Succeed With Small Business SEO Now
Small business SEO is a key to not just surviving but thriving as a business. With tough competition, one must use every resource available to be found by potential customers. This is why search engine optimization (SEO) is so useful and effective. It’s one of the most proven digital marketing techniques you can ever make use of. We offer these small business SEO tips to help your business grow.
SEO is all about getting more visibility with your target market for your business. By doing so, you can increase website visitors and sales. Just as well, SEO is generally one of the cheapest ways to drive greater attention to your offerings.
With small business SEO, impactful results from an SEO campaign are only possible with the most up-to-date methods. As such, in this article, we’ll divulge to you what happens to be the SEO latest trends. You can then best understand what changes you should make to best fuel success.
Table of contents
- Why Do Small Businesses Need SEO?
- Small business SEO tips to increase your organic traffic
- Should you reanalyze your keywords?
- How should you power up your blogs and product pages?
- Should small business SEO take URLs into account?
- Can highly engaging media help with small business SEO?
- Should you build upon internal linking?
- Must you include outbound links to demonstrate authority?
- Should you make sharing on social media simple?
- Technical Tips for Driving Organic Traffic SEO
- Is it important to create a mobile-friendly website?
- Should you use keywords in meta titles and descriptions
- Must you cut down the page loading times for small business SEO?
- Why is increasing customer engagement with Google My Business important?
- Is using Google Analytics a wise small business SEO tip?
- How important is it to eradicate duplicate content?
- Must you fix broken links?
- FAQs for small business SEO
- Final thoughts
Why Do Small Businesses Need SEO?
You want your website to be high up in the search engine results pages (SERP). Why, because you are more likely to be found by customers. This applies, whether online or in-person. As such, your chance of making sales that lead to insane business growth increases as well.
Your competitors are more than likely employing their own SEO strategies. By using the latest techniques, you can stand above the competition. Then you will capture the consumers’ attention whenever they search for what you offer over your competition.
Small business SEO tips to increase your organic traffic
There’s almost no limit to how much your small business can benefit from SEO. Remember, there are also just as many technical issues to worry about. As such, it’s not exactly easy to know where to invest your time and money best. The following tips will help you avoid any confusion and get right to dominating your competition.
Should you reanalyze your keywords?
Yes, of course! Keywords are the cornerstone of search engine optimization. You must both know and utilize the main words your target market uses. We are referring to what they search for when looking for products and services your business offers.
You may have already done some keyword research in the past. Maybe even you made it a point to use them in your website’s content. Still, though, it’s still necessary to consistently review these terms and only use what matches current consumer behavior. The SME business climate constantly changes. As such, you must evolve with it by using the most relevant keywords to your potential customers.
How should you power up your blogs and product pages?
Website content that revolves around top-notch SEO practices will drive that content to the top of the SERP. Make sure you have a blog that delivers high-quality and highly sought-after information. If you have done that, you’re doing exactly what needs to be done online to capture the most attention.
Doing so is what most satisfies the powers that be with Google. Your content will also show your customers that you’re a leader in your industry. This is exactly what you want from small business SEO.
Customers always prefer to spend their money with people and businesses they find trustworthy. Your target audience will usually spend a decent amount of time researching your brand before committing to a purchase.
Launching a blog is no small endeavor, though. Once you’ve got one, it’s incredibly important that it’s updated consistently so that you get the most SEO benefits. Make it a point to create a content schedule and post the stuff that most appeals to your ideal customer.
Should small business SEO take URLs into account?
Yes, URLs are super important. It’s a simple thing to overlook, but the importance of a clear and concise URL structure shouldn’t be underestimated. It is suggested not to have a mess of random letters and numbers as your URL. You can easily make all of your URLs keyword-focused mini SEO powerhouses. It’ll also help new customers know what each webpage is about too. Customers will be more likely to decide your site is where their question will be answered. They will also believe that product they desire will be sold is on your site.
To maximize your site’s traffic, ensure your URL is keyword-focused to enhance those click-through rates.
Can highly engaging media help with small business SEO?
Humans are very visual. So, yes, engaging media will help. Generating interest for new products and services is tough. Attention spans are shorter than they’ve ever been. Fantastically written blog posts and product descriptions are no longer enough to convince a potential customer to buy.
This is why featuring highly engaging images or videos will help grab attention.
Great media can help keep new users on your website for longer periods. As such, the SEO benefits can be enormous. Lower bounce rates (people leaving your site almost instantly) lead to higher page rankings, which means higher sales. Finally, make sure all of your file names, image alt text, and captions are keyword-centric. This will help drive more customers to your site as well.
Should you build upon internal linking?
Helping Google better comprehend the structure of your site through better internal linking is a must, too. If any of your pages fail to include any links whatsoever, it will not rank well in search results.
This is one of the worst things that can happen SEO-wise. It means Google can’t index your page, and therefore potential customers will never land on it. In addition, having internal links will also help new customers move around your website.
Internal links are the perfect method for providing more relevant information on your own website. You can have internal links to product pages or other blog posts. This, in turn, ensures customers spend more time on your site.
Always try to choose a couple of internal links and add them to your posts. This is one of those great small business SEO tips that will rev up your results.
Must you include outbound links to demonstrate authority?
As the opposite of internal links, outbound links send readers to sites outside of your own. It may seem counterintuitive to send potential customers away from your own website. Why? Well, when you’re trying to get them to buy from you, you are sending them away! However, it’s actually a great method for elevating your brand’s authority.
How so? You see, the point isn’t necessarily to send customers away. It is to craft blogs that reference the most recent news in your industry. Outbound links then are used to show support for your business’s ideas or opinions. This causes customers to perceive your brand as more informed and worth trusting.
