How to Improve Seo for Small Business – Learn how to improve your SEO for small business and ensure that you stand out from the competition. Learn the key techniques and tips that will pull your website up the rankings and drive more traffic to your site. There is a lot of information out there about SEO, but not all of it relates to businesses who are only starting out. In this article, we will walk you through from start to finish on how to make your business more visible online with impeccable SEO skills.
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Claim and optimize your GMB listing
GMB or Google My Business is essentially the most critical part of your local SEO strategy. This tool from Google allows you to create free business listings. And according to Moz, it’s one of the top factors that Google will consider when ranking businesses in organic local search and snack pack results.
To start, go to the Google My Business website to claim or create your listing.
You need to provide the following details for your GMB listing:
- Your full and correct business name
- Your physical store/office address
- Your exact location on a map
- Your business category
- Your phone number and website (if applicable)
Once your listing goes live, you’ll need to verify it usually through a phone call or via postcard. Here’s how to optimize Google My Business after verification:
- Upload photos of your business. This could be photos of the inside your store/office or even around the premises.
- Provide your business hours.
- Provide additional categories that may be relevant to your business.
- Provide additional phone numbers if available.
You can further optimize your GMB profile by sharing business updates and fresh content regularly. And Sprout Social makes that easier with a new feature to post directly to your GMB profile. Make the most of the Sprout GMB feature to update your customers with what’s new and share details about upcoming events. This helps you connect with your customers on a deeper level in addition to boosting your visibility in local searches.
Find the right keywords
Think about the words your clients are likely to use when looking for your products or services on the web. If you’re selling appliances, for example, are your customers more likely to use a formal word like refrigerator or a slang word like fridge?
Make a list of 20 to 50 keywords, then go on Google AdWords. Once you have created an account if you haven’t already done so, you can validate that the keywords you chose are frequently used in online searches.
You can also use a Google AdWords product called Keyword Tool to find more keywords to build your list.
Use your keywords on each of your website pages to help them rank higher when prospective customers search using those keywords.
Start by using keywords in the URL—the address appearing in the Internet browser for each of your website pages. Also include them in your titles as well as in your metadata descriptions (the brief text that tells search engines what your content is about).
Keep mobile in mind
With smartphones now being a part of our daily lives, it’s only natural that a lot of people will be using their phones to search for local information and businesses. Uberall commissioned a study, which found that 82% of respondents had used their mobile devices to conduct a “near me” search. This proves just how much people are using their phones for local search.
So it’s crucial that you cater to these searchers by optimizing your website for mobile screens. Create a mobile-friendly website so mobile visitors have no trouble navigating it or finding the information they need.
Don’t forget to add click-to-call buttons on your site and on your GMB listing. This could make a huge difference because 60% of mobile users have contacted a business directly from search results.
Focus on your unique offerings
Remember you’re competing against other companies for attention online from prospective customers. To rise above the pack in web searches for your industry, look for words that correspond to your market differentiators such as your unique offerings or geographic location.
Competition is also stiff for keywords you buy as part of a pay-per-click campaign, where an ad for your company appears above or beside the free search results. You pay the search engine company each time your link is clicked. Again, you will have to focus on niche keywords if you don’t have a big budget.
Collect plenty of customer reviews
According to the Moz study cited earlier, review signals also play a critical role in your local search and snack pack ranking. So having plenty of authentic reviews, particularly positive ones, could work wonders to boost your visibility in local search in addition to enhancing your reputation. That means you need to work towards collecting more authentic customer reviews for your business.
Maintain your focus on sites where Google would expect businesses to have reviews. So in addition to your website and your GMB listing, it’ll also collect reviews from consumer directories and social media. That means you should focus on collecting reviews for Facebook, Yelp, Thumbtack, Foursquare, Angie’s List, etc. depending on which ones are relevant to your business.
Don’t overstuff your site with keywords
As Google’s webmaster guidelines states: “Make pages primarily for users, not for search engines.”
If you are just sprinkling keywords all over your content, you risk distorting the meaning and irritating readers, so don’t overdo it.
Your priority should be to make the text clear and easy to read.
Build links to your site
The more sites that carry links to your site, the higher you will rank on searches. Ask the owners of related sites to carry a link to your site. Offer to carry a link to theirs in exchange for a link to yours.
Focus on the quality of the links. One link directing to your website from a chamber of commerce or a university website will help you more than a dozen links from obscure blogs.
Focus on local link building
According to Moz, link signals such as linking domain authority and quantity are among the top factors that influence your ranking in local searches and snack pack results. So just like with regular SEO, local SEO also requires link building to boost your link profile. However, the linking domains should be more relevant to your target location.
That means you should target authority websites in your target region. This could be anything from licensing bureaus and trade associations to the Chamber of Commerce or even .edu sites.
Publish high-quality content and lots of it
The main mission of search engines is to help people find answers to their questions. So your best strategy to get lots of traffic is to create compelling content—articles, videos and photos—that provides quality information to your readers. Make sure to update your content frequently so it stays relevant.
A good content strategy will also position you as a thought leader in your field.
Social media is a great ally in your SEO strategy because people also use social media platforms as search engines. They’ll often search for companies or products using Facebook’s search function, for example. Your company’s social media profile will also rank in the search results when people search for your company or for related terms.
Make sure your website is user-friendly
Have a clean, easy-to-navigate website. Make sure it’s immediately clear to visitors who you are and what you’re offering.
Use a lot of headings to improve readability, and put your keywords in the headings. Headings stand out for search engines and will help you rank higher.
Site speed is also important for SEO. The last thing you want to do is annoy your visitors with a sluggish site.
Finally, you’ll want to make sure your website is optimized for mobile platforms. Search engines now penalize websites that are not easily displayed on a smartphone.
Measure results
Free and low-cost tools such as Moz, SpyFu.com, SEMRush.com and Google Analytics will provide you with more information on the SEO performance of your site and tell you more about your visitors—how they found your site (search engine, referring website, etc.), their geographical location and how long they stayed on each page.
This blog post has more information on analyzing your data to optimize your SEO performance.
Be patient
Monitor results from day one, but don’t expect fast results. It normally takes a few months to move significantly higher in search engine rankings.
Also remember that SEO is constantly changing. What works today might not work in two or three years. Keep working at it and stay up to date on the latest changes that affect rankings.
Aim high
Most of your users won’t make it past the first page of search results. A good position means appearing on the first two pages of search results. Past page three, almost nobody will see your page. So aim high!
Conclusion
These days, almost everyone is using Google as an online search engine. In fact, nine out of 10 users will check out a business online before going or just going to a brick and mortar store. It is not a secret that SEO for small businesses is crucial to success. If your business is new, it can be a hard task if you have no knowledge of search engines optimization. To improve your website’s ranking on the Google SERPs, you have to know how SEO works for small businesses.