The post-Covid-19 world will be different from the preCovid-19 one. The crisis has changed the behavior and habits of the world. Google searches have increased rapidly because people prefer to buy and order food/goods — everything online.
And that makes SEO a must-use channel for every small business. But if you are still ignoring SEO for your small business, then you are helping your competition crush you. These days, SEO is an investment, not an expense. Here are some key benefits of small business SEO:
• It is a low-cost and higher-ROI marketing technique.
• You can get free traffic, leads and customers for your small business without paying a cent.
• SEO traffic is high-quality traffic.
• It can help you build a brand for your small business.
• It is the future of marketing.
• SEO is a great way to win over the competition.
The main reason I love SEO is that you can beat big brands with it, even if you don’t have a large budget to spend. That is not possible with other marketing channels like PPC ads. Here are some important small business SEO tips to help you rank your small business website on Google.
1. Develop a professional mobile-friendly business website.
Your website must be professional and should provide a rich experience and the feel of your brand to users. Here are a few tips to make your website professional and SEO-friendly:
• Use your business logo and branding on your website.
• Make sure your website is mobile-friendly (more than half of local searches are mobile searches)
• Your website should load in less than three seconds.
• Use a clean, minimal design, and avoid fancy styles.
• Your website must be well structured and easy to use.
Many business owners waste too much money creating a professional small business website. But there is no need to waste too much money on a business website. You can create a professional website for less than £600. So don’t waste more money on website design, but invest that extra money in SEO.
2. Identify profitable keywords.
The success of an SEO campaign depends on the targeted keywords. That’s why you need to choose the right and profitable keywords for your small business. All keywords are not equal; some keywords could have high search volume but not profitability, while some could be profitable but have small volumes.
Also, focus on long-tail keywords because they are easy to rank and more profitable than short keywords. The profitability of a keyword depends on the nature of the keyword. For that, you need to understand the intent behind that keyword — why a user is searching that.
For example, when a person searches “ice cream” on Google, they want to know about ice cream, which means it has informational intent. But when a person searches for “best choco-milk ice cream near me,” the person wants to eat ice cream. This will be a profitable keyword for you to target.
3. Create a separate page for each product.
I found that many small businesses list all their products on one page like the homepage, but this is not a good practice. If you want to get more profit from your local SEO efforts, then you should create specific pages for each product. That way you can rank higher for each product page for multiple keywords.
For example, if you have a clothing store website, then you need to create separate pages for each product, such as one page for jeans and another for shirts. Also, you can create further subpages, such as jeans > men jeans > blue jeans. This can boost your rankings and revenue and reduce your efforts.
4. Use schema.
Structured data is helping Google better understand webpages. That’s why it can help you rank higher and get the advantage of other SERP features like featured snippets, knowledge graphs, etc. Product schema, local business, FAQ and others are must-use schema types for every business.
5. Optimize for ‘near me’ and voice searches.
As I mentioned before, around one-third of all searches are local “near me” searches, which is why you should optimize your website for local searches.
But, more than half of these searches are voice searches. You should optimize your website for both.
6. Keep business listings up to date.
For small businesses, business listing profiles such as Google My Business (GMB) are important. A GMB profile can help you rank on Google and get new customers for your small business.
That’s why you should optimize your GMB profile properly and keep it updated with the latest details, including working hours, images, phone numbers, email, etc. Users will be able to get to know more about your business and can contact you and buy from you.
7. Acquire local backlinks.
Local backlinks and citations are very important parts of a successful local SEO campaign. You can ask your business partners, local business directories, local news publications, etc. to link and cover your business.
Conclusion
As a founder of a digital marketing company and a marketing expert, I can say that SEO is an investment for small businesses, and you need to focus on it if you want to survive in the future and grow your small business. Follow these small business SEO tips to rank your website on Google and grow your business with SEO.
