Do you know why SEO is important for business NYC? Companies in New York City are dealing with massive competition. NYC is the largest city in the United States of America and almost every company in the country wants a share of the market. But SEO can give your business a strong competitive edge.
The reason search engine optimization is important for businesses in New York is clear and simple. Firstly, search engine optimization is an integral marketing strategy for companies that want to thrive online without blowing their marketing budget.
Here, we will discuss why New York City local businesses investing in SEO is so important and show you ways it can help your business grow.
What Makes SEO Important For Business NYC
New York City is a business hub featuring myriads of firms. And being the largest city in America, New York has the market to attract a large pool of businesses.
Having more businesses increases competition, which favors consumers. This sort of competition often causes a reduction in the price of products and services.
Businesses facing high competition must devise creative ways to create massive brand awareness and achieve their marketing goal. But, unfortunately, marketing can be expensive. Additionally, some businesses may not achieve the ROI they seek with most marketing strategies.
With local SEO, you can measure performance in real-time and almost predict the outcome of each strategy. Furthermore, by following SEO best practices, local businesses in New York can have a massive competitive edge and enjoy other benefits which we’ll discuss shortly.
If you have a business in New York, you should prepare your mind to invest in SEO. Here are some good reasons why search engine optimization is important for your New York business.
1: Many potential customers in NYC search for information, products and services online:
A study has shown that 76% of U.S. adults shop online. The study also indicated that over half of these consumers prefer visiting physical stores.
Potential customers in New York are looking for the products or services you’re selling, online. People prefer searching for information, products, or services online. They dislike driving around town, looking for products or services.
The convenience that online shopping offers is out of this world. And we have all tried to purchase products or search for information online at some point.
Unfortunately, having a business website in New York isn’t enough. Google and other search engines don’t rank websites because they look professional and cost a fortune to develop, or a popular brand owns the website. Instead, Google considers over 200+ ranking factors, metrics you can address with an effective SEO strategy.
So, consumers in New York are searching for businesses offering their desired products or services. Will your website appear in their search engine result pages? Ask yourself this question and give an honest answer.
An effective local SEO strategy will increase your site’s chances of appearing in prospects’ search engine result pages.
2: SEO can place your products and services in front of potential NYC customers:
Do you want your products, services, or information to reach your target audience? If yes, local SEO holds the key. With search engine optimization, you can improve your site’s ranking. In other words, your business will appear among the top results in search engines or the #1 position on Google search engines.
Local businesses can appear at the top of search results via “paid search” overnight. In other words, New York consumers can still see your site at the top of the search engine result page when you use pay-per-click advertising. However, the challenge is that your site will disappear from the search engine result page once the funds in your ads account dry up. PPC’s click-through rate is also low.
Some keywords have high CPC, making pay-per-click an expensive online marketing strategy. Additionally, you’ll need to increase your bids for some keywords to boost your chances of appearing in search engine results over your competitors. In a highly competitive business environment like New York, pay-per-click may not be an economically viable option for most businesses.
Most startups will struggle to compete with established brands if the paid search is the only online marketing technique to showcase a business to potential customers in New York online.
A Handy Tip: You cannot rank with paid search, but you can rank your website with local SEO efforts. In other words, you’ll be among the top businesses on the search result pages of New York consumers seeking products or services you render.
3: Local SEO will make you brand appear credible to potential customers in New York:
Credibility is an important element in business. Once local customers in New York start seeing you as a credible brand, they won’t have any doubt when doing business with you.
How will your local SEO strategy help to make New York consumers start seeing you as a credible band?
You can deploy an effective local SEO strategy to help your business’ website to rank high on SERPs, making it easier for local consumers to find you.
And the more potential local customers encounter your business online, the more they become familiar with your brand. Additionally, people trust search engines and believe sites at the top of search engine results are valuable resources.
You’ll find hundreds, thousands, or even millions of competitors trying to rank for one specific keyword. However, Google will only display a handful of websites it considers more valuable to users. So, when your site appears at the top of search results, people assume you’re a credible brand.
When people consider your business a credible brand, they can comfortably do business with you without fear. They’ll trust your brand and will even let others know about the quality of your products or services, encouraging them to patronize you.
4: SEO will help your New York business create brand awareness:
When you have a new product, you want people to know about it. Sales increases when more people know about your products or services. They can also inform others about what you are selling.
