Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a key aspect to building a strong base for your small business success. When you get SEO right, you will see a rise in brand visibility, high-intent website traffic, and revenue. This makes for more sales opportunities and stronger growth. For small businesses, successful SEO also involves leveraging a number of key aspects of content marketing.
If you want to succeed in the modern business environment, it is important to have a solid plan to rank higher in search engine results pages.
Here are 10 SEO tips to kick start for your small business:
1. Find the right keywords
The best way to find out what to write is to understand what your ideal customer is currently searching for. What are the keywords people are most likely to search for when they are looking for a specific product or service? For instance, if you are selling kitchen appliances, will your customers search for words like refrigerator or fridge?
To find the most popular search keywords, you can make use of SEO software tools like KWFinder or Keyword Tool by Google AdWords. However, do take note to not overstuff your page with too many keywords as you will risk distorting the meaning of your content.
2. Focus on technical SEO
Technical SEO refers to the process of optimizing your site’s structure so crawlers can properly index your website. Some basic steps to try are:
- Create a sitemap to submit to Google – depending on the tools you used to create your page, there are several plugins you can use to design a sitemap. You can then submit it to Google via Google Search Console, a service offered by Google to help manage your site presence.
- Optimize your images – it is recommended to use relevant images with suitable captions. Do make use of the ‘alt text’ section as well to provide an image description.
3. Focus on local SEO
Location-based queries make up almost one-third of mobile searches and Google’s algorithm will automatically place more focus on local options when you search for a particular keyword. Since search engine results pages are teeing up small businesses to succeed with local SEO, it is understandable they are capitalizing on this great opportunity.
4. Optimize on-page SEO
On-page SEO refers to the words that appear on the site. While the primary aim is to curate engaging content that incorporates target keywords naturally, it is also crucial that your posts are structured in a way that increases your likelihood of being found in a search.
- Optimize headlines and page titles – the headline plays a big part in your click-through rate, which is one of the metrics used to decide rankings on search engine results pages. Your headline should be catchy and not too lengthy.
- Clean up the meta tags – search crawlers use these tags to ensure your site description matches your page content. By using relevant descriptions and keywords in the meta tags, crawlers will get to know what your site is about.
5. Design a user-friendly website
It is important to have a clean and easy-to-use website, clearly stating the products and services you are offering. Use more headings to enhance readability and place your chosen keywords in them, as headings will help the site to stand out in search engine results pages and allow you to rank higher.
Site speed is also crucial when it comes to SEO. Google places a strong focus on the speed of a page. A better site speed will improve the visibility of your page.
Lastly, do make sure your website is also optimized for mobile devices. Websites not easily displayed and accessible on mobile platforms are now being penalized by search engines.
6. Build authority with links
Having other websites link to your page will help to improve your ranking in search engines as Google uses quality and quantity of backlinks as an indicator of whether your site is worth a read. Research has shown that the higher the number of sites linked to a page, the higher the page will rank in search engine results pages.
7. Use internal links
Adding internal links will also help to redirect people to other pages on your website. When users start to spend more time on your site, your SEO will improve. Bounce rate, average time spent on site, and dwell time are all key factors that influence your SEO.
8. Leverage social media
Social media is key in SEO strategies as more people are using social media platforms as search engines. For example, people often search for specific products or brands on Facebook’s search function. Your brand’s social media profile will also be ranked in the search results when users search for related keywords.
Growing your brand’s presence on a variety of social media platforms will increase your visibility and brand awareness, which will improve your engagement and search engine rankings. With Aspire, you can earn cashback as you spend on digital marketing. The Aspire Corporate Card offers 1% cashback on all online marketing spend, including Facebook ads.
9. Create video content
Video content can drive higher traffic. By 2022, 82 percent of online traffic will be video traffic. Google has begun to feature snippets of videos in response to search queries. Hence, the first way to leverage video content in your SEO strategy is to create more videos.
10. Measure results
There are many low-cost and even free tools that will offer you great insights on the SEO performance of your websites and the demographics of your visitors – such as how they landed on your page and their geographical location. Moz Pro, SpyFu, and Google Analytics are some examples of these tools.
With so many conversations to drive, revenue to secure, decisions to make, SEO might be the last thing on the minds of small business owners. However, the longer you put this off, the more you may lose out in search results, and the larger the impact on revenue and organic traffic. Start today with these 10 SEO strategies to drive more traffic to your site and boost your business!
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