Managing a small business comes with a lot of challenges, especially for a novice in the world of entrepreneurship. However, even (more) experienced business owners sometimes fail to see the importance of investing in organic SEO.
Taking time to come up with a long-term strategy that will ensure your website’s high ranking among search engine results is one of the most important ventures you will undertake. To help you grow your business and improve your organic search presence, here are 5 SEO strategies that you need to consider.
Generate high-quality content
Marketers often say that content is king and this is a true statement because it is content that can attract traffic to a website and also inspire visitors to become customers, even return ones. The power of quality content is grand and so is the effect of a poorly written content. For the sake of understanding this better, let’s simplify it: good content means a lower bounce rate which is an indicator of your website being trustworthy from Google’s point of view.
To create valuable content, you mustn’t be afraid to take your own stance on different topics because the originality is one of the elements of valuable content. In addition to that, it is always good to bring more to the table by way of enriching the text with infographics, videos, pictures, charts, and even memes. All in all, what’s essential is that the content itself is useful, relevant, and altogether high-quality.
Incorporate mobile responsive design
If you haven’t noticed the immense increase in smartphone usage for shopping and information searching, you must have been living in a cave for at least a decade. People have become inseparable from these little gadgets and they are their personal assistants, window to the world, communication tools, and so much more.
Although this kind of behavior might resemble obsession, the truth is that, if your small business doesn’t have a mobile responsive design, you are already losing the battle against your competition. This is no longer a competitive advantage but a feature that busy modern-day customers expect from every website. And mind you, a mobile-friendly website isn’t the same as mobile responsive because in the former case, the website isn’t necessarily perfectly adapted to smartphones. This user-focused approach will make all the difference in your SEO efforts.
Use software tools for SEO monitoring
One of the key elements of your SEO strategy is ensuring that it is effective. If you conclude that it doesn’t bring the results that you need and you do so without delay, you can adapt it or completely change it. Monitoring the SEO strategies’ effects allows you to make the necessary changes without letting the problems wreak havoc in your marketing plans or business goals.
However, before turning what you observed into applicable solutions, you need to accumulate the data from different sides and combine them into a report, which can keep you busy for hours. Many entrepreneurs have introduced easy-to-use SEO reporting software to their daily operations because they help create reports in a matter of minutes so they are ready for a meeting. They can integrate with a variety of marketing tools, such as Ahrefs, Google Analytics, Google Search Console, etc. which is vital for a successful SEO strategy.
Make use of social media profiles
Social media are a phenomenon that isn’t likely to disappear but simply evolve into new platforms. Since the launch of My Space in 2003, we have witnessed the appearance of numerous other social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, etc., as well as the unbelievable sway they hold over the entire world.
To harness their power and use it for your SEO efforts, it would be wise to use them to link your website content and direct the followers towards your website. This strategy will help boost the visibility of your blog posts and if visitors are greeted with high-quality content, as mentioned earlier, you may hope to increase your conversion rates.
Leverage local citations
Google’s stance on (local) citations is clear: the more accurate citations you have across reliable platforms, the better your chances for high ranking. Search engines accumulate online data on your small business and if they are confirmed to be true and consistent, your business seems trustworthy and is therefore eligible for being ranked high.
Local citations first and foremost serve to help people find local businesses but they can also be used to climb the search engine ranking ladder. They usually contain your business’s name, address, and phone number but also other elements such as e-mail addresses, reviews, images, videos, secondary phone numbers, hours of operation, etc. Data accuracy of citations is, therefore, of great importance to your SEO strategy, so you need to regularly check citations.
Final thoughts
Put yourself in the customers’ shoes for a moment and try to recall when was the last time you looked past the first few search results on the first page and let alone checked out what’s on the second page. Most people don’t bother looking at what’s on the rest of the pages because they are aware that Google has their best interest in mind. So, if the website is trustworthy and if it contains the answers you need, it will be ranked high. This is precisely why your small businesses need SEO.
About Author:-
Keith Coppersmith is a business and marketing expert who has experienced both the rise and fall of many businesses. As a regular contributor at BizzmarkBlog, he enjoys writing and providing insight of the marketing industry based on both practice and theory.