As a small business owner, it requires dedication and hard work to make your business successful and profitable. You should also understand that it should be visible online to help your business grow. One of the most effective ways to make your business visible is search engine optimization (SEO). The purpose of this blog post is to discuss SEO in more detail and discuss affordable ways to get started.
What Are the Most Affordable Ways to Get Started With SEO For Small Businesses?
Here is a list of five affordable SEO strategies for your small business that you can start with:
Keyword research
Keyword research is the first step when you are starting to develop an SEO strategy for your business. It is the process of finding the right keywords to improve your website’s rankings. To find the right keywords for your business, consider what words your current and potential customers are likely to use when looking for your products or services. There are many online tools that you can use to search for keywords, including the Keyword Tool, which is known as one of the products of Google Ads.
In order to find relevant keywords, you can also look at your competitors’ keywords. What keywords do they use to improve their online presence and sell more products/services? Try to use any of their keywords in your content and website.
Also, SEO experts recommend determining the primary or focus keyword first. You should include the main keyword in the title, URLs, and meta descriptions. Also, when looking for keywords, focus on long-tail terms that include three or more words. Long-tail keywords are more effective because they are more specific. They become particularly valuable when there is competition in the market.
Here are other benefits of proper keyword research that you may not know about:
- Keywords help generate new content ideas. When you are working on the content for your website, finding new ideas for blog posts and articles might be challenging. With the help of keyword research tools, you can find new keywords and unique content ideas.
- They save you time. If you know the right keywords that you are going to use to create your content, it will save you time and effort. For example, if you create posts with key terms that will be seen, you will attract new and potential customers. Without the proper use of keywords, your posts will get lost, resulting in wasted time.
- They improve awareness of your business. If you place keywords in the correct spots, search engines, including Google, Bing, Yahoo, and others, will rank your website highly.
- They let you discover new markets. When you use long-tail keywords, you automatically get access to other markets with new people who may be interested in your product or services.
Create Valuable Content for Your Website
One of the primary purposes of SEO is to provide valuable and useful content for a website’s visitors. There are many types of content that you can create: blog posts, videos, articles, podcasts, and more. The more content you create, the better. When you are starting to create content, you should always remember that you are creating it for your audience, not for yourself.
Also, there are some other things you need to keep in mind when you are working on your content. First, you should remember to use relevant keywords to get a higher search engine ranking. You should add them throughout the content, including the headings, body, meta description, and meta title. However, even though keywords are important, do not forget about the accessibility and readability of your content. Also, post regularly and consistently to keep bringing traffic to your website.
If you are still not sure whether creating content is worth it, here are the reasons explaining why content is king and you need to focus on content creation:
- Quality content builds trust. The main rule here is not to create content for the sake of creating content. Instead, create content that people need and want to consume. It should have value for your audience; otherwise, they will not return. If your content always has value, people will start trusting you.
- Content helps you with brand recognition. When consistently creating and posting content, you also build a library with images and other visual elements defining your brand. For this reason, experts recommend using powerful images, especially if you post your content on social media.
- Content creates leads. Whenever you post new content, you should think about new eyes that are going to see it. When people are interested in your content, initial relationships are created, also known as generating a new lead. Make sure that you are using social networks to share your content. The best social networks for generating new leads are Pinterest and Instagram.
- Content helps establish your expertise. Creating regular content in your industry and niche helps show others how knowledgeable you are. Make sure to create content that will demonstrate you as an expert. For example, if you are an interior designer, you can write a series of posts about “do and don’ts” in interior design in 2023.
Use Technical SEO
Another effective SEO strategy that helps improve websites’ rankings is technical SEO. It helps optimize a website, sitemaps, and HTML tags so that they are formatted correctly in accordance with the SEO guidelines. There are several considerations for technical SEO, and page speed is one of them. If your website is too slow and takes time to load, users may leave before it finishes loading.
