Succeed With Small Business SEO Now

Posted on March 29, 2022December 19, 2022 by Stephanie Wong

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.

Why Do Small Businesses Need SEO?
Small business SEO tips to increase your organic traffic
Technical Tips for Driving Organic Traffic SEO
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.

Make social media sharing easy for better SEO

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?

Small businesses should use Google Analytics to help with SEO

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.

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15 Reasons Why Digital Marketing helps your bottom line

Posted on March 22, 2022August 30, 2022 by Ishmael Os

Achieving success as a small business is no easy feat, especially when you have to compete with some of the biggest brands out there. So, if you want to have the greatest chance of making it, a well-planned and well-implemented digital marketing strategy is going to be pivotal. How marketing helps business is well known. When we start to think of revenues, sales, and leads, we are thinking of bottom line marketing.

Marketing online is available to everyone no matter the size of your company’s budget. All one needs is an internet connection, and you have a direct path to engaging your customers and convincing them you’re worth doing business with.

Not sure how to get started? No problem! First Page’s world-class team has literally gotten thousands of small businesses like yours to reach their most profitable potential. With that in mind, let’s look at just a few of the best digital marketing tips you can implement to achieve the same.

Why should your small business use digital marketing?
What you should you do now?
Talk with the Experts

Why should your small business use digital marketing?

Why your small business needs digital marketing

It’s amazing how much we take the internet for granted these days. If there’s something we need, all we have to do is search for it, and we’ll find something relevant in seconds. That’s why if you’re not already making use of digital marketing for your small business, you’re missing out on quite a lot of revenue, seeing as how 51% of online shoppers first use a search engine like Google to research what they plan to buy.

How marketing helps business is simple. It is through digital marketing and it is all about increasing your company’s visibility in SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages) because when this happens, tons more of your ideal customers start to flood into your website. All you need is a strategy that outstrips your competitors, and your business will begin to grow like never before.

No more tallying any further! Here are the main reasons why your small business will profit from a competent digital marketing campaign.

1. What is budget-friendly marketing?

Most small businesses don’t have millions to spend on traditional marketing strategies like TV, radio, newspapers, or the like.

Comparatively, using a digital marketing strategy is much lower in cost and tends to return much better and far superior results for small businesses. Why? Because these laser-focused strategies have the potential to create a huge ROI, the likes of which your company may have yet to see.

Don’t waste your time and money with radio ads that have impossible-to-track results. Using digital marketing is the better approach, as a campaign can easily be modified, and sales are never a vague metric.

2. Can you get more conversions for less cash?

Yes, it is possible! Your company’s conversion rate directly influences your overall ROI. So, if you can level up said rates with minimal financial investment, you’d best believe your returns on investment will go through the roof. That’s the power of a specifically targeted digital marketing strategy.

Here’s an example: Using a data-driven Google Ads campaign, you can follow and reach your target customers at each point along their way to a final purchase. That way, it’s entirely possible to accomplish not just brand awareness across your market but create instant conversions.

As well, when digital marketing strategies like SEO are employed in the long term, your brand can rise through the ranking pages and leave your competition in the dust. Then, with your increased visibility, conversion rates like you’ve always wanted and beyond can be had.

3. Can you level the playing field?

Yes, you can! Even if your business lacks the resources of the biggest brands in your industry, it doesn’t mean you have to let them win. How marketing helps business is by making the playing field level. It’s even possible to make a big impact in digital marketing and beat them at their own game, and claim your piece of the pie.

Clever organizations know that digital marketing is perhaps the greatest promotion strategy because it allows them to pinpoint their ideal customers and convince them to buy with them.

Investing in an engaging social media marketing campaign or utilizing local SEO isn’t just for online businesses either. If you’ve got an actual storefront with tangible products, it’s all the more reason to expand your reach and bring more customers into your doors.

4. How can you send revenue through the roof?

Increase small business revenue with digital marketing

Generating revenue is the lifeblood of any business. Without it, doors can become shuttered faster than you’d know it. And as more and more customers opt to shop online, achieving consistent revenue increases without some form of digital marketing in place will be challenging to say the least.

