Article Contributed by Amin Ghale
Small businesses SUCK at SEO. There I said it. Yes, it’s a hard term but that’s the reality.
According to the findings of Clutch survey, still 29% of small businesses don’t have websites. And 17% out of the 71% don’t have a responsive website. Yes, the numbers have grown significantly but it doesn’t change the fact that small businesses don’t take online marketing seriously.
The major reason behind it seems to be the lack of technical skills and monetary resources. However, these problems can be easily sought with CMS like WordPress.
Here’s how:
Get a theme for less than $50 and hook up with a hosting server for $3 per month. This is all it takes for a small business. You don’t need a big dedicated server for a small space business.
If you can’t do it find an expert that will do everything in a cheap rate.
So, you have got a website live and running. Now what?
Follow these 4 tips to make sure your small business is off the charts.
Make sure your on page is correct
This is the first and foremost thing you should do after your website is live. On page deals with anything as small as page title to making sure your content has a decent list of LSI keywords.
You should always target your best keyword in homepage. So, if you offer airport taxi service, have the content around that keyword. Sprinkle the variations of the keywords in heading tags and body. It shouldn’t look like you are forcing the keywords into it; rather it should blend with the content. The graphics in the content should have variations of keywords in the shape of alt tags.
The concept isn’t about making it look real; it’s about making it actual “REAL.”
Technical SEO is crucial
Okay, relax now. Before you start scratching your head, hear me out.
Technical SEO isn’t as complicated as you think. Yes, if you need to dive deep, it will take more than just a basic knowledge. But for small business, understanding few terminologies will be enough.
I haven’t come with serious technical SEO issue when I’m working with small businesses. It doesn’t mean it can’t come ever. But the chances are low.
Know how to setup some easy configurations like robots.txt and htaccess. These two elements play a huge part in crawlability and indexibility. So grab a better grip of the two elements.
Focus Local
Have you ever searched for some location based terms like electrician in Sydney? Probably you have. If you have noticed it, you will find that 3 local businesses come up with some ratings and directions, right?
That’s the local SEO.
One big advantage that small businesses have over Ecommerce website or any other websites is the power of local SEO.
Getting ranked in local isn’t a tough ask like organic rankings. Unlike many ranking factors for an organic result, local SEO has limited factors. Elements like proximity level of search, reviews, citations etc can easily help you get ranked locally.
Earn backlinks
This is the most important and fun part of a small business for me. You need to earn backlinks to not only rank organically but also in local results. There is a definite correlation between organic SEO as well as local SEO. So, if you can rank well in organic, there is a huge chance that you will also get ranked in Google local map pack.
So what are the types of links that you can build for small businesses?
Unlike many competitive niches, you don’t need a tonne of high-quality links to get you ranked. Well, it helps if you have it.
But, even with links from directories, web 2.0, citation sources, blog comments, and few quality guest post links can get you ranked in local SEO. Never the less, you should never stop building links for your site.
Engage in social media
Social media like Facebook and twitter can not only hook you up with decent clients, it can also have positive impact on SEO of your business. Although, Google denies that they don’t take social signals as the factors for obvious reasons. But we have seen the data where social links do work at times.
Build a social media foundation and work on it. Every social media isn’t going to work for your business. So, explore the one according to that fits your needs and audience persona.
Closing Down
Doing SEO for small businesses isn’t a tough ask. It’s the lack of knowledge and dedication of small biz owners that results in poor SEO value. Apply the above 5 tips for your business, and you surely will be of course.
Author Bio
Amin Ghale is a Web developer from Sydney and SEO consultant at WP Creative. He loves to play around with codes on WordPress and build strategies to grow his client’s businesses. In free time he hunts down for news on WordPress & entrepreneurships.