Is your small business using the power of SEO to drive customers to your San Diego website? While you might worry that customers are turning to apps like Yelp! to find businesses, a study by found that the vast majority of consumers still use search engines first when looking for companies they want to do business with.

A survey by Raymond James reported in MediaPost found that while 37 percent of shoppers start their search on Amazon and 7 percent start on Yelp, the rest turn to search engines like Google, Bing or Yahoo when they’re looking for products and services. For those who are on a mobile device, the percentage using search engines is even higher, with just 13 percent using Amazon or Yelp apps and 87 percent going to search engines.

What does this mean to your business? Whether your San Diego business is an ecommerce site, a retail store, a restaurant or a physical office, search engine optimization or SEO is still vitally important to getting found by customers and prospects.

What can you do to boost your SEO?

• Use keywords strategically on your site. Place them where they matter most—in page tags and on headlines, captions, subheads and the first paragraphs of blog posts or longer chunks of text.
• Update keywords regularly. Regularly check on how your keywords are performing using Google’s keyword tool. Your keywords might become too common to be effective with your website getting lost way down in search results.
• Use “long tail” keywords. Try keywords that are more specific, which will bring fewer but better hits from people who are really looking for what you sell. For instance, San Diego seafood restaurant is more specific than seafood restaurant, and casual San Diego seafood restaurant is more specific still.
• If you need customers to actually come into your business (like a bar or restaurant), make sure your business has a presence on local search directories. Visit the biggies like Local.com and Citysearch, but also check into sites dedicated to the San Diego area. You want to be sure your business is listed and that all the information (address, hours, phone, etc.) is correct. Then you can start adding more information to make your listings on local search directories.

If you’re struggling with SEO, consider having a professional company experienced in Web marketing help you out with SEO. It can be worth the cost since a professional can make just a few tweaks and boost your SEO considerably.