Another consideration is the use of canonical tags. The mission of canonical tags is to prevent duplicate content from being indexed by search engines because it can hurt the ranking of your website. It is important to implement canonical tags correctly so that they improve the website’s ranking and help you avoid penalties from Google.
You should also create a sitemap for your website, which is another important aspect of technical SEO. A sitemap is a special file containing a list of your website’s pages and helps Google understand its structure better.
There are other affordable and easy technical SEO strategies that you may want to consider for your business:
- Caching
- URL structure
- Image compression
- Log file analysis
- 3xx or 4xx Error detection and repair
You should also know about the benefits of technical SEO:
- It helps identify SEO issues and fix them. If there are any structural issues on your website, technical SEO will help identify and solve them. The most common issues you may face include duplicate content, improper website structure, and broken links.
- It increases your reach. Technical SEO improves a website’s rankings, making it easier for people to find your business and discover your brand. This will help increase your overall reach across different channels. As a result, you will notice better engagement and higher sales.
- It improves the speed of the website. As mentioned above, a fast-loading website is essential because it will most likely get a good ranking. However, the ranking will be negatively affected if the website performs poorly.
Create a User-friendly and Mobile-Friendly Website
A website that is well-optimized and easy to use is definitely an advantage. If your website is user-friendly, users will want to stay on it, which positively impacts your website’s ranking. The more user-friendly your website is, the more confident users will feel about your website. Specific components make a website user-friendly:
- Strategically planned content. The structure of your website should be simple so people can easily navigate. Remember that users are impatient: they will look elsewhere if they cannot find something on your website easily. Therefore, it is important to always think from your customer’s perspective.
- Speed. The perfect website is fast and should load within four to six seconds. Speed is very important as it also affects your search engine ranking.
There are also certain mistakes that you should avoid when you create a website. For example, you should not hide any important information on your website. Do not give users a feeling that they have to look for information that should be easily accessible. Also, get straight to the point by answering the most important questions about your business: what do you do? How can you help? And remember that images matter. Your website should look fresh and modern. If it looks outdated and disorganized, people will think the same about your business and your products/services. You do not want this to happen.
Use Social Media
In case you do not know, social media significantly impacts SEO. Therefore, using social media platforms is one of the smartest things you can do to help you achieve high rankings. Unlike many other SEO tools, social media channels are free. If you use them the right way, you will be able to attract more new visitors to your website, boost traffic, and increase sales in general. The four most popular social media platforms that you can successfully use for your business are Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok. Your targeted audience can be on any of these platforms.
Here is a list of benefits of incorporating social media in your SEO strategy:
- It helps you build trust. Social media is exactly what you need if you want to establish trustful relationships with your audience. Since so many different businesses exist, people are more suspicious and do not engage with those they cannot trust completely. Social media gives you a unique opportunity to tell about yourself and convince people that your business is legitimate and they can trust you.
- It allows you to post all types of content. Social media platforms can be used for sharing valuable content of different types. You can post blog posts, videos, and audio on social media and interact with your audience at the same time by answering their questions and comments.
Getting Started with SEO For a Small Business – FAQs
Now, it is time to answer popular questions about affordable SEO for small businesses:
Can I do SEO on my own?
Yes, absolutely. You do not need to hire an agency specializing in SEO, and you can do everything yourself. However, it might be better to contact SEO professionals if you want to save time and money in the long run.
Does SEO really work for small businesses?
Yes, SEO works well for small businesses. To understand why it is enough, look at the current statistics: about 97% of people learn more about small businesses and local companies online than anywhere else.
BizIQ – A Team of Smart Local Marketing in Phoenix, AZ
If you are a business owner from Phoenix, AZ, currently working on your SEO strategy, and need professional help, make sure to reach out to BizIQ. Our company specializes in digital marketing and offers effective local online marketing solutions. We work with all types of businesses and have already helped over 26,000 businesses. If you want to be next, you must visit our website or call us and talk to us personally.
