All businesses should optimise their website for search engines is the simple answer to the question of the title of this article. The main decision that you need to make when it comes to search engine optimisation (SEO) is how much your business should invest.

1.    Competitive Keywords
If you are in an industry such as hedge fund managers, and your business name is new, then you are going to have a hard time being seen on searches made by people looking for hedge fund managers. There are so many large hedge fund firms out there with huge budgets already invested in the keywords that lead people to use their service that unless you have millions to invest in SEO and the return on investment is worth it (ROI), then, by all means, give it a go.

However, the bottom line is that in this type of industry you should forget about ranking for highly searched and competitive keywords. On the other hand, you should be investing in SEO that helps people find your company name and brand. Also, the SEO should help people find those that work as hedge fund managers in your business.

This is because when people hear about your name, one of your colleagues, or a particular branded hedge fund package you have, when they type in the words on a search engine, you should be aiming for number one. Local SEO is much easier, so you could go for keywords such as Hedge fund manager Essex.

2.    Non-Competitive Keywords
For those of you that are in an industry that is not so competitive, then you should invest in SEO now before it is too late. Some time or another the industry could boom, and you want your company to be at the top of the search engine results.

For example, SEO service Phnom Penh Cambodia may not sound enticing as Cambodia does not have a huge economy, but nor was Bangkok in the past, and now look at how the economy here is booming.

You may also be selling a specific product that new and up and coming in the market place. Once again, if you are the first to react and get your website ranking quickly, then you are likely to hold your position at the top of the search engines when people look for this product.

Lastly, you should always look for keywords in your niche that would bring traffic to your website. Hopefully the traffic will turn into sales leads, and eventually, this could lead to sales, which means customers and profit.

3.    Local SEO
Local SEO is the easiest SEO out there because you are only competing with a small number of companies. That is compared to nationwide or global SEO keywords. However, the approach to local SEO needs to be different because results for local SEO come below Google Ads, and then Google Maps results. You should look at combining Google Ads with SEO as well as getting your website listed on local business directories to help your business rank high for Google Map keywords and searches.

For instance, if I am an SEO company in Essex, I would want to rank for SEO Essex on Google Maps results in one of the top 3 positions because Google only shows 3 of these positions. Secondly, I want to rank as high up the page for organic SEO results as possible.

Then, I would also want to invest in Google Ads as high up as I can. This way when people search SEO Essex, then they will see my company name 3 times as the scroll down the search results – this is great click bait and my company has more chance of luring in web visitors. From here, it is all about how well my content is presented so people are incentivized to contact my business.

In all instances, you will need to make sure that your on-page SEO is very well designed. You should also research your market to see if there are any keywords that are low hanging fruit with a large number of searches that could bring your company web traffic. Therefore, if I found that SEO Essex was too competitive, but Essex SEO also has a lot of searches, but not much SEO competition, then I would focus my SEO efforts on this.