things like that, you’re gonna be a little disjointed. Extend your SEO beyond your website to also include all of your other digital footprint areas. The consistency.

And accuracy across these is huge. And it’s really gonna again, help glue it all together. And just to pause right there. What do I mean by that? Again, like the name of your business. You know, if you’re luminatelocal.com, hopefully on Facebook, social media, all the other profiles, you’re using that same business name where possible, if you can even get the URL,

Like if your business is redballoons.com, if you can go to facebook.com and get slash red balloons, you know, that would be ideal. Your about section, your phone number, your business hours of operation, all those things should be consistent across the board on all of your listings. And we’ll dive more into that in, in future episodes here. You’ll see now the third part is how do you know if it’s working right?

So again, the first two we’re talking about optimize your website. That’s the glue that really binds all of your marketing together, right? Again, like your Facebook page is gonna link to your website. Your GBP, it’s gonna link back to your website. On your MapQuest listing and your Yelp listing, you’re gonna link back to your website, right? So your website glues it together. Then you wanna take all those secondary listings that are not your website, but still part of your digital footprint. You wanna optimize those as well. And now we wanna know if this stuff is working, okay?

And this is the great part about digital marketing and online marketing is we can tell if it’s working. You can actually track it all. Look at the keyword rankings. You can look at the website traffic, click through rates. Are you getting form submissions? Are you getting emails? Are you getting phone calls? Google search console is a completely free tool that gives you a ton of insights on how you’re showing up in search. Google analytics is a free tool that shows you the traffic patterns and pages and all kinds of

Analytics for what’s happening on your website after somebody finds you in Google. The point on this is don’t fly blind, right? It’s not just doing the optimizations. It’s not just, you know, being found online. You want to track all of this. And again, that’s the beauty of digital marketing is we can track all of this. So don’t fly blind. Make sure that you’re not only optimizing, you’re also doing the analytics, doing the tracking, doing the reporting. Another thing I like to throw out there is

People don’t really think about this, but visualize what happens when you’re ranking number one, right? If you have room to grow right now, what’s that gonna look like? When you show up at the top of Google for your keywords, what’s gonna happen? You’re gonna get more phone calls, you’re gonna get more clicks, you’re gonna get more business, you’re going to get more walk-ins, whatever the methods are. It’s not hypothetical, it’s going to happen, right? The impact to your business is gonna be real.

At first, if you’re really low ranking or maybe you don’t have any visibility at all, you’re not going to get great leads at first, right? The lower you are in the page, the lower you are in the results, the more other businesses are ahead of you in that visibility. You’re going to get the overflow, right? You’re going to get the people that have been told no in the first two businesses, they call their emailed and then they’re going to try you. Right? So the leads aren’t going to be the greatest at first, but once you start climbing and get in front, getting in front of your ideal prospects for the.

The keywords and the phrases that you want to be found for, you’re gonna get more leads, you’re gonna get more business, you’re gonna close more deals. So as a business owner or maybe a manager of the apartment, think about what that looks like. What kind of volume is that gonna be? What kind of room to grow is there in your mind? Are you doubling? Are you adding 20%? Are you adding 10%? And the reason I say this is because a big part down the road for you to sustain that,

Not just have a quick blip on the radar, but to be sustainable growth and be a good business is you have to provide good products, good services, good experiences for your clients. Visualize what this is going to look like. Be prepared for those milestones, maybe those different metrics on when you need to maybe reinvest additional team members, different, maybe service and support options for people. Because if you start to fail at that, as you get bigger, you’re going to get negative reviews. You’re going to get flack.

From your client base and that’s gonna sabotage everything that you’re doing. If you’re trying to grow, hey, you’re in the right spot. We’re gonna teach a ton of stuff here for getting found online. But I just wanna say that if you’re gonna be a five-star business and if you’re gonna get five-star reviews for your business, you have to provide that level of service as you continue to grow. So can’t underscore this enough, visualize what happens if you rank number one. Have an idea on how you’re gonna grow your business.

Have an idea how you’re gonna scale your business, have an idea on how you’re gonna still provide great products and services to your clients, and that flywheel will keep pumping. I hope that makes sense if I said that the right way to everybody. All right, so quick overview there. What do we do next? I do have a free tool for you. Go to luminatelocal.com and you can take our free SEO audit. It’s luminatelocal.com. You’ll see a yellow button says free SEO audit.

Click on that, it’s a quick checkup that shows you your SEO score and gives you some personalized and customized insights into what’s working and what needs fixing on your website. You plug in your page that you wanna analyze, that’s page by page, so you can do your homepage, you can do an inner page, whatever, and then you’re gonna type in the keyword that you want to optimize that page or get it scored for, if you will.

Do that. It takes just a few seconds. PDF is going to pop up on the screen. You can download that PDF and then we’ll also send an email afterwards. But definitely download that PDF and then you can refer to it. It gives you a checklist of things. Like I said, that are working good, a checklist of things that are not working good. And you should have a pretty good itemized report on what you need to start doing to optimize your website. Back to the very first thing we talked about here today, right? That’s where we want to start. We want to have a good website. We want to have it be optimized and we want it to represent our business well to be that.

