No matter your company’s size, there is little that can compete with powerful, organic search engine visibility to promote your services online. Below is some knowledge from our team and what we believe that every small business owner should know about SEO.
There is more to SEO than meets the eye. A common misconception about SEO is that it only has to do with content and keywords when it comes to achieving high rankings on Google SERP (Search Engine Results Page). While choosing the right keywords and content development are essential, SEO goes far beyond these efforts. Small business owners need to know that obtaining top ranks for target keywords takes time, effort, and stamina. SEO is an ongoing effort that involves evolving the many aspects of your online presence – building domain authority, author authority, link building, website UX/UI, mobile usability, site speed, and much more. If you’re looking for a quick win in search engine rankings, you may want to consider adding Google Ads PPC to your strategy. If you’re looking to increase your quality organic (free) traffic to your website for the long haul, SEO is a must.
SEO is a hard thing to understand unless you are fully immersed in it. As a small business owner, you likely don’t have the time nor energy to be constantly learning about and working on SEO. However, with SEO, every little bit counts. Break it into small bits and pieces that will be more manageable with your limited time available. Start with your Google My Business account and get your location and details about your business right. Then start looking at the wording of your website. Are you using terms that everyone would know or are you using your own internal language or industry language? For example, on your navigation, use the term for the problem you are solving, and not the name of the product you are offering. I.e. – Organizational Change Management instead of Change Agents Unite. Unless someone knows the name of your product, they aren’t going to Google to search for that term. Also, if they’re on your site, a person unfamiliar with your terms won’t know to click here to find out about your Organizational Change Management services. Once that’s complete, learn what terms people are using to search Google to find businesses like yours. Then start implementing them across your website where applicable. Lastly, post blogs. Even if it’s once a week or once every two weeks. It keeps your website fresh and provides more and more ways for people to find your site. Doing these things will definitely help you get a leg up on many of your competitors.
First, it’s important to understand what SEO stands for: Search Engine Optimization. PPC (pay-per-click) can be seen as complementary to SEO but it has no direct effect on your SEO results. The keywords you choose can make a huge difference, but make sure not to keyword stuff; it can hurt your search engine ranking. Make sure to use ALT tags on your images so search engine crawlers can read it. These are just a few tips to remember but there are lots more out there!
Local SEO is everything! If anything at all, keep your Google My Business listing up to date and fully optimized. Include target keywords in your description, make sure your address, hours, and phone number are accurate across all listings and include pictures or blog updates on Google My Business! Update your website with relevant, localized content.
SEO is important and a critical part of the digital marketing plan. It is, however, a long-term investment rather than an overnight fix. Keyword research gives you an understanding of what users are searching for as it relates to your business. Once you have your research completed, it will be much easier to tailor content around those terms. All content you create for your business moving forward should, at the very least, keep these related keywords in mind. Content is what will move the needle in the SEO world. Every page on your website should be well written and concise. Not only will this enhance the user experience, increase time on site, and answer the users’ questions/problems, it will create higher rankings.
SEO is constantly evolving and it can be hard to know where to start! Just remember SEO is NOT about stuffing as many keywords as possible into your website and calling it a day. Search engines are smart and looking for quality, relevant and up-to-date content to present to users. Besides posting awesome content and optimizing your pages, it’s important to fix any issues/errors on your site that could affect the user experience and your ranking. Finally, if you’re a local small business, don’t forget to look at your local SEO! Start with getting your Google My Business listing into shape.
The bottom line for all small business owners is this: if your website isn’t optimized for search engines, people are going to have a hard time finding you. Even if you spend lots of money on marketing, none of that will matter if someone sees one ad, tries to search for your site, and nothing comes up. You can spend a lot of time optimizing for keywords but at the very least every business owner needs to have the baseline standards in place. Website titles that are concise and to the point, meta descriptions that have keywords about your product, and sitemaps all go a long way.
OPTIMIZE!!! That might sound like Greek to you, but really it is fairly simple. As a small business, you need to make sure you are putting the right information out about yourselves online. Review your business listings on Google, your website, other review sites, and make sure you have active and accurate social media accounts. Link them all together and share your content across multiple platforms regularly. You want to make sure you are using descriptions that include keywords your audience may be looking for so that they can find you when they search. Seek out clients to leave reviews for you and encourage positive media coverage that might broaden your audience beyond your direct reach. It may seem like a daunting task, but chip away at it, and you should begin to see positive results. …And of course, don’t forget that we can help you with SEO if you’d rather hand that off to someone else. ; )
The keywords you choose make a big difference. … Your site can be too keyword-heavy. No matter how relevant, images won’t help improve your search results.
Create and share new content regularly! Having a deep network of links and pages throughout your site can drive users to various pages throughout your website which helps improve your search engine rankings. Double down on that strategy by making sure your links include relevant keywords wherever possible.
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