Why SEO is Critical to the Success of Your Chamber of Commerce Website
SEO is Critical to the Success of Your Chamber of Commerce Website
Discover why your chamber of commerce could lose potential customers and revenues without SEO.
Members of your chamber of commerce expect to obtain value from their memberships. They hope to network with other business owners in the community, increase their exposure, and attract new customers.
One effective way to enhance the value of chamber memberships is through search engine optimization, or SEO. SEO is the process of maximizing the amount of traffic your site receives from search engines. SEO helps chambers of commerce expand their membership and boost non-dues revenue, while generating more leads and foot traffic for member businesses.
Recover Declining Print Revenues
In the past, many chambers of commerce relied on advertising revenues from their phone books to survive. But like the Yellow Pages, chamber of commerce phone books have experienced a significant decrease in revenues. In order to replace declining print revenues with online revenues, chambers of commerce have no choice but to increase their websites' search engine visibility and offer attractive online advertising options to members. In today's competitive online space, SEO isn't a luxury – it's a necessity!
Generate More Leads for Chamber Members
Chamber of commerce membership boosts a business's credibility. According to a study by the Schapiro Group, when potential customers know that a small business is a member of a chamber of commerce, they are 44% more likely to think favorably of it and 63% more likely to purchase goods or services from the company in the future.
By strengthening your chamber of commerce website's SEO, you can harness the power of local SEO to help your members grow their online presence and generate more leads. And when you can prove that you're capable of achieving measurable results for members, you can offer them a number of online advertising options that increase your non-dues revenue.
Take Back Control of Your Online Presence
Sadly, well-optimized third party directories and corporate sites have made the bulk of chamber of commerce sites irrelevant. The typical chamber of commerce website caters to users who are already on the site itself and generates minimal search engine traffic. SEO is vital to reversing that trend. Optimizing your chamber's website for search will enable you to take back control of your chamber's presence and position your chamber of commerce website as THE source for local business information.
How to Improve Your Chamber of Commerce Website's SEO
Optimizing a chamber of commerce directory for search engines is a lot more complicated than optimizing a simple website with just a few pages of content. Both on-page and off-page SEO are vital to increasing your chamber website's search engine visibility. On-page SEO techniques include proper URL structure and the use of descriptive and keyword-rich meta tags. Off-page SEO involves increasing the number of links on quality websites that point to your chamber of commerce website.
Expand Your Membership Base and Boost Revenues with efelle's SEO solutions
efelle's ChamberFusion management system for chambers of commerce has built-in SEO capabilities that automate most of the SEO process. ChamberFusion is incredibly easy to use, so even non-techies can update their chamber sites with ease. ChamberFusion handles everything from membership management to social media marketing, and it's built to maximize business exposure for members. efelle also provides SEO services that help to drive more quality traffic to your chamber of commerce website.
Contact us to find out how our SEO services and ChamberFusion management system can provide added value to members of your chamber of commerce while increasing your revenue. Call 206.384.4909 or fill out our online contact form to schedule your free consultation!