SEO or search engine optimization is the science and art of optimizing your website. This helps in increasing the traffic to your website and hence boosting visibility. The main agenda of having a website is to improve your business. SEO helps in making sure that your website garners the quality and quantity of traffic.SEO is extremely important for your business especially if you have a small business. Hence, you must consider SEO for small businesses.
SEO for small businesses: The main SEO areas that you should focus on?
SEO is a part of an extensive field i.e. Digital Marketing. When it comes to your small business, these are the specific sectors that you should focus on:
- Website: A mobile-friendly and well-structured website for an amazing user experience
- Content: your content should be simple and expressive. Your customers should be able to connect with your content. The content should be extremely relevant and unique.
- Content Marketing: An informative content aids get you in touch with a wider audience.
- On-page optimization: Basic optimization is extremely beneficial. Hence think about your keywords and optimize your content, meta title, meta description, and blog title.
- Local SEO: Local businesses must consider Local SEO for better visibility around the vicinity and more boosted conversions
- Authority building: Link building helps in building more authority on your website. Consider linking more website links from credible and more authoritative websites.
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SEO for small business: Is SEO right for our small business
The primary way how people or your potential customers find about your products is through search engines. Search engines crawl through the web whenever there is a relevant query made and find the best results based on the key phrases or the words used by your customers. SEO is always the right marketing approach as it helps your business to get in front of your potential customers. Organic search visibility is the best but you can not completely depend on that. You can also look for other SEO methods such as PPC advertising and other paid methods. These methods are extremely effective for getting fast results. In many cases, a combination of organic visibility methods clubbed with PPC gives you the best results. You can consider the following factors to determine whether you require SEO for small business.
- Budget: you have to check your budget and determine if you have the budget that’s enough to compete with your established competitors
- Speed: Determine how fast you need your results. If you want to see a fast result, you might consider a paid SEO
- Competition: Some search terms and phrases are already used by established brands in your niche. These are the terms or phrases that are very difficult to compete with. Hence it is important to run significant research and choose the words and phrases that you want to optimize your content for.
Key Components of SEO for small business
ou have to master the following key components for running a successful campaign of SEO for small business. See a steady upward ascent of your traffic with these fundamentals:
Keyword research:
These are the specific words or phrases that your customers type while searching for you or any business in your niche. These keywords are important for figuring out the kind of content that will be relevant and hence useful for your readers or users. A good keyword strategy complemented with constant monitoring of the metrics and regular updates as per the trends is beneficial for ranking higher for the relevant searches.
Copywriting:
You have to write content that is relevant and informative to your readers. If your content is not relevant, people might bounce from your website fast. Hence a good content keeps your readers on your page for a longer time and decreases the bounce rate. This improves the rank of your website. The average time that a person spends on the first page of google search results is around 3 minutes and 10 seconds. Therefore crafting a good copy is always a bonus.
Content Marketing:
A good content marketing strategy comprises crafting blogs or articles that include specific keywords that focus on informing and engaging your audience. This can be a big part of your online strategy depending on the kind of business that you run. It is recommended to create a landing page that comprises all the important competitive keywords with a decent search volume. Make other informative content and link them back to your landing page via related long-tail keyword phrases. This makes your site easier to be crawled by search engines as well as readers.
Link Building:
The quality of your website is determined by the number of internal links and external links. The quality of our backlink portfolio boosts your rank in SERPs. It is recommended to use links from highly authoritative sites to link to your content. These highly authoritative sites are strong indicators of the quality of your site.
Usability and UX:
Optimize your website pages and make them simple and easy to load. A well-designed page that is easy to navigate keeps visitors on your page for a longer time and hence decreases the bounce rate.
Local SEO:
Local SEO is a unique and marvelous strategy to increase the visibility of your website in the nearest vicinity where your business is located. You can craft blog posts that are locally relevant and use keywords that are used commonly by local users for finding your business.
