Inside Small Business | Small Business & Home Business Marketing

Do I Need SEO Even if I’m Not an Online Business?

The answer to this is, “It depends.” It depends on whether you care about growing your business or not. If you want your business to grow and succeed, then yes, you need a Web presence and you need people to be able to find you on the Web.

The statistics are staggering, showing that having a Web strong presence is favorable for all types of businesses. Ten years ago, it wasn’t so important to be on the Web because relatively few people had Internet access. Today, however, the Web is quickly replacing traditional media in many areas. A perfect example of this can be seen in the recent decline of yellow pages usage in favor of the Internet when looking for local business information.

Let’s take a look at a very well-known example of a non-Internet based business: the fast-food restaurant chain Wendy’s. Despite not being an online business, they have a website. Why? Because they know that there are a lot of people like me that want information about what’s on their menu, how many calories are in their single-cheese combo, where the nearest Wendy’s is when I’m in unfamiliar territory, and so forth.

In fact, recent research conducted by Marchex shows that 86 percent of Internet users in 2007 preferred to use search engines to research or find local businesses. This number has been trending upward over the last several years.

Since search engines are the #1 place people are going to find a place that offers the products and services you provide, not having a website can be quite detrimental to your business, especially if your competition does have a website.

Just as bad is having a website that nobody knows about. In other words, yes, you will benefit from SEO regardless of the type of business you run.

           

Posted on Monday, April 14th, 2008 at 2:18 pm and is filed under Boardroom, Search Engine Optimization. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.