It is of high pertinence for every small-scale business out there that you have all the know-how to begin your start-up journey. SEO or search engine optimization should be your key, especially if you are in a niche market. If that is what you have been wondering lately and figuring out how to grow your small business, you are definitely on the right page because we discussed the complete guide to small business SEO.
Beginner’s Guide to Small Business SEO in 7 Easy Steps
This blog will walk you through seven easy steps and tips that you must delve into before getting started. Let us begin now.
1. Start with a Logical Structure on your Website
The algorithm of Google has been designed to naturally recognize the sites with a logical structure and distinguish them from those that don’t. Therefore, it is imperative to create a site that flows logically and is structured in and out. Furthermore, your site pages should be reachable from at least one static text link. At least, this is what Google demands of you.
As we are looking for the beginner’s guide to small business SEO, Simply put, you must have a butter-smooth navigation style on your site. It is no fun and games to see a site with some rocket-science level navigation to reach a certain product. If that is the case with you, say hello to startling churn rates to come your way. Instead, put up dropdown options and link to all the relevant pages as and when required. And just in case you have any broken links, remove them as fast as you can. They will not be helping you in any way. They will only make your site look spam-like, and you would not want that for your customers.
2. Look into the Page descriptions and Meta titles without fail
Each page on your site must have a unique meta description as well as a title. For this, you will have to make sure that you stick to the word limit prescribed to you. Do not try to exceed the length at which even Google will truncate them in the organic search results.
Moreover, it would help if you put in your primary keyword that the whole page is about. This will make the viewers and the search engine know the crux of the content given. Keep it crisp and short. Put only those words that naturally fit the given context and space. The algorithms of Google can trace out keyword stuffing, and you would not want to do that.
3. Content is the Key
This is the best guide to small business SEO for beginners. None of your efforts will work out well if your content does not do all the talking. Your content needs to be on point, and then only the rest of the things can follow. Google checks out the content on a website to know whether or not the website is a good result for any given certain query. If there is less or zero content on a page, or let’s say the content is not that well optimized, this chops away your chances of being ranked higher on the search engine pages.
To begin with, ensure that you write relevant to the niche you are in. have good enough readability throughout your content. No reader would want to read bulks of content stuffed together. Allow some room for white space too. This will enhance the readability aspect and make the reader comfortable to read through.
Do use H1 tags for the headings to make them stand out. Break your content into bullet points for better understanding. Ensure that the spelling and the grammar too are on point and there is no room for mistakes there. It will cut a very sorry impression there, and you would not want that.
4. Try out Link Building for your Sites
Links, be they internal or external, are extremely crucial for your business. It is needed to rank higher in the Google search results. In this guide to small business SEO, you will be happy to know that Google has admitted to the fact that links are one of the top three ranking factors as of 2016. Understandably, the art of link building might not be that simple for small and medium scale businesses.
To begin with, you can always find a lot of sites that are open to accepting citations and would want to help you get featured personally. There is always the option of providing such businesses with testimonials. You can outsource that as well. All you need to do is provide clear instructions to the freelancer and render names of the sites or businesses you have affiliated with.
5. Do not ignore the Social Media Platforms too
Marking your presence in cyberspace or on social media platforms is truly essential for the growth of your business. Therefore, it is needed to be active on all such channels where your customers and the newer prospects can find you. This way, you can expand your business too and entice new prospects your way too.
Think of this whole situation as an analogy. See your website as your home and social media as an event to meet both your existing customers and the new ones. And when they attain a certain amount of trust in you, you can always bring them and show your home or the site in this particular case. Furthermore, whenever you see a customer lauding your products or services, make it a point to congratulate them and say how happy you are to have a customer like him or her.
On similar tracks, as and when you see a customer who is not happy with your products or services, make it a point to show them how to trust you back and resolve their complaints, if any. Again, this guide to small business SEO will show them that you are still worth a chance.
6. Security and Protection should be your USP
No customer, I repeat, no customer wants to continue a business with a site with trust issues. However, when a customer comes to your site, they do have a lot of questions in their mind, concerning the transactions and security of their shopping. They do not want to be fleeced when they see that their safety and PII (Personally Identifiable Information) are compromised.
That is when it is important to win your customer’s trust by giving them what they want. Do not forget to install an SSL Certificate at the earliest. These certificates ensure that their communication is getting encrypted, and so are their transactions. You will find a lot of options on the online front. Suppose you plan to branch out in the foreseeable future and have a primary domain to secure along with multiple first-level subdomains. In that case, we suggest that you go for a premium yet cheap Wildcard SSL certificate such as the RapidSSL Wildcard Certificate.
7. Find and Use only those keywords that your users are looking for
This guide to small business SEO is that the best way to know what to put up on your site is to include what your customers are looking for. This makes it super easy for them to find out and contact you sooner. If you have what it takes to answer their queries better than anyone else in the niche, you stand a chance to be recognized by the SERP as a business that can and should appear on the top of the results.
Luckily, today you will find many tools that make keyword research a fun thing to do and easier for time-strapped people. Start by analyzing the suggestions you get from Google’s autocomplete feature. This sheds a lot of light on the things that your customers are demanding at the moment. This should give you a lot of ideas as well. So, in a way, Google is doing keyword research for you and making your work easier.
That’s a Wrap
Security is undoubtedly a big key that you must delve into for the success of your business. Make it a point to follow the seven points mentioned above and see which one works out the best for you. For a small-scale business, what truly matters is growth. We all want to expand our current customer base and garner as much love as possible from them. Nothing beats the love and affection for your brand, and you are no different in that rat race.
To wrap up, we would like to re-emphasize the importance of investing in a good SSL cert such as the Comodo PositiveSSL Wildcard for your business website. This is a scalable option and keeps away troublemakers, scammers. Hope this guide to small business SEO in these tips will benefit you in some way or the other if deployed in the right manner. In the end, all that matters is the happiness of the customers.