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6 Tips for SEO for Small Business:
Focus on technical SEO:
Technical SEO is the aspect of SEO that is not as much under your control as on-page SEO. Technical SEO helps in optimizing your website that it becomes easily crawlable by search engines so that it is easily visible to your audience. You can have amazing content on your website but if your website takes a long time to load due to technical SEO issues, your readers might bounce faster. A lesser bounce rate is an extremely important factor for boosting the rank of your website in SERPs.
Create a sitemap and submit it to Google:
There are various tools and plugins that you can use for creating sitemaps. One of the most popular plugins of WordPress for creating a sitemap is Yoast SEO. This plugin helps WordPress users generate a sitemap automatically and keep it up-to-date whenever you publish new content. You should submit your sitemap to Google via Google Search Console. It is a free service by Google that helps you manage the online presence of your business.
Old pages that do not perform:
Keep track of the pages that are not getting traffic. You should analyze your pages and take down the pages that are not performing well as these pages affect the ranking of your website negatively.
Fix broken and old links:
Links from credible and authoritative sources are a big factor for ranking your website in SERPs. Hence you should fix all the broken links or old links.
Optimize your image:
It is recommended that you should use relevant images. After you add images, you should consider writing optimized captions and also never forget to add alt text as your alt text tells search engines what your image is all about.
Local SEO:
One-third of all the mobile searches conducted by people are location-based. More specifically “near me” searches have increased effectively. It is paramount to capitalize on the opportunity of local SEO for small businesses as Google’s algorithm automatically prioritizes the options that are available nearby. The most essential part of Local SEO is setting up GMB(Google My Business) account. Claim your GMB listing and fill out all the necessary details i.e. name, address, and contact number. These pieces of information will flash up on the screen when someone searches for your business. The most unique feature of GMB is the questionnaire. You should consider answering as many questions as you want to as it makes the experience of your users easy.
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Research keywords:
Before crafting your content, you should consider research how people are searching for your business. Multiple online tools are available for conducting your keyword research faster and easier. You should search for the relevant keywords that have more search volume and lesser search difficulty. Optimize your content with these keywords as it increases the visibility of your website.
Optimize on-site SEO:
On-site SEO is all about whatever is written on the page. The main goal is to create and maintain the interest of your customers on your website. You have to incorporate all the relevant keywords strategically and naturally within your content. Craft the content in a way that makes your website easily visible on the relevant searches.
- Optimize page titles and headlines: Your headline is a very important factor for boosting your CTR(Click Through Rate). CTR is the ratio of the number of people that click on your content to the number of people that visit your website. Optimize your title as well as headlines with your primary keyword to get easily searchable.
- Use proper header tags: You should use optimized header tags. It is recommended to divide your content into smaller sections with a header optimized with your keyword
- Optimize your meta-tags: Every Content Management System allows you to enter your meta-tags. This is a brief description of your blog. This helps search engines crawl and understand if your blog is relevant to your meta description.
Streamline Content Marketing:
Content marketing is time taking. It takes a lot of effort. You should have a specific template and use more visual representations. It is recommended to add more videos to your website as it helps search engines to crawl and find you easily. You can consider sharing your posts and content on social media. Do not completely depend on organic visibility methods, you can also use a combination of paid marketing as well.
Build authority with links:
Linking your content to credible and authoritative websites gives more leverage to the rank of your website. Google understands the quality as well as the quantity of your backlink profile. Hence it is an indicator of whether your website is worth reading or not. According to research, the number of links attached to your website is directly proportional to the rank of your website. Research for the best links in your niche and do not forget to research the links that your competitors are using for ranking higher in SERPs for relevant searches.
Conclusion:
It might feel like a lot to do when it comes to SEO for small businesses. But the more you delay, the further you will be from being easily visible. You can use all of the formerly mentioned tips for conducting SEO for your small business for boosting your revenue as well as traffic.