Small businesses usually have a limited workforce and resources. And this can make tapping their target market and promoting their products challenging.
Luckily, Search Engine Optimization is here to provide businesses of all sizes an even playing field. When done correctly, it lets you establish your small business’s online presence. This means that more people can discover your brand and products.
Defining Search Engine Optimization
Also known as SEO, it is comprised of steps you need to take to improve your website to rank higher for a relative term.
Say you own a shoe store in Delhi. When someone searched for “affordable shoes in Delhi,” your store’s website should be one of the search results. And if it is and you are ranking high, that means you are doing SEO right.
This is just one reason you need SEO for your small business. Other than, such marketing practice have a long-lasting and compounding effect.
For one, it compels you to consider usability. That’s because the more user-friendly a website, the longer a site visitor stays. This can decrease your bounce rate, impacting your search engine ranking.
Another benefit you get to establish your presence and reputation within your industry. This is due to the content your produce and the promotional channels you use.
And when you have an excellent online reputation, more people will trust your brand. This can increase sales.
3 Effective SEO Tactics for Small Businesses
With the benefits of SEO for small businesses all laid out, we have listed down three small business SEO services you should implement. That way, you can improve your small business’s online presence.
1. Local SEO
As a small business, you would probably benefit more if you focused on local SEO rather than targeting SEO relevant globally.
Local SEO is essentially when you optimize your website so that it appears more on search engine results with a specific location. It is a lot less competitive, but it still can get some good search volume if you know which terms to target.
Here are some local SEO tactics that you should use:
(a) Use Google My Business Account
Creating your Google My Business account is one way to make your business easier to find on search engines. Google My Business is essentially a listing site powered by Google. Creating an account will help you rank higher on Google Maps and show up on local search results more. It’s simple and easy but powerful.
(b) Add Location Pages on Your Website
If you have business branches, you might want to add location-specific landing pages. That way, you can personalize the content on the landing page more depending on where the user is searching.
SEO is all about bettering user experience, so providing relevant and personal content is always beneficial to a website.
(c) Get Listed on Online Directories
Besides getting a Google My Business listing up and running, it would be best if you also listed your business in other online directories.
You can list it down in general listing sites, like Yelp or something similar. However, there are also industry-specific listings. Another tip is to get listed on local directories.
The more relevant the guide is to your industry, the better it is for you.
(d) Encourage Online Reviews
Another way to promote your business is to encourage online customer reviews. It’s also content that you didn’t have to create yourself. Thus, it’s a good idea to encourage previous customers to leave reviews of your product or services as much as possible.
At the same time, it can encourage window shoppers to shop from your business because they’ve seen a positive review of your product or service.
2. Technical SEO
Technical SEO is less about what you do on the front end of your site and more about its back end, the ones that people don’t see or notice. This includes website security, schema markups, and trimmed codes.
To get you started, here are some technical SEO tips you can do:
(a) Improve Pageload Speed
One of your website’s most critical technical aspects that you should pay attention to would be your website’s loading speed.
It only takes a second for potential customers to click away from your website when they deem that the website isn’t loading fast enough. Plus, crawlers will pay attention to a slow website and recommend the site to people as much if it’s too slow.
That’s why you should find ways to speed up your website.
(b) Optimize Site Structure
As mentioned before, the proper and easy navigation through your site is one part of technical SEO.
Again, SEO is not just about getting the attention of your potential customers. It’s also about providing an excellent user experience for your website visitors.
(c) Make it Mobile-Responsive
Speaking of creating a positive user experience on your website, you also want to make sure that your website is mobile-friendly.
In 2020, smartphone users in the world reached 3.5 billion. And more than half of them access the Internet through their devices.
Thus, it’s vital that your website can provide a consistent experience, regardless of screen size.
3. On-page SEO
On-page SEO is more about the content you publish on your website. We are not just talking about your blog posts. We also mean the text and images you put on your Homepage, About Us, and Contact Us.
That’s because your content and how you optimize it are integral in ranking for the right keywords.
Here are some on-page SEO to get you started:
(a) Conduct Keyword Research
Keyword research is a significant part of on-page SEO as it helps you identify which phrases and terms to target in your content. It lets you know which words are most relevant to your target audience and whether they’re worth pursuing or not based on the level of competition.
(b) Optimize Your URL
Every URL for your webpage should also go through scrutiny. As much as possible, you want to avoid an auto-generated URL filled with random letter and number combinations. You want your URL to have the right keywords in place because it helps you rank for that keyword.
If you don’t check your web page URLs, that’s an opportunity that you’re losing out on when you don’t have to at all.
(c) Build Healthy Links
Your website’s internal and external links also have impact on your search engine ranking. One of the most relevant methods is to ensure that every link on your site works and leads to a working website/web page.
You also want to make sure that high-quality and reputable websites are linking back to your site. That lets search engines know that you are also a reputable and trustworthy site worth recommending to their users.
Outbound Links: These are the links that lead back to your site from other websites. These links let Google know that you are someone associated with whichever site is linking back to you.
Internal Links: These are links from one webpage to another. Internal links help search engines understand how your content is inter-related with one another.
The SEO techniques and tips stated above allows your small business to stand out from the competition. It also provides you an even playing field to compete against the big brands. This means that you have the same opportunity to attract customers and generate sales.