However, it’s also now easier than ever to make use of the newest technologies and techniques like video campaigns, chatbots, micro-influencer marketing, and so on to persuade consumers to consider your company’s offerings.

Keep in mind, though, those same big brands in your industry are looking at those exact same things. That’s why alongside our team at First Page Hong Kong, you’ll never have to worry about being left behind and leaving profits on the table.

5. Want to engage your ideal customers?

Digital marketing isn’t magic, even if it feels that way sometimes. How marketing helps business is by focusing on ideal customers. All it does is help up-and-coming brands increase sales by reaching and converting their perfect customer through increased brand awareness. A fully optimized marketing campaign will help achieve this, but targeting an audience isn’t as simple as choosing a demographic.

Research is necessary, first and foremost! And not just any knee-deep level of research. Not only must you discover who your ideal customer base is, but you need to internalize their biggest pain points and show how what your company offers in the solution they’ve been seeking all along.

Of course, this will include basic demographic information like age, gender, and interests, but you must also consider the best type of content that will get them to engage with your brand actively. Once this is successfully done, you have a sure-fire method of gaining new customers.

6. How can you stay on top of consumer trends?

Our society, especially over the last couple of decades, has been undergoing incredibly rapid changes. Likewise, consumer behavior has been changing in tandem, and it’s something your company must stay aware of to best shape your message today.

Fortunately, staying current is relatively easy when keeping up with the latest digital marketing strategies. Ever notice how you and just about everyone you know shops online via their smartphones? Then, it’s likely a good idea to have a mobile-friendly website to accommodate these behaviors.

Personal information is more heavily guarded than ever, too. This means communicating to concerned consumers exactly how you plan to use their data in an effective manner of developing public trust for your brand.

7. Should you elevate your brand awareness?

Yes, most definitely! You likely have already heard, “It’s not what you know, but who you know.” But, even more so it’s, “Who knows you.” It’s the same for business! People simply don’t purchase from companies they don’t know and do not trust yet. How marketing helps business is by building trust with prospective customers.

Having a digital marketing strategy helps get your business out there so that potential customers learn why your brand is different from others. Whether it’s faster shipping or the best products, everyone must know exactly what your brand provides and why they should be spending more time on your website.

8. Is it worth promoting a small business with digital marketing?

Yes most definitely! Now that you understand why digital marketing can be such an incredible asset to your small business, it’s time to see the exact ideas that will bring you the most success. How marketing helps business? Here are a few of the most common and advantageous marketing strategies you can implement:

Social media marketing for small businesses

Billions upon billions of people spend hours of their day on social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok, and you can make use of this fact to market your business. However, since just about everyone else is doing the same, you can’t just make mediocre content and expect stellar results.

Your content, and the way you reach out to your potential customers, must all work in unison to drive them to your website and influence them to buy your products or services. And, it’s all a lot easier said than done.

However, if you understand what makes your customers tick (remember all that research?), you can connect with them on another level, capture their attention, and get them to take action.

10. Should you try growth hacking?

With how crowded the online landscape has become, brands hoping to reach the next level of success often have to resort to more experimental techniques. This is the realm of “growth hacking,” and it’s a relatively new field that shares quite a bit with digital marketing but focuses more on “hitting gold” rather than a traditional steady marketing approach.

Examples include detailed remarketing campaigns and exit popups, among many others.

11. How about the effectiveness of affiliate marketing?

Affiliate marketing is a digital marketing strategy where you pay participants in your campaign a small commission when they send converting customers your way. When done effectively, you’d be surprised how quickly it can escalate your business.

Doing it well is the rub, of course. And to properly do so, you have first to attract potential partners who can reach your ideal customers. For instance, one type of affiliate marketing involves having other people create freelance SEO campaigns to build interest and sales for your products. Another is requesting popular online influencers to speak to their audience about what you do.

And while you do have to pay out for this tactic constantly, the similarly constant sales conversions will far outweigh such a comparatively tiny sum.