Also, these outbound links can be used to build worthwhile relationships with similar organizations in your industry. By providing potential customers or supporters to their homepages, they’ll eventually do the same for your company in the future.
Should you make sharing on social media simple?
This is one of those key small business SEO tips. Every blog has are always buttons where you can share said content directly to your social media profile.
Doing the same on your site’s content is a savvy move. It will ensure that when your most avid fans can share information about your products, they can with ease.
The more traction your brand gets on social media, the more your SEO results will improve. However, it’s important to take note of the proper placement of these buttons. You never want them to be an annoyance to your potential customers! Keep them readily available but discreetly out of the way. You should only provide social buttons that are most relevant to your ideal audience.
Technical Tips for Driving Organic Traffic SEO
It’s common to only consider on-page SEO strategies for rising up in the SERP. However, the more behind-the-scenes technical stuff is just as important to stay on top of.
Is it important to create a mobile-friendly website?
It’s no mystery that modern online shoppers do most of their online browsing via their smartphone devices. As such, having a mobile-friendly website is nothing short of absolutely necessary to take advantage of today’s SEO trends.
The best way to do this? Make your user’s experience easy. Don’t use complicated fonts, and develop a site menu that’s as clear as possible. Last but not least, you’ll need super fast loading speeds so that your potential customers don’t click away.
Don’t make them suffer through a shoddily built mobile website! Keep your design up-to-date and watch your SEO performance soar.
Should you use keywords in meta titles and descriptions
Keywords are super essential. Small business SEO relies on keywords more than anything! Keywords in your meta titles and descriptions throughout your site will maximize your reach on search.
It may not be exactly outright useful for your customers. Keywords are extra information that Google’s algorithms appreciate. It is appreciated as Google scours your content to understand what it’s actually about.
Additionally, these titles and descriptions do show up in search results. As such, they’ll be instrumental in informing consumers on what to look forward to when perusing your products.
160 characters are what you’re limited to. This can feel a bit cramped for space, right? Still, you can still craft a compelling description that convinces more click-throughs.
Must you cut down the page loading times for small business SEO?
As far as small business SEO tips go, page loading time is crucial. It is crucial to hitting page one on Google. Believe it or not, it’s actually a direct ranking factor! Think about it: When was the last time you spent time waiting for a website’s slow page to load? Exactly. Slow and steady may win the race, but not in this instance!
What can you do to quicken your page speed? First, if your website is based on WordPress like millions of others, it’s sometimes just simple. It could be a matter of getting rid of unnecessary plugins and code to hasten things along.
Fully optimizing your images for size and format (like PNG) will go a long way, too.
Why is increasing customer engagement with Google My Business important?
Google My Business (GMB) is a free tool. As a tool, it allows brands to fully control how their company is shown on other Google services like Maps. So, optimizing is yet another crucial factor in boosting those sales!
Keeping this profile updated is easy. As a small business SEO tip, it also ensures that local consumers have a great time interacting with your brand. Why? Because it helps them to have your most accurate basic information, like contact info and hours of operation.
In addition, photos and raving customer reviews can be highlighted to get your company to appear in even more searches.
Is using Google Analytics a wise small business SEO tip?
Yes, it is! SEO, when properly utilized, can be incredibly rewarding. Unfortunately, it’s not always clear exactly how and what your efforts are really doing.
Google Analytics provides a simple solution to tracking your website’s SEO metrics.
With this tool and the data, a small business can learn so much. You can view incoming traffic behavior and how individuals are clicking through your site’s pages. One can also see what searches they may have performed while there.
It’ll also show you what your bounce rate happens to be. Taking note of it will make one thing instantly clear to you. Are new visitors leave your landing page without doing anything else? Then there is a problem. it’s likely a signal your content isn’t hitting the mark for them.
How important is it to eradicate duplicate content?
All websites grow with more and more content. As such, it’s easy to end up with sentences or even whole pages that are duplicated.
You might not think this is an issue, but Google has other ideas. Google’s site crawler gets stalled with duplicate content. It can’t figure out which version of content is supposed to be shown in search results. As a result, it scraps both of them.
This means that instead of having twice the content show up in searches, you end up with none! Talk about a negative impact on your SEO.
Thankfully, the Google Search Console can help you find said duplicate content and fix it to rank higher up.
Must you fix broken links?
Like duplicate content, broken links can appear suddenly on your web pages like other pages update (both internally and externally). As a small business SEO tip, broken links will eventually cause issues with your SEO. Your website visitors will keep finding informational dead ends and click off your site.
Don’t just let these links sit around causing havoc. Find them and either fix them or get rid of them outright. Always double-check their validity, too, both before and after, to reduce the number of broken links.
FAQs for small business SEO
Is SEO good for a small business?
SEO is crucial if you’re a small business attempting to attract local clients since it helps them locate you first. People learn more about a local small company online than anyplace else in 97 percent of cases.
What is local SEO for a small business?
The practice of optimizing your website through search engine optimization (SEO) increases the likelihood that it will be found by users who enter relevant search phrases for your company. Similar to regular SEO, local SEO puts a specific emphasis on local keyword words.
How does local SEO help to grow small businesses?
Local SEO improves conversion rates by generating focused visitors and raising them. Users that are looking for more local content have a better chance of converting.
Final thoughts
SEO is the best bet for small businesses to grab their customers’ attention. It simply doesn’t happen overnight, though!
Getting your company to smash its goals and rise up past your competition is what we want for you. These small business SEO tips will help you get there.
We warn all small businesses that getting SEO to work well is a time-consuming activity. If you are a time-strapped business owner, let us help you with your SEO. We invite you to look over our SEO services.
At First Page Hong Kong, our world-class team of experts knows exactly how to help you implement such a strategy. Get in touch with any of our friendly digital marketing experts and learn why businesses in Hong Kong look to us for SEO.