The One Tool Not To Miss Out On for the Small Business
Growing your business through SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a simple, cost-effective way to set your business apart from the competition. The internet can be a competitive space, especially for small-businesses, but by harnessing your website’s SEO capabilities you can compete more easily in the Digital Age.
How do I get started with SEO?
With this handy ICN beginners’ guide we can help you take your first steps into this booming business strategy.
1. Capitalize on the Keywords already hidden in your content
The first and most simple step in boosting SEO is to just continue to write your content and engage your audience as you already do. When you authentically represent your business in your blog posts, articles, and product pages- you are already using Keywords, a great resource to identify where you can improve your searchability.
By scanning your content using tools like Google Search Console, Google Analytics and SEMrush, these Keywords can be ranked by their ability to improve your search engine ranking, how often they are searched for, and can show you clearly which specific site pages they bring traffic to, and where your largest traffic sources are.
From this information, it is simple to prioritize the Top 10 Keywords for your business goals. Whether you want more eyes on your work, customers sharing your services on social media, or buying from your ecommerce store, optimizing your content to include well-chosen and useful Keywords can be your first step to success!
Top SEO Tip:
Using Longform Keywords of 3+ words which are specific to your content are more likely to find your site more customer interaction.
2. Linking Plans- growing your network
Search engines value a website which reputable external sites link to. These are called Backlinks and are an invaluable tool to grow your website fast. Through producing quality content these can be gained organically as other websites take notice of your business, but there are some methods to speed this process up.
Contacting respected blogs, directories, and review sites directly to turn their attention towards your content is one way to build these Backlink networks, but it can take some time to receive a response and even more for the Backlinks to come into effect so it is important to identify the most valuable partners. This can be done through using a Domain Authority score check, while higher scores are signs of value, a high number is not necessary, a comparison of relevant website’s scores can identify which Backlink would boost your business more.
Internal links can also be used to boost the SEO of low performing web pages by sending traffic towards them from more successful pages within your site. This is an underutilized and very easy method to improve search engine rankings by making a small change.
Top SEO Tip:
Also take a look at which sites your competitors get their backlinks from to identify connections to make which are relevant to your business sector.
3. Don’t forget to look behind the scenes
Although often forgotten, using your chosen Keywords in the Meta-data of your website helps to boost your online presence. Google pays as much attention to the invisible content of your website as the visible, so it is important to keep this consistent to the other aspects of your SEO plan.
Looking at the code of your website can allow you to identify missed opportunities for optimizing your website. Each element of the webpage from titles, videos, images, and text have attached Meta-data which can be tailored with descriptive identifiers to each piece of content containing Keywords, with the page Meta-description being an important part of how Google ranks websites and the snippet of text the user is most likely to see first on the search engine.
4. What to watch out for when starting out with SEO
Avoid Keyword stuffing- using as many as possible to appear in the most searches may seem like a good idea, but it can be a waste of time – bringing in more visitors who aren’t looking for your services (increasing what are known as ‘bounce rates’), and even deprioritizing your site in Google’s algorithms which prioritize quality content.
You may hear other SEO sites say that Google’s algorithms and methods of ranking websites is always changing and therefore there are no guarantees that these techniques will remain reliable. However, we take a different view, that through making consistent small changes and paying regular attention to your SEO data, your site can easily adjust to any shifts in the online landscape.
SEO is ultimately an exploration in what works best for your business, these techniques may take some time to show results and require trial-and-error, especially when just starting out, but here at ICN, we and our clients agree that it is definitely worth it.
Remember, the key to positive SEO is to stay relevant and true to what your business offers, your unique selling point is your greatest asset in boosting your online presence.
Work with us
To help you on your SEO journey ICN offers comprehensive SEO management services to take care of the basics as well as expand your business’ online presence even further through expert analysis and solutions. So contact us today and get the ball rolling by booking a call with one of our experts, and access the Ultimate Digital Performance Tool with ICN SQUID.
Blog by ICN’s SEO Analyst & Content Creator Gemma Gibson
