As a small business owner, your #1 job is to provide top-notch goods or services to your customer, regardless of the market you’re working in, no matter how macro or niche.
Happy customers translates to more business, and (hopefully) more profits at the end of the day.
But how do you get your business name out there, to grab the attention of those soon-to-be-happy customers in the first place?
If it seems like it’s harder than ever to get your brand noticed in today’s highly digitized world, it’s not just you. In our ever-evolving culture of smart phones, virtual reality, and apps, breaking through the noise and connecting with leads can be a challenge, especially as a small business with a limited marketing budget.
What was once as simple as buying a print ad in the local newspaper now feels like a complex process involving social media, analytics reports, and more. Though the digital landscape can seem overwhelming at first, the team at Splendid Strategy is on standby to help you navigate and make the most out of the digital marketing realm.
There are three simple letters that we suggest small businesses focus on when beginning to delve into digital marketing: SEO.
Like many of the digital marketing buzzwords being tossed around these days, the concept of what SEO exactly is, and the impact it can have on your small business, can seem a bit fuzzy.
So, let’s start with the basics.
SEO stands for “search engine optimization”, and refers to the process of improving a website’s ability to be noticed by search engines like Google, Yahoo!, or Bing. By being more easily discoverable, your website has a greater chance of being seen by searchers, who have the potential to become customers.
The term isn’t strictly limited to dealing with traditional search engines, either. It’s critical to ensure your business has visibility across different types of search results, including maps, images, videos, and more.
Unfortunately, you’re not just competing against other small businesses on search engines. Big brands have a plethora of money and resources to utilize when implementing their SEO strategies, making it easier for them to be seen.
Even if you don’t have a devoted SEO team, there are plenty of simple ways that you can easily improve your SEO as a small business.
1. Optimization, Optimization, Optimization!
We hate to break it to you, but optimization is more than just lobbing in target keywords throughout a webpage with a basic SEO plug-in.
That being said, we get it. There’s a fine line between working your keywords into content in a strategic way that looks natural, versus appearing “spammy.” Luckily, there are plenty of places throughout a webpage that you can incorporate optimization. Don’t miss key places like:
- Page titles
- Headings and subheadings
- Images & video descriptions
- Meta descriptions
- Internal links
2. Optimize for User Experience
Let’s for a moment think about things from the perspective of the search engines… When someone performs a Google search, Google’s goal is to provide the most relevant results possible for that query.
With that said, Google is placing an emphasis on user engagement metrics such as time on site, bounce rate, and many more. What we can deduce from this, is that your company’s website should be aesthetically pleasing, on brand, and built with the user in mind.
Make sure you have content in place that you think will be beneficial to your prospective customer. Offer as much information as you can in a user friendly way that allows your visitors to get the information they originally sought without having to bounce off your website and visit a competitor who CAN answer their query. This might include things like:
- An “About” page
- Pricing
- Hours of operation
- FAQs
- Location (if applicable)
Additionally to ensure your site is as user friendly as possible, do a regular sweep for things like:
- Duplicated content
- Broken links
- Improper redirects
Tending to these issues early on can make a world of difference for your site’s SEO performance.
3. You & Your Google My Business Profile
Did you know that setting up a Google My Business Profile is free? As statista reports, Google is the most-used search engine worldwide. So it’s a no-brainer that leveraging a Google My Business Profile would get more eyeballs on your brand. After you claim & verify your profile, fill it out with as much information as you possibly can, and be sure to include images and videos to enhance the listing.
If you want to level up your Google My Business Profile, you can even proactively add a Q+A section, where folks can ask questions and get answers from your team. However, it’s up to you to stay on top of responding to these inquiries. Unanswered questions could have negative ramifications.
4. Level Up The Competition
Let’s say you’re a small-scale bakery. There’s no doubt that you’re aware of every other bakery in a 30-mile radius. And you probably keep an eye on how they’re advertising and interacting with their customers.
In addition to these local competitors, you need to keep an eye on your online competitors as well.. In the world of SEO, you’ll want to keep an eye on the top 5-10 websites that are showing up in Google when your targeted keywords are searched, e.g. “Buffalo NY bakery.”
Here’s what to look for when doing an analysis of these competing sites:
- Which keywords are these sites ranking for?
- What is the structure of these websites?
- What is their backlink profile, and how is the quality?
- Are they targeting any long-tail keywords that you could be targeting?
- How many pages is their website and how many is Google indexing?
- How is their page speed? (You can run pages through Google’s page speed tool to determine this)
5. Ensure Consistency in Local Listings
In addition to your business’s information being available on Google, online location data aggregators are sharing your business’s name, address, and phone number (don’t worry, this is a good thing!) It’s vital for your business’s NAP information to be consistent and accurate across all web mentions of your business.
Luckily, you can make this easy by signing up for a local citations tool that distributes NAP information on your business’s behalf, and keeps an eye out for any inaccuracies.
6. Get Your Schema Markup in Place
We know, it sounds like a fake word. But much like you can think of notes as the language of music, you can think of schema markup as the language of search engines. Basically, schema markup is a way of structuring your content that makes it simpler for search engines to comprehend. By using schema markup, search engines can better identify aspects of your site like:
- The name of your business
- Business address
- Business phone number
- Hours of operation
- Ratings
- & much more!
7. Reviews!
It’s a tale as old as… well, the dawn of the internet era: local businesses are conditioned to think that reviews sites are strictly respites for disgruntled customers, and something to be feared.
But, like it or not, potential customers will be looking to online reviews before purchasing your goods or services, and positive reviews will improve conversions. So, how can you go about ensuring your reviews are as glowing as possible? We’ve included some quick tips below:
- Response is everything. As tempting as it might be to let sleeping dogs lie and not respond to bogus reviews, your response will show all local searchers that you value the opinion of your customers.
- Don’t feel like you have the time or expertise to manage your business’s reviews? Luckily, plenty of the larger review platforms offer a paid service that can help you efficiently organize and respond to reviews.
- Whether it’s via a rewards-based initiative (e.g. offering a discount for leaving a review), sending an email, or verbalizing the ask to customers, encouraging your customers to leave an online review can majorly improve your SEO.
8. Don’t Miss Out on Opportunities to Optimize Images & Videos
When it comes to your website, compelling videos and images are just as salient as text, especially considering that 81% of marketers feel that video has a direct, positive impact on sales.
While the average user can simply view videos & images to understand their content, search engines need the images optimized with text to read them properly. Image and video optimization is a prime opportunity to sneak additional competitive keywords into your website.
9. Build Out Your Content
As we alluded to in the last bullet – the more words on a site, the more opportunities that a search engine has to pick up your content. For this reason, it’s in your best SEO interest to build your website out as much as possible.
To quickly bulk up content on your site, we recommend dedicating individual web pages to as many aspects of your business as applicable – like to each specific product or service your offer.
Regardless of the industry you’re working in, blog posts are also a simple way to build out content and establish your business as reputable and knowledgeable.
Conclusion
While we hope these quick tips prove helpful, it’s still understandable to feel uneasy as you break into the new world of SEO. But fear not, the Splended Strategy team has your back for all things digital marketing, designed around your business’s specific needs. Contact us to set up a free consultation.