It’s a tough time to be a small business owner. According to Forbes Finance Council, only half of the businesses currently in existence are still going to be around in five years’ time.
With 95% of small businesses upping their marketing budget this year, it’s clear that one of the biggest goals for small businesses is finding the customers they need to thrive and survive.
Improving your visibility as a small business entrepreneur starts and ends with Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
As business moves online, there’s never been a better time to get into the search marketing game. When it comes to online business, small businesses have a number of advantages over their bigger operators. In this guide, we’ll point out what these are and how small businesses can use them to improve their SEO.
A small change can make a big difference
This is a good rule to bear in mind for anyone trying to do SEO on a shoestring. Since Google’s MayDay update, the search giant has given a slight ranking advantage to newly published and updated content. Boosting the SEO score of some pages can be as easy as refreshing your content, whether it’s updating a product description, uploading some fresh images, or bringing the statistics in an old blog post up-to-date.
Come up with a long-term link building strategy
If you’re in it for the long run, you need to know about link building. Google loves sites with a high proportion of links pointing to high authority domains. When it comes to links, it’s about quality, not quantity. The most powerful boost you can get from any link building strategy is from inbound links to your own content.
If you publish interesting, original, unique, linkable, keyword-optimized content and ensure it’s widely circulated via social media, you should generate natural links anyway. It’s not rocket science: if you build it, they will come.
If you want to do this at scale, you should seriously consider getting into guest blogging. Establishing relationships with bloggers in your niche (not to mention in market overlaps) will give you a steady source of inbound links. This can be a time-consuming process. Investing in the blogger outreach services at clickintelligence.co is a great shortcut for anyone looking to quickly scale their SEO.
Think locally
Local search is one area where small brick and mortar businesses can really come into their own. Did you know 78% of local mobile searches lead to in-store purchases? If you want to be right at the top of that 78%, there are three simple things you need to do:
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Make your website mobile-friendly. A consistent focus on improving the mobile user experience will make it easier for people to find and navigate your site. If you get this right, you make it far more likely that you’ll cash in on those local searches.
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Set up Google My Business. This is the number one ranking signal in local searches. -
Having an active page here will really help with your ranking, provided you keep it updated with your latest information (address, opening hours, menus, product lists etc.). Generating reviews of your business and responding to these also helps, showing Google your business is alive and kicking.
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Create directory listings. Listing your business information in the major online local directories will help with your ranking. Google increasingly integrates directory searches into its operations, not least the vertical directories which cater to industry niches. -
By listing your NAP (name, address, phone number) information in the same format across both general and niche directories, you help Google see the prevalence of your business. If the listing allows you to include a link to your website, you may also have earned yourself a valuable backlink.
SEO can sometimes seem like a dark art form. But it’s actually pretty simple once you know how.
Spending a few hours implementing some of these changes can help set your business up for better online search visibility. Of course, if you have the upfront cash, spending money on professional SEO services can often offer surprising ROI as well.
A good combination of amateur enthusiasm and professional expertise is the making of many great businesses.
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— Will Corry (@slievemore) April 10, 2019