Digital marketing is challenging — SEO even more so. The black-box nature of SEO can make it the most difficult form of marketing your business. Yet when done well, there is little that can compete with strong, organic search engine visibility to promote your small business.
Organic listings build trust with customers, and all the best business relationships are built on a foundation of trust, right?
If you want to build great relationships with your customers, you need to perform SEO. In this article, we share 10 actionable tips to help boost your online visibility.
But first, we will answer a few questions we often encounter.
The short answer is yes. Search engines are a key way in which we look for products and services. So, in the majority of cases, search is a great way to get in front of potential customers.
If your business is not showing up in organic search results for terms relating to your products/services then you are missing out on, potentially thousands of, customers.
Wait! Don’t go spending all your budget on SEO just yet. While it is necessary for your business to rank well in organic search and SEO is vital to that. You need to determine if SEO is a good fit for your requirements right now.
The following should be considered:
If you have a limited budget and want quick results then PPC may be better for you at this time.
Remember! Each click through to your website is a cost and the listing is only active for as long as you keep spending whereas organic ranking improvements can hold their place for years.
The simple answer here is yes. At least some of it. If you have been running a website, then you are likely doing some SEO yourself already. However, a professional will do a better job and generate improved results more quickly. Likewise, your time may be better spent doing what you do and paying an SEO consultant to do their thing.
If you want to have a go at SEO yourself, here are 10 tips to help you get better results.
Trying to rank your website for individual phrases that have the most search volume isn’t always the best way to go. Such terms are very competitive and not specific enough to generate enquiries/sales.
Instead, you should target long-tail search terms. Let’s say you are an electronics e-commerce store that sells headphones. Naturally, as it has high search volume, you want to optimise your page for the phrase ‘headphones’ and invest all your time and resource doing so. Don’t.
Instead, look to a less-competitive long-tail search term which is more specific and will therefore bring more targeted traffic to your website. Such as ‘waterproof Bluetooth headphones’.
The term ‘headphones’ has a lot of volume but it’s very competitive and therefore harder to rank for. Also, ‘headphones’ is very vague – the user could be searching for any type of headphone.
Compared to ‘waterproof Bluetooth headphones’ which is very specific. You automatically sense the ‘intent’ or ‘purpose’ behind the search. The searcher knows what they want and are ready to buy.
So, when performing your keyword research look to more detailed, long-tail keywords.
Yes, long-tail keywords may not generate a lot of traffic like head keywords. But the power lies in the quantity.
That is, the more long-tail keywords you target in your pages and create rich and helpful content on, the more qualified traffic you’ll generate to your site.
Link building is hard. Creating original content is hard. Try the Skyscraper Technique.
In short, the Skyscraper Technique is a link building strategy where you improve existing popular content and replicate the backlinks.
After several years of struggling to build a loyal audience that will read and share his content, and seeing a meagre or no results at all, Brian Dean, founder of Backlinko.com invented the Skyscraper technique.
The best way to learn the strategy is from the man himself.
Reviews help build consumer trust. They can also help with SEO. User reviews help to build your business’ visibility in local search results, and so does your engagement in responding to them — whether they are positive or negative.
Reviews are essential if you want to stay ahead. Whether you offer services, products or a bit of both, reviews do and will greatly influence the way people interact with your listings and website, both directly and indirectly impacting your SEO efforts.
So be proactive and encourage your customers to leave reviews. Be sure to direct customers to various review platforms to make it simpler for them.
Positive media coverage of your business can result in a long-term positive impact on your business’ search performance.
Your PR efforts can result in positive articles, videos or other types of coverage that will remain highly visible in search over the long-term and boost your brand’s reputation.
In many cases, the publications will link to your website and therefore improve your websites backlink profile and therefore your performance in organic search.
It’s important to develop relationships with journalists. As a small business, you will probably concentrate on local media at first. These relationships are easier to build.
If your business is doing something for charity or releasing an innovative product that could benefit the community be sure to let your media contacts know.
Don’t be restricted by traditional PR methods. You can get very creative to get links. Check out these great examples.
We have shared some ‘new-age’ SEO techniques but that doesn’t mean you should ignore traditional SEO methods.
On-page SEO is as important today as it was 10 years ago.
After determining what keywords you want to rank your pages for, make sure you optimise your pages accordingly.
You can look to Google to find out what people are searching in relation to the search term(s) you want to rank for. You can then answer these queries to stand a better chance of ranking.
Note: not every item will be relevant but you can find some great content nuggets.
Each page on your website should have a unique title tag as each page has its own purpose and can be optimised to answer a specific search query.
Here’s a checklist including a few other points we haven’t gone into detail about.
Google My Business is the digital representation of your physical business. Ensuring your business information is 100% correct on Google My Business is essential.
Have you claimed your Google My Business listing yet?
If no, what are you waiting for?
Do it now. Claim Google My Business. It’s FREE.
Just claiming & optimising your Google My Business listing isn’t enough. You need to ensure your NAP (name address phone number) are correct across other online directories, local listing websites and social media channels.
If your information is incorrect across different platforms it makes your business appear less trustworthy and somewhat neglected. Invest some time to see where your business is listed on the web and then update the information accordingly.
Simply search ‘your business name’ in Google and check the citations. Whilst you’re there check the listed domain is correct too!
Bonus: when searching for your business on Google. If you find any unlinked brand mentions, contact the website and ask for a link.
Website optimisation doesn’t start and end with written content. To double or triple your chances of ranking for a term optimise your imagery and video content.
YouTube is the second biggest search engine, after Google, and YouTube videos often rank in Google.
If you can turn your content into a video, give it a go. You may just find your winning formula.
We have discussed writing content a few times within this post. Therefore, it’s important for us to stress ‘write for people, not search engines’.
This may sound like the most obvious piece of advice in the world, but you’d be surprised at how many people refuse to follow it.
It can be all too easy to get side-tracked trying to create the perfect “SEO content” – trying to tick certain boxes you think search engines require in order to have your content rank. However, rather than boosting your website to the top of Google’s results pages, this can actually have the opposite effect.
A few pointers…
Your website navigation is so important and often overlooked.
If you have fantastic service and product pages but no one can find them because they have to jump through a hundred metaphorical hoops, you are going to lose business.
Instead, have a clear website structure that is well-organised and matches the hierarchy of your pages.
Something like this will work just fine!
There we have it, 10 things you can do to boost your websites search engine performance.
If you don’t have the time, drop us a message. We know (and love) this stuff.
We hope you found the article helpful. We’d love to hear about your SEO experiences.
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