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 Small businesses SEO face many challenges with their digital marketing. They generally have smaller budgets, fewer resources, and weaker brand recognition.

One of the best ways small businesses SEO can compete with larger brands is by generating more organic traffic. According to BrightEdge, more than half of web traffic and up to 40% of total revenue comes from organic search.

However, that involves an understanding of SEO marketing. According to our State of Small Business Marketing guide, this is one area where most small businesses admit they’re challenged.

The following post will explain how SEO works and provide simple tactics for small businesses to utilize this strategy without busting their budget.

How SEO marketing for small businesses SEO impacts page rankings

Before understanding how to optimize for search engines, it’s important to understand what SEO is and how it works. SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is the main tactic that marketers use to make their web pages visible to search engines like Google and Bing. Pages with stronger SEO will appear higher on search engine results pages (SERPs).

Search engines are constantly making updates to their ranking and SEO algorithms in an attempt to provide the user with the most useful content first. In 2018, there were at least 15 suspected algorithm changes. Some of these changes are minor, but others can have a major impact on keyword ranking and traffic.

For instance, a Google Core Update in March 2019 caused a big drop in organic traffic for many reputable media and publishing outlets like The Atlantic, Vanity Fair, and the New York Times.

To be successful with organic traffic, small businesses really need to try to rank on the first page of a SERP. There’s a saying popular with SEOs that the best place to hide a dead body is on page two of Google. It basically goes to show that most people will only look at the results on page one and either click on one of those links or search for something else.

In fact, the click-through rate on Google SERPs decreases exponentially with positioning. Links that appear in the first position have a 30% click rate. The number drops to 10% for links in the third position and falls closer to 2% towards the bottom of the first page.

Some larger brands will likely pay for Google ads to offset any shortcomings with their SEO strategy. For organic traffic, however, Google doesn’t pay attention to budget or resources in its rankings. The best way small businesses can beat the bigger fish in organic traffic is to have better SEO.