12. What about lead generation for my business?

Small business lead generation with digital marketing

Getting hot leads is one of the ultimate goals of all businesses. But, it can only be done once your digital marketing strategy is working in sync with the exact objective of your company.

A fundamental understanding of your target market is essential, but you also have to have a method for capturing their attention. For example, a company that sells a muscle recovery drink might spend lots of time on Facebook groups catering to physically active individuals.

Alternatively, any brick-and-mortar business that thrives off local traffic must prioritize responding to online reviews, as even negative ones are an opportunity to demonstrate your ability to listen and improve based on feedback.

13. Should I use content marketing?

Setting aside the time to formulate a solid content marketing strategy is an excellent way to ensure customers spend more time on your website and get to know your company. Whether it be blog posts, infographics, YouTube videos, or podcast appearances, any or all of them can help your brand achieve prominence in your sector.

Surprisingly, although content marketing is extremely popular, almost two-thirds of all businesses fail to have any sort of content marketing plan in place. That is the perfect opportunity for your brand, as there’s the chance you can easily surpass your competitors in this realm.

We live in a world where businesses who maintain a blog get 434% more web traffic than those who don’t. Never overlook the power of content marketing!

14. What about paid media like Google Ads?

When it comes to advertising online, it doesn’t get any bigger than Google Ads, with Google Display Network ads reaching more than 90% of internet users all by themselves. Despite this fact, most small businesses think paying for online advertising is too cost-prohibitive for them.

The reality, though, is that most of these companies have likely never taken part in a truly optimized digital marketing campaign. By using real, research-backed methods that prioritize the most effective audience targeting techniques, creating a campaign that returns multiple times what it takes is well within the realm of possibility.

Our First Page Hong Kong team specializes in performing the most comprehensive keyword research to narrow down your ideal target’s language and reach them via modern-minded and cost-effective Google Ads.

15. Is SEO (Search Engine Optimization) good for my business?

The biggest companies may seem like they own a monopoly sometimes, but it certainly isn’t over SEO. Truly, it’s often most effective for small businesses instead, as it assists them in identifying customers, generating leads, and building a website that best serves their users.

Keyword research is where it’s at, though, and it simply cannot be ignored. Knowing what keywords to include in your content is absolutely critical to optimize your website’s pages with words your most relevant customers actually use. This is how your brand increases its visibility in search engine result pages!

Additionally, SEO can serve as the springboard for building your content plan and around launching your brand’s image into the stratosphere.

What you should you do now?

Start learning! As a small business owner we suggest you learn as much as you can about marketing and digital marketing in general.

We believe that this blog post can help you understand how digital marketing helps business. The tips here may not be a cure-all for every small business owner. However, we know the more you put into practice, the more sales you will get.

Saying that, we invite you to learn more from our recent blog posts on digital marketing:

Perfect Your Email Marketing Strategy Now
What are the top PPC ideas you ought to know?
Social Media Strategies: Successful Ones You Can Learn From
Helpful Content Tips: Get Noticed Before the Competition
6 Easy Digital Marketing Hacks to Increase Your Leads

If you are a busy small business owner, you may not have the time you need to do these tactics on your own.

If this is the case, we encourage you to review some of our strategic digital marketing services:

SEO for your business to drive qualified leads
Social media management for improved brand awareness
Linkbuilding to drive organic traffic to your website
Top converting landing pages to convert your leads
Email marketing campaigns to bring in referrals

Of course, more than anything, we would love to help you succeed in digital marketing and drive quality lead growth. If you have any questions, please contact one of our expert digital strategists. It is obligation free, and we would love to chat with you.

Talk with the Experts

Just because you’re a small business doesn’t mean you have to make small moves. These simple marketing ideas are much more powerful than you might expect and can quickly get you to the forefront of your industry.

That being said, a digital marketing campaign will only achieve success if it’s implemented to an incredible standard. You’re in luck though! Because our expert team at First Page successfully operates such campaigns for the world’s biggest businesses each and every day.

Are you ready to experience the life-changing results of digital marketing? Contact us today and learn why we’re thought of as Hong Kong’s leading full-service digital marketing agency.