Modern advertising has evolved over the past two decades, once TV ads and newspapers were the main sources of advertising your products.

With the modernization of internet advertising, the landscape has evolved and now online advertising is a necessity to stay relevant.

Search Engine Optimization or SEO is much more than advertising as it evolves, link building, web optimization, keyword research and more.

This may seem overwhelming for any small business or entrepreneurs looking to achieve success in the online market, though in today’s market investing in SEO is more important than ever before.

Fair Competition With Ads

Advertising, especially on Google’s Display and Search Networks businesses ad rank, is not just determined on who has the higher bid. Other factors such as your quality score are factored into who is ad rank is higher than others.

With Pay Per Click ads on the Google Search Network, you can manually adjust your bid as well as set a maximum amount you want to spend per day. The better understanding of the system, the more likely your ads will appear at the top of search results.

Furthermore, building links to point to your website will help build your website’s authority.

There are also many different forms of paid advertising for the search and display networks to fit your company’s needs, such as CPA, CPC, CPM, etc.

Location Targeting

For businesses such as a local coffee shop, location targeting is the best option when it comes to marketing your local business.

The advancement of smartphone technology has made location targeting even more important than ever as people are searching for places on the go.  

Location targeting allows businesses to increase their bid amount for areas within a given radius of their shop. Also, increasing your bid on mobile in combination with location targeting is a great way to improve your local business traffic as most consumers use mobile as their main method of using the internet.

This helps when people are on the go and need to find a local shop to stop by.

Increasing your bid amount using location targeting will help your business be shown and give you more potential customers over the local Starbucks.

Setting this up is easy as long as you have a Google My Business account.

Read also: How to Take Your Dutch-Based Business Global

Future

SEO is not going away for a long time. 3.2 billion people have access to the internet. Even if you start small, there are thousands upon millions of potential customers in your area with access to the internet.

SEO allows you to grow your business. If done right, you can be on your way to take your company on a global scale.

One of the best examples of a successful business due to online marketing is Dollar Shave Club.

With their use of Youtube (a Google-owned property) and their viral video campaign strategy, they took a company with small beginnings to being worth 615 million in 2015.

We also cannot forget that smartphones mobile advertising is a big proponent of SEO as most consumers browse for what they want using their smartphones.

It is crucial that you find a professional search engine optimization company.

There is are a plethora of malicious SEO companies that try to take advantage of the search algorithm with spam links to your webpage that try to boost your organic search. This is bad practice as these companies’ websites will have bad link authority and will end up wasting your resources.  

Advertising is no longer about who can get the most air time with the most amount of money. With Google’s online advertising, marketing focus has shifted to the quality of the website or the product you are advertising.

Small businesses have a fighting chance when it comes to getting their ads seen.

Furthermore, location targeting allows small businesses to optimize their ads so that their ads are not wasted on consumers who will never see their shop.

A lot has changed over the past three decades in the world of marketing and as the world evolves, SEO will evolve too.