Every small business should have a well thought out SEO Strategy for Small Business marketing strategy. Your strategy is not something that you can outsource. You can however outsource certain tasks, but it is your responsibility as the business owner to design and implement your marketing strategy.
A Marketing Strategy should include an Online Strategy, and the SEO Strategy should be part of the online strategy..
I have specifically designed this SEO Strategy for Small Business Guide to help business owners to create better strategies when it comes to SEO.
In this guide I will cover the following topics:
- What is a SEO Strategy for small business
- Why do you need a SEO Strategy for small business
- How do you implement a SEO Strategy for small business
- How do you measure a SEO Strategy for small business.
There’s never been a better time for business because of the technology that was developed over the last 20 years. Anybody can get online with a cell phone and send out a message to thousands out there. Most of the cell phone cameras are better technology than the big TV producers had 15 years ago. Anyone can get up at 2 a.m. create a YouTube video and stream it worldwide.
There has also never been a worse time because of all the noise which the internet produces. What do I mean by noise. Because it is so easy to get online, post your message, make a video who create a website there are literally billions of pages with information on it. This poses a problem for business owners because there is simply too much information.
The question is how do you escape the noise how do you make yourself seen between all the billions of web pages out there.
The only effective way to escape the noise and to get your message clearly still have a good SEO marketing strategy in place. You have to be on the first page of Google on every keyword that you target.
You should establish yourself as the leader and the authority in your industry.
- E – Expertise
- A – Authority
- T – Trustworthiness
If you want to get ahead in a SEO marketing campaigns you have to establish yourself as the leader in your industry. This includes that you have to establish yourself as the expert the authority and the trustworthy person to go to for any information on the subject.
You can achieve these goals by creating valuable unique content that you place on your website. This way you will not only show your customers that you are the expert but you will also show Google that you are an expert in this field and they will rank your content higher and therefore give you more traffic to your website.
Creating unique and fresh content is by far the best solution for ranking in the search engines.
What is a SEO Strategy for Small Business
It is a known fact that almost 90% of all online business comes from Google’s first page. If you do not rank on the first page of Google for every keyword that is important to you, you are losing business.
Having a long-term SEO strategy enables you to create valuable content. If this content is written properly it can serve you for many years to come.
Content must also be produced on a regular basis and should be keyword specifically targeted.
When creating a SEO campaign you should identify the top 50 keywords which best describes your customers needs. These are the things that they will search for Google. But not only does it have to be important subjects, it also has to be keywords that has got the most possibility meaning the best traffic coming to it and the least competition.
Once you have identified these keywords you build proper content around 8 which is at least about 1500 words.
Following this strategy on a long-term basis will produce results which will send more and more traffic to your website.
Why do you need a SEO Strategy for Small Business?
Failing to properly develop a SEO strategy will make it impossible to achieve your goals to bring in enough traffic to your business website. Without enough traffic coming to your website on a daily basis it is impossible to achieve proper results. You have to stand out Above the Noise.
The SEO strategy also helps you to build a reputation of authority, expertise and trustworthiness. If you can achieve this and Google recognises you as a leader in your field. You will learn guy and he will have lots of traffic coming to your websites.
We have developed amazing SEO tools which can help you to achieve these objectives. Whether you are doing it yourself or you are using our experts to do it for you, it will improve your SEO results.
How do you implement a SEO Strategy for Small Business?
In order to implement a SEO strategy for small business you need to be able to measure results on a consistent basis.
There are various factors that can influence your SEO campaign, and you need to be on top of all of them.
The best way to implement a strategy is to have a proper software program that runs everything for you. Our SEO software will do most of the tasks for you. From interacting with Google and getting information from Google to spying on your competition and get all the valuable information about their websites and their campaigns.
Once you have the software and you are able to analyse your websites information as well as the information that you collected from Google and from your competition, you can start signing the strategy that will help you beat your competition.
From there it is the process of working your plan on a continuous basis. Continuity is very important in SEO marketing.
Getting the correct information from your campaign also will help you to proper analysis of what exactly is going on and where you need to go.
How do you measure a SEO Strategy for Small Business?
Measuring your progress is most probably one of the most important tasks in the SEO strategy. By having information and data at your fingertips it is easier to make decisions on where to target next.
Once you have this information available it is also easy to put it into reports so that you can see exactly what is going on in your business.
One of the things that our software does is to measure each keyword against certain search engines and to find out exactly where each keyword ranks. You can then easily see if your rankings went up or down.
By connecting our software to google Analytics and Google search console it is easy to report on the amount of traffic that you receive and how that measures up against your previous reports. It also allows you to see which search terms were people looking for.
23 Steps to create a SEO strategy that works.
Step 1 – Create a list of 200 keywords
When creating a list of keywords it is important that you try and identify as many relevant keywords as possible. One of the best ways to do this is by just simply typing in the keyword into Google and see what suggestions Google comes up with. There are many other keyword tools but it is not even necessary to use them. Our SEO software will automatically suggest keywords from your own website from competitor websites and from competitor Google Ad Campaigns. It will also fetch search terms from you Google search console and add it to the list of keywords that you can use.