SEO involves a combination of strategies designed to improve brand awareness. So, whether link-building, content marketing, on-page, or other off-site optimization strategies, SEO can help make your brand more popular in New York City.
5: SEO has a higher conversion rate than other marketing strategies:
We have discussed several reasons why SEO is important for business in New York. But do you know SEO has a higher conversion rate than other marketing approaches, including paid search?
According to research, people are 8.5X more likely to click on organic search results than paid search results (1.5X).
Why do organic results have a higher conversion rate than paid search results?
The reason for this is simple. More people are now aware of the differences between organic results and paid results. They know organic results are based on domain authority, backlinks, content quality, relevance to users’ search queries, and a valid SEO strategy.
People know organic results have more value and match their search intent than paid results. Of course, they also know Google and other search engines will only organically promote a site with relevant or good-quality content to the top of organic search results, leaving the poor-quality ones at the bottom.
People know paid search results are determined by the brand’s financial strength, not SEO efforts. They know paid results don’t appear at the top of search engine result pages due to merit. That’s why most people don’t trust paid search results, as they understand websites using pay-per-click advertising are at the top of SERPs not because they offer real value.
We’re not saying every site that isn’t at the top of search results is poor quality and doesn’t offer real value. We’re only trying to explain what most people think or how they view paid results compared to organic search results.
The bottom line is that organic search results obtained via local SEO strategies have higher conversion rates than paid results.
6: SEO can give your NYC business a higher ROI:
Implementing effective local SEO strategies will improve your New York business’ ranking on SERPs, making it easier for potential clients to find you online. Potential NYC consumers will easily find you and take action.
SEO has a higher click-through rate than other marketing strategies. It also has a high conversion rate. When you invest in SEO for business NYC, you’ll most likely achieve a high return on your investment in the long run.
I said you’ll achieve a great ROI “in the long-term” because it can take a while to start seeing the results of all your search engine optimization efforts. It can take a few weeks or months for your site’s ranking and traffic to improve significantly.
The good part is that once your ranking improves and you start getting organic visitors, you’ll keep growing and increasing your search ranking until you reach the #1 position. And once you get there, your competitors can’t outrank you overnight. It would take months, and you would have abandoned your SEO strategy for your competitors to take your place on search engine results.
But if you keep putting more effort into your local SEO strategies, and have a rugged and dedicated SEO agency like BitChip Digital that cares only about your business’ growth and not financial gains, you’ll achieve your online marketing goals.
7: SEO has a lower customer acquisition cost and doable on a tight budget:
Getting customers via other channels is costlier. Another discouragement is that most marketing strategies aren’t as effective as local SEO. Thus, most businesses don’t get their desired results after investing heavily, leading to frustration.
With SEO tactics, the customer acquisition cost (CAC), the amount it will cost you to get a new customer, is impressively lower than other marketing strategies. SEO’s low CAC means you can make a high profit.
People establish businesses to make a profit. And when you make a profit, you can run a business successfully. You can expand to other parts of New York City and employ more people.
8: SEO will improve the user experience (UX) of your New York City Business’s website:
Website optimization implies making your website search engine and user-friendly. In other words, you’re making it easier for search engines to crawl, understand the context of your content, and index your web pages. In addition to making your website search-engine friendly, you’re making it user-friendly.
So, when you optimize your site, you’re doing two things: making it appealing to users (potential customers that will visit your site) and search engines (Google, Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo, etc). Your website must appeal to both to stand any chance of ranking high or giving you the desired ROI.
How does SEO improve user experience? Here’s a simple explanation:
Local search engine optimization involves a whole lot of procedures. After conducting research to find your target keywords, you also have to write quality content and use high-quality images. Your content must be readable and well-optimized. In other words, you must incorporate the keywords in the content naturally. Your readers don’t have to spot the keywords you’re targeting when they read through your content.
Google can detect poor-quality content with ease. The search engine giant can gauge the quality and value of your content based on how readers react to it. A simple way is via dwell-time, the amount of time readers spend on a web page before returning to the search engine results.
Now, here’s something you must understand about dwell time.
A high dwell time is good for you. How? It means people enjoy your content, so they spend more time consuming it. Google is owned and operated by humans, not machines. Even if they are using sophisticated technology, humans give the verdict sometimes. The advanced technology Google uses considers several metrics to gauge the quality of content on a webpage, and one of them is the dwell time.
