Are you a small businesses owner? Are you trying to attract customers through the Internet? Then you should consider Search Engine Optimization (SEO) as one of your main digital marketing strategies. It may seem like too much work or too much money but trust me; it will pay off.
Think about for a second. Think about how big and how much content it’s available on the Internet. You can’t just put yourself out in that big ocean and expect to be noticed just because you have high-quality products or services. There’s a lot of people just like you. So got to do something to stand up above everyone else. And that’s what SEO strategies are for!
SEO is something every entrepreneur should consider and apply. So consider this post a complete guide to affordable SEO for small business:
What you need to know about SEO
Every web page has the possibility of ranking in Google, as long as you know how to pull off effective strategies. This is when SEO comes up because it is everything you do to have better rankings at search engines. SEO is classified into two main categories:
• On-Page SEO: responsive design, keywords, load speed, formatting, on-site blogging, navigation, and URL. These all are SEO aspects you need to take into account to boost your ranking in search engines. That’s we call On-Page SEO because it’s all about improving your website so it ca stand out from the competition.
• Off-Page SEO: there a couple of things you can do off your website to improve its raking. For example, social media, articles, link building, and business profile.
Affordable SEO for small businesses
The advantages of digital marketing, in comparison to traditional marketing, is that if you know how to do it, you can do everything on your own. Pulling off an effective marketing strategy will only cost you time and your effort. And in case you need extra help, maybe from a graphic designer or a blogger, paying for their services will still be cheaper than making a TV commercial or paying for publicity at radio.
When it comes to inbound marketing, these are the 3 most successful strategies:
1. Using Social Media to engage customers
According to Statista, in 2018 there are around 2.6 billions of people using social networks. That’s a lot of people you can reach, right? People around the world use social media every single day of their lives, that’s something every business needs to use in their favor. Take these platforms to share interesting content for your followers, drive them to your blog or website to generate more traffic. And most importantly, post regularly and interact with users.
2. Appealing to your local audience
Google gives priority to local content, so Local SEO strategies are the ones that best suit small businesses. Take advantage of the fact that, unlike big companies, you know better your local customers. Local SEO strategies use long-tail keywords to get better results; this way, the keywords are phrases that contain what the business offer and the location. For example: “Tai food San Fransisco.” But having a good long-tail keyword isn’t enough. You have to create content using the keyword you chose. By doing this, search engines will consider you an authority on the matter and will give you a good position on the result pages.
3. Link Building
In order to gain authority on the Internet, it’s crucial that you use link building to create interesting and shareable content, guest blogging, and addressing pages to important directories. Remember that Google doesn’t pay attention to the size of your business, all it cares about is how good your strategy and your content is, and how useful can it be for its users.
5 steps to build a smart SEO strategy
• Research and optimization of keywords
Make a brainstorming of keywords and make it big as possible. Use Google Trends, or a similar tool, to evaluate each keyword performance and choose the best ones above all. Keep in mind that the quality of the keyword is better than the number of times people uses it to search for content. Once you choose your keyword, introduce it in your website, inside the content and the code, and create quality content around it for blogs and tags.
• Authority and the trust of users
If you convince Google and users that you’re an expert in your area, you’ll gain the authority you need to have a good position on the result pages. To earn that trust, create quality content and use link building to promote and market your website.
• Evaluation of the progress
The ranking of keywords is continually changing, and this could affect your rankings. This is why is so important to regularly monitor your keyword performance on search engines to adjust the strategy if necessary.
• Promote your website
Once your site is optimized with the first set of keywords, promote and market your website on your social media accounts, using Google Local Business and reciprocal linking.
• Repeat
Once you complete the previous 4 steps, it’s time to find new keywords to optimize and repeat the process.
Is your inbound marketing strategy working?
SEO and every digital marketing strategy are measurable. If you use Google Analytics, for example, you can know precisely how much people are visiting your site, where are they from, which sections are the most visited, how did they get there and how much time they navigated on your web. This is very useful because allows you to see what’s working and what isn’t so you can dismiss some strategies and focus on the ones that are paying off.
Summary
As we stated at the beginning of the post, every business owner needs SEO to be visible online. Otherwise, they’ll drown in the infinite ocean that is the Internet. And even though it requires some work, the best part about SEO for small businesses is that you can do it by affordable SEO expert. Keep in mind that to gain visibility, you don’t need to go big from the beginning with your strategy. You can start with little steps that will get bigger as your business becomes a big one.