Good glue that brings all of our digital marketing together. So if you can use other tools, right? You can, you gotta start somewhere with SEO. So if you want to do an audit yourself, if you want to use some other online tools, great, knock yourself out. But if you want a really easy way to do it, just go to luminatelocal.com, take our free SEO audit and you’re going to be off to the races. All right. So I do want to pause there real quick. Something that you’ve noticed probably in other episodes, if you’ve started later on in our episode journey is that we read reviews on every episode.

What we do is free, right? The show is free. There’s no subscription. Again, we’re not gatekeepers. We just share insights to help everybody out. And what we then ask for you in return for value is leave us a review. That’s how we know we’re doing a good job. That’s how we know we’re teaching the right things. And also quite frankly, it helps us for our visibility to get found, right? That’s probably how you found us is through some exposure, searching online, searching through podcasts, YouTube, whatever.

And you probably read some of our reviews to see if we’re legitimate. So we’d like to read those on every episode. Just to kind of loop all that back in together, right. And tie a nice bow on it. Have a great review here today to read from Mary Beth Barbagallo. Gosh, Mary Beth. I hope I’m saying your name the right way. Left on Google. Mary Beth says, Jesse provided great insight into optimizing SEO for my business using simple searches and updates to get the ranking higher.

Able to feel confident to increase my position in Google. Thanks again. Thank you, Mary Beth and everybody else. I hope in this episode or other episodes or content that you’ve read or watched, I hope you feel the same way. If you do again, go to luminatelocal.com scroll down to bottom, click on the button for reviews and please leave us review. It really does help the show out. And yeah, we’ll read yours on the show. If you leave us one. Okay.

Sorry for that little interlude there, but let’s get back to the topic at hand. So we’ve talked about what to optimize, some strategies for that. Again, high level, just overview basic, like 101 type stuff here. Why does SEO matter? And what are some initial directions on that? So now hopefully you’ve done our SEO audit and you have some actionable items to start digging into if you don’t take those actions.

Here’s what’s going to happen. Nothing’s going to change. You’re going to keep missing out on those customers. People are looking online right now for your products and services, probably every day. And if you’re not going to take the steps to enhance your presence and show up online, they’re going to patronize your competitors. Those who are investing in SEO, right? They’re going to keep winning those leads, keep winning those opportunities. And you’re going to be at risk of being left behind in this digital.

First world to put it like that. So I definitely urge everybody to take action, take steps, start making some changes. Again, if you take our free SEO audit, there might be 10, there might be a hundred things that you need to do. Just fix one, just start, right? Because if you do, you’re going to have success. You’re going to get more traffic. You’re going to get more qualified leads. You’re going to work with better clients. You’re going to make more money. That’s something a lot of people.

We coach them through this process here as they’re starting to have success with SEO is you’ll probably run in, hopefully run into a situation where you’re going, I’m getting too busy. We say raise your prices, right? If you’re getting more of the qualified leads, more of the better client opportunities, they’re not necessarily looking for the cheapest thing in town, right? And a good way to filter out the crappy low end clients that

Maybe aren’t gonna pay you maybe don’t pay you enough. Maybe take too much of your time for what you’re charging. It’s raise your rates the people who really value you the people who really need your products and services are still gonna pay that and if you’re running a five-star business they’re gonna pay that happily and you’re gonna be able to kind of cut off that low-end stuff just by raising your rates. Again better clients. You’ll make more money and more importantly, you can have a business that thrives online not just offline right if you’re still getting referrals and everything else, which

You’re going to get more and more of those two, the more clients that you bring in, right? So you can feel confident knowing that your digital presence is actually working for you. If you start to optimize this stuff and again, just take it step by step, day by day. This isn’t something where once it’s all done, you’re going to reap the rewards, right? If you just start taking action just slowly, but surely it’s going to get better and better for you. So, there we go. I think that’s enough for this episode here today. Again, kind of a whole level, high level overview of what SEO really is.

How it applies to your business, what success looks like if you’re doing it right. And, you know, again, caution you is don’t sleep on it. Don’t fail to take action because your competitors already are. Take a look at that free SEO audit. You’ll get that quick snapshot and take some actions. And if you have a question again for the show, maybe something out of that SEO audit or something else that you’ve kind of bumped into on your own SEO journey here, let us know and catch you on the next episode. Take care everyone.

Get Your Content Found in Google

To drive more traffic to your site and stand out in search results, it’s essential to understand how search engine optimization works. Creating high-quality content that aligns with your target keyword strategy can significantly improve your ability to rank above the competition. With thoughtful optimization and a focus on user intent, you can position your site as a trusted resource and boost your visibility in every relevant search.

Episode Notes and Resources

• Free SEO Audit Tool: Evaluate your website’s SEO performance with our free tool
• Google Search Console: Monitor your website’s presence in Google search results
• Google Analytics: Gain insights into your website traffic and user behavior
• Google Business Profile: Manage your business’s online presence across Google, including Search and Maps

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