Digital marketing brings many benefits to businesses of kinds, so mastering it is the key to outgrowing your competitors. You can now use online tools such as pop ups to boost your campaign. One of the most important things to do when investing in digital marketing is to SEO optimize your content since that’ll help you get to more people.
Naturally, getting clients is easier if you’ve been working for a while since you already have some clients, and people know how good your work is. However, a decent SEO campaign can help small businesses compete with larger companies.
Do you want to learn more about SEO for small businesses? Dive into this page to know some ranking factors to consider as a small business!
What Is SEO?
SEO stands for search engine optimization, and it consists of adapting your content to what search engines want to make them rank your website better. Why do people do that? Because ranking higher means taking the first spots on the search results page when people look for a specific service or product.
Let’s say, for example, that someone needs legal services in Colorado. If they look for “legal services in Colorado,” they will check what the first websites offer to know if they are decent or not.
Your services may be better than what the first places offer, but clients won’t know that if they don’t notice your website is there. SEO makes sure people know you are there when people look for your services. However, this only means more people will click on your website, but that doesn’t mean they will pay for your services.
You may see the benefits of investing in SEO faster or slower depending on how you do it or how the company you hire does it.
Importance of SEO for Small Businesses
Even if people already know the benefits of SEO for a small business website, not everyone understands how much it can help a small business change its status quo and stop being small by increasing its leads and sales.
Regardless of the services you offer, the main thing you want when starting a business is to reach your target audience since that’s the first step to increasing your sales and leads. SEO helps you do it faster than you would do it on a regular basis.
When people in your target audience notice your business, they will tell the people close to them about it, and that will snowball in the future. Hence, you also need to have a decent landing page ready for new leads.
Big companies already have a client base, so it’s difficult to compete against them if you are just starting to work. Nonetheless, if you master SEO, you will outgrow them in a matter of months. The reason for that is you will get more clients than them as time passes.
This happens because you are getting to more people in your city and outside it, while they use old communication channels their target audiences don’t use. Likewise, if your competitors optimize their content and you don’t, they will sell more than you, so you shouldn’t miss out on this.
The highest-ranked page on a search engine can get up to 49% more traffic than others, and since 75% of users don’t go past the first search results page, you have to take the first spots if you want to get some attention.
Key SEO Ranking Factors for Small Businesses
Now that you know how important SEO is for small businesses, you may be interested in optimizing your website. However, how can you do that?
It’s challenging to make your website SEO-friendly if you’ve never tried SEO strategies in the past. Thanks to that, most businesses hire an eCommerce company to help them with the matter.
Regardless of that, it’s good that you know the ranking factors most search engines take into account when ranking your content. This will give you an idea of how much you need to change your website to comply with the SEO requirements to be an authority web page.
These are the main SEO ranking factors small businesses should keep in mind:
Keyword Research and Implementation
In a nutshell, some keywords can make your website rank higher or lower if you add them to your content, so you need to research the right ones for the topic you want to address and how many times you should use them.
The keyword research process includes researching what your competitors have done to optimize their content and how much that has worked for them. After you know the keywords you need in your website to make it rank higher on search engines, add them to your content correctly!
That means using the right ones and knowing where to place them to get the most advantage you can of them.
Content Optimization
Apart from the keywords you use for your content, you need to make sure everything you add to your website is high-quality content clients will read without getting bored of it after a few seconds of being on your website.
Search engines also consider how much time users spend on your website after they click on it, so it’s useless to get your website at the top of the search results page if your website is not optimized enough to stay there or to turn your leads into actual clients.
Link Building
Links are also essential for SEO since adding enough links to your website tells search engines other websites trust you and that you are working with other web pages. According to the algorithm’s standards, that means you are an authority website, so it will rank you higher.
The best way to do this is by adding backlinks to your website on other web pages. You can also add some links to other websites in your content since it’s also helpful. Needless to say, never add links to your competitors’ web pages since that would only help them outgrow you in the long run.
Mobile Compatibility
Although not many people know this, mobile compatibility and optimization are excellent ways of making your website rank higher on search engines. Many people looking for specific services online can indeed do it through their personal computers or laptops, but a huge deal of clients look for information on their smartphones.
People now have all the information they need in their pockets, so they only need to get their smartphone and look for something on Google to get an answer. It will be difficult to rank higher if your website is not optimized to work on smartphones, so get your hands on that if that’s your case.
User Experience – Web Design
Getting to the last SEO ranking factor we will address on this page, we have a decent user experience. The user experience of your clients once they get to your website is determined by the web design you go for.
Users want a straightforward and intuitive platform that gives them all information they need in seconds. No one wants to stay on a website that makes things more complex for them, so make sure your web design is easy to navigate and understand before trying to optimize other things.
Tips for Improving SEO Ranking as a Small Business
We understand that, even after reading this article and learning the factors search engines use to rank small businesses, you may struggle with search engine optimization if you’ve never dealt with it in the past. Hence, we have some tips to help you master this before your competitors outsell you.
The first thing you should do if you want to optimize your website is to make sure you have high-quality content. It’s useless to optimize a website that doesn’t have correct information or that doesn’t have engaging writing. Apart from that, make sure to optimize your website for local search.
If you offer your services in California, make sure you add keywords and optimize your website to work in California. That way, when people look for the services you offer in your state, you are the first thing they will see.
Don’t forget about adding enough links to your web pages. Backlinks and external links are good for that, so don’t be afraid of adding some of them. However, link building is not as easy as it sounds, which means you may need to contact an expert to help you with it.
Last, but not least, make sure your website is mobile-friendly and visually appealing. That will make the clients that click on your web page stay on it and see what you have to offer.
Final Thoughts
Adapting to new market trends is essential if you don’t want to be left behind by other companies. Starting a new business is not easy, but a decent small business SEO strategy can make you get more sales faster than you expected, so you should try it or contact an SEO company to help you with it.
If you focus on search engine optimization, you will get a more competitive stand on the market as you engage with your target audience more easily.
There are also many digital marketing tools on the market that can help you increase your sales.
Do you want to read more articles related to SEO and eCommerce? Check out our website now! We have plenty of them there.
