Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is a confusing subject that a lot of businesses don’t have time for.
Dismissing this integral part of your marketing strategy is limiting your potential big time.
Google alone receives 63,000 searches per second, so without a solid SEO strategy, your customers are not going to find you.
Here are our top 5 SEO tips for small businesses that will get you found:
- Stick To The Rules
- Know Your Audience
- Proper Keyword Research
- Start a Blog
- Stay Up To Date
Stick To The Rules
has created a FREE detailed document that tells you literally everything you need to know in order to create a Google-friendly site.
Following Google’s guidelines is simple and extremely effective if done correctly.
First, give visitors the information they are looking for. Google recommends uploading high-quality content that will attract visitors and allow them to find all of the necessary information right on your homepage. Describing things as exact as possible will allow users to find what they are looking for easily.
Second, Backlinks. Backlinks are sites that link back to your website, allowing Google to understand what your business is about. A link from one page to another is known as a ‘vote’, the more votes you get, the more important your page is. However, only ‘natural links’, which are links originating from real pages, are valued by Google, none of the FAKE stuff.
Third, site accessibility. The more user-friendly and easily accessible your site is, the more chance you have of ranking higher on the search page.
“Build your site with a logical link structure. Every page should be reachable from at least one static text link.” – Google Search Console
A great way to test your site’s overall performance is through Google’s Page Speed Insights, giving you a score out of 100 and telling exactly how to improve it.
Things to avoid:
- Don’t fill your page with lists of keywords
- Don’t hide any pages on your website or Google may find you deceptive
- Try not to show website information as images (use text) or Google won’t read it
- Don’t create website pages under different URL’s
Know Your Audience
A successful business is one that understands and communicates with its customers exceptionally well.
Here are 2 simple steps that will help you to understand your audience better:
1.Create a customer persona
Creating a customer persona is a process of detailed identification. This is where you select a specific individual who matches your product/service. Often, your ideal customer is shaped using information like age, income, location and interests etc. Analysing your competition using Semrush is a great way to gather inspiration and guidance when creating your customer persona.
2.Monitoring your current and future position
One of the best ways to find out who is visiting your website right NOW is to use Google Analytics.
What can it tell you?
- Demographics
- Interests
- Geography
- Behaviour
- Technology
- Mobile
Implementing this software on to your website can allow you to see whether you are targeting the right people, and help you develop a new or existing strategy. Supply your niche with the content they want and your website traffic will go wild!
How do you add Google Analytics to your website?
After you have created an account and received your tracking ID, paste the following Global Site Tag to the <head> of every page on your website:
<!– Global Site Tag (gtag.js) – Google Analytics –>
… (several lines of customized programming code appear here)
</script>
If you get stuck, visit Analytics Help for more information.
Using this tool to monitor your audience and website engagement is a crucial practice to ensure you stay on track and always know your audience.
Proper Key-Word Research
Now you have collected insights into your audience demographics and activity, you can choose keywords relevant to match, and create a list of important topics based on the information you have gathered.
Another way to create your list is through competitor research. Spyfu is a great tool that lets you input a competitor’s URL and find out the exact keywords they are using in their SEO campaigns.
When you have finished creating your list, it’s time to define!
Filter out the less important keywords and create a bucket of specialized keywords that are going to set you apart from the rest and become a strong competitor in your industry.
The most important keywords you should try and rank for are SERP’s (search engine results pages). These keywords are what’s going to rank you on the first page of Google.
Here are some FREE SEO tools:
- Google Keyword Planner
- WordStream’s Keyword Tool
- Ubersuggest
- SEMrush (7-day free trial)
What will Google’s future algorithm be concerned with?
Google’s algorithm is constantly evolving and becoming more intelligent. Therefore, it is more concerned with the relevancy of the keywords in your content. These are called LSI (Latent semantic indexing) keywords, as opposed to the normal keywords mentioned above.
SurferSEO is a marketing tool that we use to write content at The Good Marketer. Its content editor section allows you to enter your article title and location, to source a pool of keywords which are relevant to your content. Naturally including these into your article will have a positive impact on your businesses SEO performance and enable you to confront any changes to Google’s algorithm.
Start a Blog
Starting a blog is a brilliant way to boost your search engine rankings.
Having a piece of entertaining and educational content will bring visitors back to your site over and over again, showing Google that you are legitimate and should appear in the search results more frequently.
As mentioned above, naturally including LSI keywords into your content, in this case, a blog, is the perfect opportunity to boost your SEO performance whilst providing value.
Blog ideas can be sourced from your Google Analytics account, which will tell what your audience is interested in.
Need some more inspiration?
Here are some of our blogs:
- Marketing Strategies We Use To Help business Owners
- 7 Tips To Grow Your Startup Business
- How To Remain Ethical In Today’s Social Media Marketing Environment
What should your blogging schedule look like?
- Brainstorming – Before you start writing, it is essential you construct a detailed plan that covers all of the necessary points. Treat it like an important email.
- Prioritize – Organise your content in order of importance so you publish the right content.
- Time management – Allocate your time efficiently to create a productive workflow.
Although blogging is a creative process, there are some things you should avoid:
- Don’t write misleading content
- Don’t be negative
- Don’t waffle, quality over quantity
- Don’t make grammar mistakes
- Don’t write big chunks of text, break them down into smaller paragraphs
Stay Up To Date
New marketing and SEO trends are always emerging, so you need to stay up to date with the latest news. Small businesses are the most vulnerable to a change in Google’s Algorithm, which puts them at risk of being penalized.
If you are receiving an unusual amount of traffic on your website and something seems up, Google may have made some changes.
Nevertheless, there are certain resources that can help you prepare for these changes:
- Twitter – Following Google and other SEO/marketing pages on Twitter is the perfect place to receive first-hand information about any potential action.
- Moz – Moz is a smart SEO tool that writes blog content for their website. This won’t be as efficient as Twitter but it is still a great way to keep up with the news.
- Google – The most reliable way to follow the news is through Google. However, other resources may discuss the possibility of future updates before they are formally announced.
To collect data that you can trust, staying up to date with a variety of channels will allow you to prepare in the best way possible!
Signing up to SEO and marketing agency emailing lists is a convenient way to collect information if you are busy.
Key Take-Aways
- Abide by Google’s official guidelines
- Regularly test your site’s speed
- Get to know your audience using Google Analytics
- Use your audience insights, Spyfu and the list of FREE SEO tools to conduct relevant LSI keyword research
- Starting a blog is another FREE opportunity to rank higher on the search page
- Stay up to date with Google’s SEO updates so you are not penalized
