Top 10 SEO Strategies Small Businesses Should Follow

Everyone wants to attract more eyeballs on their website.  Sound and effective search engine optimization (SEO) strategies have the potential of getting your site to the top of Google’s organic search rankings, leading to potential growth for your business.

SEO is a fast moving field. It’s important to stay on top of trends and changes to be effective. That said, there are some gold standards in SEO that all small businesses should adopt.

Define Your Audience

The main goal of SEO is to drive traffic to your website and make it more visible in search. But that would be of no use if your website is not showing up in front of a relevant audience. Hence, your first step should be to identify the type of audience you are targeting and know their search patterns, demographics, geographic location, preferences, etc. A step in this direction can be made by setting up a Google Analytics account that will enable you to learn more about them on a daily, weekly, monthly basis.

Put Your Audience First

Quality content should be a focus of your search strategy, and creating content your audience actually wants is critical. When creating your blog posts, it’s an absolute must that you have a reader-first mentality. What your readers are really getting out of the writings should be uppermost in your minds.

keyword rankings

Differentiate from Your Competitors

There will be always someone who has already used the keywords you wish to target. Do your homework to find out who these competitors of yours are and how you can differentiate your SEO strategy from those of others.

Improve Your Page Speed

Google places great emphasis on page speed. A great page speed improves the visibility of your site. According to Gomez.com, even a second delay in a page’s load time can decrease the customer dissatisfaction by 16 percent.  This is all the more important in the case of mobile users.

SEO

Use Long Tail Keywords

Using long long-tail keywords in your strategy is key to the success of your business. For instance, considering the keyword “SEO tips”. It may take a long time to improve your ranking on Google based on the pop. However, using long tail versions of the keyword “SEO tips” such as “SEO marketing for your business” can increase your chances of raking high in Google.

It has been found recently that 50% of those consumers searching locally on their smartphone visit a store that same day.

Local SEO 

Small businesses need to be especially focused on local search. If you are a small brick-to-brick business, local SEO is of utmost importance. It has been found recently that 50% of those consumers searching locally on their smartphone visit a store that same day. The figure stands at 34% when it comes to search on a computer or tablet. Hence it is in fitness of things that your business’s visibility should rank high in your area. Otherwise, you run the risk of losing out to competitors.

Get Your Website Compatible For Mobile Devices

Findings of a survey reveal that 60% of traffic is coming from mobile devices and that number is likely to increase. Hence it is incumbent on you to ensure that you site is optimized for mobile visitors and not difficult to navigate on mobile devices. This becomes all the more necessary because Google is in the process of awarding higher ranks to the sites that are mobile optimized.

Siri and Alexa

Voice Search

With the passage of time, the use of voice based search is increasing. It is now clear that you can ignore voice search at your own peril. Since voice search queries differ greatly from typed queries, you will have to optimize your content for voice search.

Be Authentic

SEO is not a sneaky or deceptive practice, even though there are people who tend to think so. Tricking search engines by using shady tactics is not going to help you. By doing so you run the risk of losing the trust of search engines.

Focus On Quality Over Quantity Of Links

Quality rather than quantity should be your prime consideration when it comes to building links for your website. Cranking out mass number of links without quality has the potential of damaging your website’s credibility.

SEO is an ongoing process. However, starting with a sound strategy will translate into online success for many years to come.

Enjoyed reading the AG Integrated Marketing blog? Sign up for our bi-monthly newsletter to receive marketing news and advice

 

Neeraj Parnami
Follow Me

14 thoughts on “Top 10 SEO Strategies Small Businesses Should Follow”

  1. Good article, it is always important for any small business have an strategy to boost up their small business……..Thanks For sharing with us!!! keep doing good work…

    Reply
  2. Great article, I would like to add that sometimes you must outsource things that are not under your control, I outsource my PPC activities. But I agree that one should also try to implement things on your side.

    Reply
    • Outsourcing things that are not in your control or outsourcing activities where you lack the internal resources is definitely a good direction to consider. I think it really depends on an assessment of your current setup.

      Reply
  3. It’s a fact that your blog posts are so unique and interesting and I enjoys a lot while reading your posts because you explained your post very deeply in a very easy and clear language.

    Reply
    • Thank you for the compliments. While I didn’t write this post (it’s from a guest blogger), all of the content we post here is highly vetted and approved for quality to ensure our readers are getting what they deserve!

      Reply
  4. Great Share!!! he tips are very helpful to those who want to design a website You have covered all the points required for SEO and Digital Marketing. Share your more valuable knowledge through such posts.

    Reply
  5. Every day people look for more SEO tricks and positioning advice, although it is true that they often serve to give a boost to your project, what really gets you out ahead is having a good SEO strategy defined and agreed with the objectives and resources of the company.

    Reply

Something to add? We welcome your comments below.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Connect

Subscribe

Join our email list to receive the latest updates.

Affiliate notice: Some of the links on this site are affiliate links. We only promote products we have tried and love. We may receive a small commission if you click and buy.

Skip to content
Share via
Copy link
Powered by Social Snap