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Only 63% of Small Businesses Invest in SEO, Despite Enticing Long-Term Benefits

Staff Report

Thursday, April 21st, 2022

Visual Objects, a B2B guide for choosing the best creative services, found that nearly half of small businesses (47%) don't have search engine optimization (SEO) efforts at their businesses.

Small businesses surveyed attribute their delay in SEO investment to the intricacy of SEO strategies and lack of immediacy of results from SEO efforts. However, 25% of small businesses are planning on adopting SEO strategies in 2022 because of its long-term benefits.

Visual Objects surveyed 1,003 small business managers and owners to examine current SEO trends. This report reveals small businesses SEO confidence levels, preferred SEO software and tools, and overall SEO strategies.

2022 Small Business SEO Findings:

Here are the 2022 trends found by our team:

●  Almost half of small businesses (47%) are not currently investing in SEO. In 2021, over a quarter of small businesses (27%) began investing in SEO and twenty-five percent (25%) plan to in 2022.

  • Small businesses cite keyword research (43%), technical SEO optimization (40%), and local search optimization (37%) as their main SEO tactics.

  • Twenty-one percent of small businesses (21%) believe that website engagement is the most important metric for tracking success.

  • Over 40% of small businesses use in-house SEO software and tools instead of hiring an outside party.

  • Most small businesses (79%) are confident in their understanding of SEO best practices, despite the lack of SEO use for many small businesses.

Aaron Gray, co-founder of NO-BS Marketplace, an SEO platform, encourages small businesses to focus on prioritizing when it comes to SEO.

"SEO has a massive scope…make improvements one at a time," Gray said. "By focusing your efforts on just one pillar of SEO, such as technical development, you can end up with a site that is faster, more mobile-friendly, and easier to index or you could improve your on-site SEO by making incremental improvements to your keyword usage and meta tagging."

Every one of these SEO methods can be efficiently carried out by an in-house team, which should motivate small firms to increase their SEO investment.