Step 2 – Find keywords with lowest competition and most traffic
Especially if you start out with search engine optimisation it is important to find keywords that are not that competitive and that is easy to rank. Those keywords should however still have the winning full traffic.
Keywords are normally evaluated by a Factor called KEI. Keywords for the highest KEI value is the best keywords to rank.
Step 3 – Connect Google Analytics and Google Search Console
Without meaningful data it is not possible to evaluate your efforts. The best data that you possibly can get is from Google Analytics and Google Search Console. This will not only tell you how many visitors you had, where they came from and which pages they visited but it will also tell you which search terms they searched for on Google.
Step 4 – Analyse Competition
It is important to analyse your competitors websites for keywords that they use as well as people who are linking to them. If you have that information it is easier to rank above them.
Step 5 – Analyse Google AdWords
Our software can also analyse your Google AdWords and the Google AdWords of your competition. This is valuable information because it can help you make Better Decisions on the search terms that you need to use.
Step 6 – Ensure you are on Google Maps
A listing on Google Maps can help you to rank way above your competitors because Google Map listings normally comes out first. If you have first position rankings on Google Maps you can help you tremendously.
Step 7 – Complete your Google Business Profile
If your Google business profile is completed correctly it will help Google to place you in local search. This can also help you to run better for searches for your main keywords in your local area.
Step 8 – Create better Content than your competition
Most probably the most important factor for search engine optimisation is content. If you create valuable content it is much easier to rank for specific keyword terms but it will also give you a broader exposure on Google.
Good valuable content also helps your customers to find answers to the problems they have and when they search for these terms on the questions they have, you are more likely to come up first.
Google are always looking for fresh unique content which adds value to their customers and their customer searches.
If you have valuable content most other website owners are more likely to link back to your website and that will create backlinks that is also valuable for your website ranking.
Step 9 – Do Competition Analysis
Knowing where your competition is in terms of the search engine optimisation is available information that can help you to rank better and to eventually brand better than them.
With our software you can analyse your competitors for the keywords that they are using as well as websites that are linking back to them.
Step 10 – Optimise Landing Pages
It is very important to match every content page that you have with a keyword that you want to rank for and then optimise that page using your software.
Landing page SEO normally looks at the meta tags, the headings, subheadings, keyword density, internal and external links, alt tags much more.
Step 11 – Do Technical SEO
Technical SEO is also very important. It looks at issues that can affect your website like the website speed, the mobile speed and how the website react on mobile devices. Technical SEO will also find things like broken links, pages that are not directing correctly, server issues and lots of other aspects.
Step 12 – Create Internal Links
Linking internally on your website is very important. Creating links from your website content two other pages on your website is one of the important factors that Google is looking for.
Step 13 – Create and Manage Backlinks
Backlinks can be both good and bad for your website. If an authority page out of the right contacts links back to your website it can boost your rankings but if you have websites linking to your website and they are of low quality and out of context, it can actually harm your website rankings
Many people will advise you to buy links but it is not a good practice at all and Google makes it very clear that it is against their rules and regulations.
If you create good valuable content it will be natural for other websites to link back to you. This way you can acquire valuable links.
Step 14 – Sitemaps
A site map is necessary for your website because Google uses the this site map to determine which pages they should indexed. Only pages that are indexed will be ranking on Google
Step 15 – Analyse Social Engagement
Our software can also measure your social engagement which is an important factor for Google. When ranking your keywords Google actually also looks at your social engagement and the value that it brings to your website.
Step 16 – Check Keyword Density
Keyword density in your content is very important because if the density is too high then Google thinks that you are spamming their search engines and will therefore rank you lower.
Step 17 – Check Meta Tags and Headers
Meta tags and headers helps Google to identify information from your website and if this information is not correct Google will not know how to use the information to rank your website.
Step 18 – Share Content with Influencers.
If you share your content with other influences they will most likely link back to your content and that will give your rankings more juice to rank higher.
Step 19 – Optimise your URL
The URL of a page is most probably one of the most important factors and therefore it is important that you ensure that it complies with Google’s requirements.
Step 20 – Check for Mobile Optimisation
Content for mobile devices and for computers are differently ranked by Google and it is important that you ensure that you also optimise for mobile content as well.
Step 21 – Check Page Speed
Page speed can negatively influence your website. It is therefore necessary that you ensure that your page loads quickly. There are various software programs that can test this including our SEO software.
If the page speed on your website is too slow customers visiting your website will also leave before the page is fully loaded
Step 22 – Ensure that your Pages are Indexed
Google indexes the pages of your website on a regular basis. They collect this information from the sitemap and therefore it is important that your sitemap is correctly submitted to Google.
Step 23 – Image Alt Tags
The Alt Tags off your images has also got an influence on the ranking of your website. Ensure that all images are identified by the alt tags with the keyword that you are using for that specific page
If you would like to find out more about SEO Strategy for Small Business, then you are welcome to connect with Christo on +27(0)81 2700 884 or email christo@businessdirectmedia.com