So, Google knows that people would leave a web page almost immediately if the quality of the content is low.
A low dwell time isn’t a good thing for a website. Why? It indicates that people leave your web page almost immediately, making Google assume that the quality of your content is the reason for people’s quick exit from your site.
A low dwell time tells Google that your content is poor quality and doesn’t deserve a place at the top of the search engine result page.
Are there other ways SEO improves user experience?
Yes, there are other ways. When performing SEO, you must optimize your website for mobile search. Otherwise, Google won’t rank your site. In addition, a website that isn’t mobile-friendly will lose reasonable organic traffic.
Mobile-friendliness is one of Google’s major ranking factors. It looks at how your website displays on mobile phones. When you optimize your website for mobile search, it will display on every mobile device the way it displays on a desktop, regardless of the phone’s screen size and resolution. But the reverse is the case if you don’t optimize for mobile search.
When you visit a website that isn’t optimized for mobile search on your phone, you have to zoom and strain your eyes to read the text on the page. The website’s content won’t fit your screen size. In other words, it won’t display on your phone the same way it displays on a desktop or laptop.
Google appreciates sites that are mobile-friendly. So, when doing SEO, you must ensure your site is mobile-friendly. Otherwise, you won’t rank high and should as well forget about outranking your competitors.
Another way SEO improves UX is via website speed. A slow website delivers a terrible UX and suffers a poor conversion rate, including ranking.
Google doesn’t fancy websites with slow loading speeds. Online users also feel the same way; they prefer websites that take less time to load.
According to Google, as page load time increases from 1 second to 10 seconds, the probability of a mobile site visitor bouncing increases by 123%.
When performing SEO, website load time or speed is one of the metrics an SEO expert will analyze and improve. By improving site load speed, you can improve ranking. Site load speed is one of Google’s major ranking factors.
So, performing SEO will improve your website’s user experience and impress potential visitors. A happy and satisfied visitor will be encouraged to re-visit your website and even take action (Purchase your products, services, subscribe to your newsletter, or share your content on their social media handles).
Choosing an SEO Agency For Your New York City Business Online Marketing Campaign
Running a business is one of the most demanding tasks anyone can ever undertake. You have to create and market the products.
SEO is an important strategy for marketing any product online. And as a business, you have three options. You can perform DIY SEO, recruit an in-house team, or outsource to a reputable SEO agency.
Assuming you plan to outsource to an SEO agency, how do you choose the right agency to manage your search engine optimization campaign? You’ll have to make a big decision on this. Remember, the quality of the SEO agency or professional you hire will determine the result you get.
You must thoroughly decide the search engine optimization company that will handle your online marketing campaign.
Here are factors that will help make the ideal decision:
1: Define your business needs:
The first thing to focus on is your business needs and what success mean for your business. What do you want to achieve with SEO?
Do you want to improve your local presence to attract more potential customers to your business in your service area in New York City? Or do you want to improve online visibility to drive sales for your ecommerce business? You have to define your marketing goal.
After defining your business needs or marketing goals, start searching for an SEO agency with a proven track record of achieving similar results. You can also gauge the agency’s knowledge of your business needs and learn how they intend to meet those needs.
2: Ask SEO-related questions:
By asking the right questions, you can uncover an SEO agency’s methodology, philosophy, and approach. Here are some examples of questions to ask.
- Strategic alignment: How will the SEO agency’s approach or strategy complement your New York City business goal?
- Adaptability: How does the agency update with Google’s algorithm changes and adapt its SEO approach to maintain your already achieved competitive edge?
- Long-term partnership: SEO isn’t a one-off thing. It is continuous, and you need a long-term partner to help you monitor and track the progress of your campaigns. So, please inquire about the agency’s vision for a long-term partnership. How does the agency plan to evolve its approach in alignment with your NYC business’ growth and ever-changing marketing dynamics?
Conclusion
You have explained why SEO is essential for business NYC. It can give you an edge in a highly competitive business environment like New York City.
New York City is the largest city in the United States of America, with a population of over 8.5 million people. It is twice as large as the second-largest city, Los Angeles, California.
Given the population size, it’s easy to see why businesses are trooping into NYC in their numbers. Every brand wants to have a share of the city’s gigantic market.
SEO can help you create massive brand awareness and make it easier for potential customers in your neighborhood to find and contact you. It can help drive more sales and improve your business’s online reputation.
