Implementing SEO is a great way for a small business to market its products/services.
According to the polling run by Search Engine Journal, 49% of people say organic search is the best digital marketing channel based on its Return on Investment (ROI). Moreover, a survey from Google reveals that 59% of shoppers do online research before they decide to buy something.
These statistics make SEO become an approach that a small business should try to gain an edge compared to its competitors. The more presence we have in search engines, the easier it should be for us to get potential leads for our business.
However, SEO can seem to be complicated, especially for a small business that has just started to practice it. What are the things that we can do to optimize the SEO results of our business? Well, here are five SEO practical tips for small businesses you can try.
Register your business at Google My Business
When people search for business-related queries (e.g. restaurants near me, best salon in my area, etc) at Google, it may fill its top search results with Google My Business pages. If you haven’t registered your business yet, you will miss the opportunity to showcase your business when that happens. Make sure your restaurant, local store, or bar is registered if you are in charge of restaurant management or own the business yourself.
It is easy to do the registration as you only need to visit the Google My Business page and fill in some details. Doing this should help you get additional business leads from Google.
Additionally, when you already have the page, you may also want to try to gather authentic positive ratings and reviews from your customers on it. That should help Google to trust you more and, as a result, it may show your page more often for search queries related to your business offerings.
Have a relevant website with a blog
You can handle the optimization or apply an expert SEO company to optimize your website. It will be much better if the website has a blog section as it can broaden your chance to rank in many more keywords related to your business.
However, you shouldn’t have a website and a blog that cater to all people in all segments. Instead, you should try to build ones with niches that fit your customer profile. By doing that, your website should get more relevant traffic and it can have more topical authority in the eyes of its visitors.
Consider ranking on long-tail keywords
It can be hard to rank for keywords with high search volume, especially if your business SEO landscape is competitive. Because of that, you may want to try to rank for long-tail keywords instead. Although they have lower search volume, they are easier to rank as authoritative websites usually don’t target them.
Furthermore, long-tail keywords are more specific in their search intent. That means you should be able to get more high-quality leads if you can target the right long-tail keywords. Those leads should be easier to convert rather than the ones that come from ranking on short-tail keywords.
Get reference links from related media and business websites
Backlinks are one of the most important ranking factors for Google. If you want to get much organic traffic, you should try to get quality backlinks (not spam backlinks from bad websites) as many as possible. Backlinks from websites related to your business are better as they can be the source of significant referral traffic as well.
One thing you can do to get those kinds of backlinks is trying to contact website owners from media or business organizations in your industry or area. Ask them if there is a chance to feature your business on their websites. If your business has a good reputation and offers quality products/services, there should be some who are willing to do that.
As a bonus, media and business websites may also be authoritative websites in your niche. By getting backlinks from them, your website authority should improve significantly as well from the search engines’ point of view.
Create separate product/service and category pages
People might directly search for the individual product/service your business offers or the category it is in. For example, if your business sells cakes, people may search for “strawberry cake vendor” or “cake shop”. If this happens and your website has separate product/service and category pages, then search engines might list those pages of yours in their search results.
People who search for specific products/services or categories are usually in their buying mode. If they visit your website when they do the search, there is a chance they decide to buy your offerings. Therefore, you should have your website ready to anticipate this kind of search situation.
Conclusion
SEO can help a small business market its products/services. The key here is to know and practice the right SEO effort to establish a business presence in search engines.
Implementing the five tips above should help your business get the results it wants from its SEO. Keep on trying to build your website authority and produce great content so search engines can favor your website more. That will support you to rank high for many relevant keywords in the short and long term.
Author Bio
Dan Brunell is a person who has a passion for technology and SEO. He is the founder of Innovation Infinite, a website that discusses all things about technology.
