Search engine optimization is key to growing your small business. Nearly 50% of all Google searches are local, so why not develop a strong SEO campaign to help your small business be seen?
SEO marketing will be a game changer for your business. However, SEO strategies are different for small businesses versus large corporations.
Public and large corporations focus primarily on trending keywords with the highest search volume, but small businesses’ process is a bit different.
For small businesses, you’ll want to stick to keywords relevant to your brand and produce optimized content for those keywords.
If you start using trending words, your content will be lost in the crowd and won’t help you improve your search results, manage your online reputation, or get noticed on Google.
SEO marketing may feel like a daunting task. However, we’re here to help; follow these eight SEO marketing tips to get started.
1. Create or Audit your Google My Business (GMB) Profile
Creating Your Google My Business Profile
A Google My Business profile is the first thing that pops up on the rights side of the Google search results page when someone Googles your business.
Your GMB profile gives customers accurate information regarding your business location, hours, contact information, and pictures.
This listing also provides a place for individuals to leave reviews, another important factor in SEO marketing that we will mention later in this article.
GMB has many layers, which can be confusing to figure out at first. Luckily, there are step-by-step instructions outlined by Google on troubleshooting any problems you may have when creating your profile or business listing.
Auditing Your Google My Business Profile
If you already have an existing account and can see your listing on your Google search results, you may want to take a closer look at some of the issues that may arise.
These issues include duplicate business listings, errors in your business name, phone number, or address, and local ranking identifiers outside your listing.
Multiple problems may affect your GMB listing from being seen, but consistently auditing your listing can help identify or prevent them.
Another critical factor for auditing your GMB is asking yourself a few questions:
- Are you soliciting enough reviews? Are your reviews more positive or negative?
- Are your GMB images high-quality? Do you need more images on your listing?
- Is your contact information up to date and accurate?
- Are there multiple ways to contact your business?
These are a few questions you can ask yourself when auditing your Google business listing. Mastering consistency and gathering reviews through your GMB profile will significantly impact your small business.
2. Fix Technical Issues On Your Website
Having glitches or technical issues on your website can damage your online reputation and leave customers frustrated and overwhelmed.
Experiencing technical issues from an administrative standpoint can be equally frustrating. It’s essential to hire the right staff who know how to troubleshoot website problems and fix them right away.
You put a lot of money and time into creating a beautiful and user-friendly website with eye-capturing graphics; even with these great features, if there are technical issues, it will reflect in your online reputation, and customers will notice.
Be sure to take care of foundational aspects like how your website runs before jumping into other pursuits in your business.
3. Identify Target Keywords
Identifying target keywords may be one of the most essential parts of your SEO strategy. You won’t see the expected results if you do not have the right keywords.
Hiring SEO experts at BRANDefenders can help you grasp the right keywords, develop a strong campaign, and jumpstart your SEO marketing journey.
Identifying target keywords takes focus, diligent effort, and excellent team brainstorming. Finding keywords on your own can be frustrating and may drain you.
One of the biggest mistakes beginners make when identifying target keywords is using too many keywords at once. We recommend focusing on only a few keywords at a time to create a concise, targeted SEO strategy.
Once you see improvement with your few targeted keywords, you can move forward with others, but taking on too much at once can detriment your marketing resources.
4. Produce Positive, Relevant Content For Your Brand
Once you have targeted keywords, you can then start brainstorming topics for content to publish to your internal blogs or other external websites.
Remember when you are creating content that the search engine has one goal: to answer a question. So, when brainstorming content ideas, you may want to start with commonly asked questions about your brand or industry.
It’s essential to focus on the title of your articles as much as the content within them. A title should be concise but strong and use your primary keyword.
Once you’ve come up with your blog and external topics, hire writers to help you maximize your reach and develop a strong article. High-quality writers will focus on keywords in your article and ensure that there is no keyword stuffing.
Creating relevant, compelling, updated content will best help your brand and is essential to creating a good SEO marketing campaign for your small business.
5. Create a Strong Web of Backlinks
The top Google results for a given search term have, on average, nearly quadruple the number of backlinks compared to the results ranking in sports two through ten.
Building backlinks is not a short and straightforward process; it takes time and patience to consistently build a strong web of backlinks to help boost your brand, targeted keywords, and overall search results.
Some small businesses may wonder if building backlinks is with the time and money. Once you start seeing results and creating that web, you’ll know it’s a worthwhile investment because it adds so much SEO value.
Like keywords, it’s important to find relevant and high-quality backlinks. If you just start backlinking to random articles, this won’t help; instead, it will hurt your brand.
Take the time to find high-quality articles you can backlink to; you can also partner with other businesses in your community to do a link exchange. This will help you and the other small business, which is a big win!
6. Consistently and Actively Gather Reviews
Most acquiring customers read multiple reviews before purchasing a product or buying a service. It’s important to gather reviews from previous customers consistently. This gives you valuable feedback to help improve your processes, builds trust with your customers, and allows others to see how great your brand is.
The key to reviews is being consistent. Many review sites filter out reviews and stress the importance of organic, natural reviews. Being consistent with the reviews and when they are published will help review sites recognize that your customers value your brand and that there aren’t any fake reviews published.
A great mistake many small businesses make is publishing reviews all at once instead of spreading them out over the month or using SMS marketing to help consistently solicit reviews.
Reviews add excellent SEO value and are vital to a strong marketing campaign.
7. Be Patient With Yourself and Your Team
SEO is a process that takes a lot of time and diligent effort. Search results are not something that can be fixed overnight. Expecting overnight results will only lead to feeling defeated and overwhelmed.
Instead, focus on the small, positive results you see over time. Be sure to note where you started and review over the months to see how you’ve progressed.
The biggest key to SEO work is consistency. Without consistent effort, you won’t see any results. So remember to be patient with your campaign, be patient with your team, and most importantly, be patient with yourself. SEO takes time, but it is worth the investment.
8. Hire SEO Experts at BRANDefenders
BRANDefenders specializes in helping small and large businesses, as well as individuals, improve their online reputation through SEO strategies. If you are feeling overwhelmed with the task of marketing through SEO, our experts can help.
We have years of experience helping a wide range of clients control what is being said about them online and crafting a solid SEO strategy to help insulate and boost your brand.
SEO work can be daunting, but having a team of experts to back you up will give you peace of mind and allow you to focus on other essential aspects of your small business.