Why SEO Matters for Your Small Business in Phoenix
Business owners don’t need to be told that marketing has changed a lot in the past 15 years. These changes have been a mixed bag for small businesses. With an estimated 96% of consumers learning about businesses online, small businesses no longer have to rely on outdated methods like door hangers, Yellow Pages, or costly radio, TV, and newspaper ads—but…
The Big ‘But’ at the End of All Those Benefits
Digital marketing has done a lot to level the playing field, but only for businesses who fall in line with Google’s best practices.
Whether they’re looking for roof replacement, watch repair, burgers or primary care physicians, the vast majority of consumers are starting their search online. Since roughly 90% of those consumers are using Google search, it’s safe to say the most important foundational marketing tool for small businesses in Phoenix is their Google Business Profile (GBP).
Most small business owners have already claimed their GBP. If they hadn’t, they probably wouldn’t still be in business. Your competitors have already claimed their own GBPs, and at best, this step is the minimum requirement for visibility.
Paid Advertising and Email Marketing Are Optional, SEO Isn’t
As much as digital marketers may not want to admit it, pay-to-play digital marketing tools aren’t must-haves for every business. When done right, paid ads, social ads and email have much higher and faster revenue-generating capacity than SEO, but they aren’t foundational tools for being found by 96% of your potential customers. Unless you can afford to stay afloat by somehow monopolizing the business of the remaining 4%, you’ll need at least basic SEO.
GBP Optimizations, Listing Services and Onsite SEO
Optimizing and Maintaining Your Google Business Profile
An optimized Google Business Profile (GBP) contains accurate and up-to-date categories, hours, photos and services. Completing these fields allows your business to show up in maps and local packs. Keeping it updated ensures Google sees your business as active and reliable, and that’s crucial in a world where Google is the gatekeeper.
Ensure NAP Consistency Across Listings
Search engines and AI tools rely heavily on your business’s name, address and phone number (NAP) to confirm legitimacy. If that information is inconsistent across directories, review sites, and social platforms, it can confuse both customers and algorithms, which will hurt your rankings.
Onsite SEO
The good news is small businesses in Phoenix can boost visibility at relatively low cost, and basic optimizations at launch can pay dividends for years. The bad news is, all your competitors are doing the same, and many are going to be spending heavily on SEO and paid ads.
There’s not a one-size-fits-all, guaranteed solution for every business in every industry. The upside of there being no guaranteed SEO formula is that there are a variety of paths to meaningful improvements, and many don’t require a large budget.
DIY SEO Is an Option
It’s probably not in our best interest to admit this, but small business owners can use ChatGPT to do basic SEO for free once they’ve covered the basic cost of publishing and hosting a website. So why hire REV77? It comes down to two things: experience and time.
Technically you could use AI to:
- Figure out how to add schema markup for things like articles, product pages, FAQs, events and reviews
- Have it teach you how to implement the changes properly
- Generate and edit blogs and website content
- Have it explain how to set up analytics so you can measure performance
- Feed it reporting results and have it make recommendations on further optimizations
There’s an opportunity cost to everything you do—including SEO. You technically could replace your own roof, but it would take you a lot longer than it would a roofer, and chances are the licensed, insured and properly trained roofer who has installed roofs daily for a decade will almost certainly produce a roof that looks better and lasts longer than a DIY attempt.
In the Business of Driving Revenue While Saving Local Phoenix Small Businesses Time and Money
At REV77, we don’t offer rigid SEO packages because we appreciate that every SMB has unique budgetary limitations, goals and marketing challenges. If you want to find out what we would recommend based on the current condition of your SEO, fill out our free audit form.
