As this is an era of digital marketing, presentation of businesses online is very important. Companies use different strategies to increase their website ranking to attract more number of visitors, and to make it possible, the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) role comes into play here.
An SEO-optimized website can make your small business appear more when customers search for you or something you sell. This will make you competitive with the larger companies in the industry, because then you will be ranking right alongside them.
Search engine optimization can be applied in different ways to improve rankings for your small business, and it’s advised to embrace it to its full capacity. You may be wondering, “How do I implement SEO for my small business?” We’re here to help.
There are some of the most effective tips regarding SEO for your small business.
Target a Niche
Being a small business, you are selling different kinds of products or offering multiple services to enhance the business. In terms of SEO, only advertising each product or service will not serve the purpose.
- You need to specialize in a specific product category, because only then you have a competitive edge. For example, you are dealing with the consumer products for the home, and you do a great business in kitchen utensils. Whenever someone types the keywords spoon, plates, kitchen knife, or fork into their search engine, your website will be the first on the list as this is the niche that you have specialized in.
- The idea is that if you do too much, you will do nothing well. If the keywords you choose are more specific, your website will be seen as the expert or primary place to go for that specific product or service.
Keywords Approach (Long tail Keywords)
If you were to go back in the time long keywords were the only SEO technique that mattered, but now things have become more complex. It might take a little more time to narrow down your long-tail keywords, compared to short-term keywords, but trust us, it’s worth it.
- The difference in the current scenario is that the keywords must be well-researched, carefully chosen, and judiciously used in your content in order to be effective. It is one of the fundamental approaches to boost the business, in term of SEO. Because when you write the exact keyword, which people use to search, you get maximum chance to reach out first to them.
- Long-tail keywords are used to target niche demographics and markets. They consist of at least three words, and can be as long as five words. Long-tail keywords offer the same service as specializing in a niche. This approach goes hand-in-hand with what we talked about above; being specific. With a specialized niche, you aim at short phrases that are targeted at customers looking for specific products or services.
- These types of keywords help you target specific customers, again helping your small business compete with industry giants. For example, let’s say you sell hand-made candles in your online store. If you were to optimize your site for the keyword “candles”, you would be competing against thousands of other e-commerce stores. Instead you use a long-tail keyword like “handmade blue candles” or other modifying words in order to narrow the search engine results.
Research Local Keywords
It’s becoming more evident that locality of a business is vital to improving a small business website’s ranking. Your company may be located in one place, but you know that you have a large potential market in another country/city/state, so you will need to target those prospects as well.
- How that can be possible, simply go localizing. It means, you need to add local keywords in your website SEO. Not only that, it may include geographic words to your key phrases. For example, using the candle shop example above, you could add key phrases such as “handmade candles Brooklyn New York.” This way you are targeting a specific neighborhood, so your customers know they can visit your online site, or your actual brick-and-mortar store.
- So, once you start getting great reviews on these sites, you can share them on your website as well. Also, review sites typically rank high in search engine results. In fact, it is an indirect way to increase web traffic is to add a link to your site from the review page. So, when your site get reviews from renowned sites, it will help to boost your small business besides being located or doing business in small area. Thus, it is a win- win situation for you.
Engage on Social Media
The current world runs on the social media, it has become the most rapid and viewed medium across the globe. Before hitting anything on main stream media, social media is the easiest accessible approach to introduce your products or services.
- Using term # (Hashtags), are gaining significance importance. So, specifying the hashtags for your products or services will definitely increase your business.
- The other way is to be socializing with your viewer, it means personalizing your experience, explaining or responding to viewers who respond on the social media pages of your business. Quick the response, better you enhance your business and higher the profit you ear.
- It’s important to find out which social media platforms your customers are frequenting, so that you are targeting the correct audience.
Post Content Regularly
Besides all, the basic and most important factor in order to compete on bigger level, post content regularly and update your viewers regularly.
- It is an ultimate thing for your website’s success that you publish new content at least 1-2 times a week. This way, whenever someone enters certain keywords they can be sure to find your site as the search engine regularly indexes your pages because there is fresh content on your website.
- It is also important to show to the search engines that your site is regularly updated with fresh, relevant content. Besides that, the genuineness of the up loaded data or information is the most important thing. By only then, you will have more views, thus more web traffic means more profit.
- You should add your keywords on various articles and pages throughout your website. Content should typically have a 1-3% keyword density. You should add your focus keywords in the article’s title tag, and on the Meta tags, you can put the description in form of long-tail keywords. This should also be done on the header tags within the content.
- Be sure to also add backlinks to a reputable website by offering to write a column on their website about your niche in exchange for a backlink to your site. A backlink is a link from another site that points to your site, the better the site the more precious the backlink will be.
Conclusion
While coming to the conclusion, it can be said that these are the few things or steps in SEO, that will make huge difference in the business long run. So, it is important to take some basic measures to remain in the business. Among the many suggestions out there, one of the easiest to implement is investing time and resources into improving your small business’s SEO.
Make sure your brand is visible online, you must engage on social media, update the content of your website regularly, and by then you can engage the market and viewers as well. as long as you are getting the traffic, you are in business.