- Easy SEO Strategies for Small Businesses
- Getting Started With Local SEO for Small Businesses
- How to Optimize for Mobile Phone Users
Q: Can you do SEO for free?
A: Yes! Affordable small business SEO does exist. In fact you can effectively manage your own SEO for free. SEO is a series of steps taken to optimize the content on your website (on-page SEO) combined with off page strategies that are completely free. For small businesses, implementing Local SEO strategies is the best use of your time and gives you the biggest value for your effort.
Although we at Alliance Virtual Offices do not provide small business SEO services directly, we do implement and maintain local SEO and global SEO strategies on a daily basis. We know what strategies work for us, and as a business-to-business provider, we’ve seen what works for small businesses.
This guide is your first step on a path that extends your brand’s reach and drives leads to your small business website through free search engine traffic.
Today’s companies can no longer survive on bare bones business practices.
While taking out newspaper ads and having a static website featuring your basic offerings is great, it’s not enough to thrive in today’s economy.
As more people stay at home and high-risk individuals want to continue purchasing their favorite products online, the digitization of our economy has never been more evident.
The pandemic is still part of our daily reality, and it’s becoming more clear that the way we live, socialize, and purchase products will never return back to pre-pandemic normalcy.
Businesses no longer have the option but to adapt to the increasingly distributed nature of our world.
And what does that mean exactly? Digitization.
Businesses need an online presence to survive in this day and age, and the best way to stand out amongst the sea of competitors is to have the best search engine optimization (SEO) strategies on your side.
Related: Top Website Benefits for Small Businesses
But what is SEO? And how can it help your small business?
SEO is simply a process that:
- Helps enhance the quality of traffic and search engine ranking of your website
- Increases the quantity of traffic your website receives
- Drives organic traffic from search engines, meaning you don’t have to pay for the traffic like you do with ads
Small business SEO is one of the key ways for companies to bolster their revenue in an affordable way, especially as people continue to do a large portion of their shopping online.
It’s clear that businesses are taking notes and looking for new ways of adopting a more online-centric approach to ensure that they are still piquing the interest of local customers, while also broadening their reach to new customers outside of their market.
Even if your company relies on walk-in business, having an online presence and proper SEO makes it easier to stay afloat during pandemic-related restrictions and attract potential customers when it’s safe to do so.
Digital adoption is inevitable, with research from McKinsey finding that society was catapulted five years into the future in terms of consumer and business digital adoption in just eight weeks.
Although lockdowns won’t last forever and in some parts of the world, we are seeing a slight return to normalcy as vaccines become more readily available to the public, the future of the economy will be anything but a return of what we once knew.
That’s why SEO plays a critical role for the sustainability and longevity of businesses, no matter the industry or size of companies.
What Makes SEO Important?
Isn’t SEO reserved for technologically-centric companies?
While some may be skeptical and think SEO is just excessive usage of digital tools, it can grow the exposure of your business in ways that can’t be done tangibly.
SEO has the ability to:
- Help your website become more user-friendly
- Attract more customers and leads
- Boost conversion rates
- Grow your brand awareness
- Beat your competitors
Without SEO, your company’s website can easily get lost in the sea of the billions of websites that exist online.
And this means more than standing out in the global economy — it can also impact how you stand up to competitors in your local area.
In fact, the importance of local SEO should not be understated.
Not only do you gain the benefits of general SEO, you also have the ability to better cater to your community and compete with businesses that operate within the same niche in your geographic area.
But how do you guide those customers into your lap?
As you’re probably aware, the internet is vast and can point searchers in various directions for their inquiries, so in order to grasp the attention of your potential customers, you need to give them instant access to your company’s information.
People are not interested in doing deep research or calling a business to find out the basics a company has to offer. Local shoppers want quick access to everything your company is about, such as business hours, address, location, the products and services you offer, your current stock, and more.
If they can’t get that information in a timely manner, they are guaranteed to find another business that does.
And in the case that they do show up to your store and don’t find what they need, you are almost certain to lose them as a customer.
Word spreads fast, and one poor customer experience can cause a domino effect that impacts your company’s reputation in your community.
Easy Affordable Small Business SEO Strategies
I’m sure you understand the importance of SEO now. That’s great!
But how do you implement the most optimal SEO strategy? While it may seem complicated to improve your online standing, you don’t have to be a computer whiz to enhance your business’ virtual presence.
To execute the best SEO strategies, start here:
Uh oh! 404 Page Not Found
Make sure your website does not have any broken links or empty and missing pages. Using Google Search Console is a great, free way to find these errors along with a multitude of other important data.
Meta title and Meta description on every web page
A meta title or HTML title tag defines the title of a page on your website. Titles are displayed on search engines as clickable headers. The title tag is oftentimes the same as the primary header (H1) on a page. Ensure your title includes the primary keyword you’d like to target for that page.
A meta description is a brief explanation of the content on the page. This is often displayed as the description you see on search engine results underneath the page’s title. Include your primary keyword in your meta description, and entice searchers to click yours versus your competitors’.
Write High Quality, Keyword Rich Copy
There are free resources like UberSuggest, Moz Keyword Explorer and Google Keyword Planner that can help you conduct research that relate to your business and can help you identify the most commonly searched keywords to include on your website.
Product Pages
Create a separate web page for each product or service you offer
Maintain Minimum Content Length
200 words. Meeting this word count makes it easier for you to fit in primary keywords that help boost your web’s presence on search results.
Spelling and Grammar Check
Proofread to make sure there are no grammatical or spelling errors. Eliminating any grammatical or spelling mistakes shows attention to detail and fills out a reputation of professionalism.
Link Your Pages Together
This helps direct the flow of traffic to other relevant pages, and helps search engines crawl your entire site. Additionally, any time another website links to your page, that “equity” will be shared through to the other pages you link to.
UX and Page Speed
Utilize website design that is user-friendly and speedy. Find tools that can give you a better insight into how fast your website is running and whether it is mobile-friendly.
This is essential as research has shown that 40% of consumers will abandon a website that takes three or more seconds to load.
Foster Connections & Engage Online
Start a website blog that nurtures discussion about your company’s products and services. Creating a blog is a great way to engage your customers and nurture a community of people who share interests.
All of these methods can help you amplify your presence online, thus boosting your reputation and conversion rates.
Getting Started With Local SEO for Small Businesses
Remember that oftentimes, people are searching for products and services within their own area.
If you want your company to appear as one of the top search results when someone inquires about services within your industry, it’s important to narrow down your SEO strategies.
So if you want to go further and enhance your local SEO, include the tools above, then focus on your direct surroundings to grow your reputation within the community and neighborhood.
Admittedly, taking a more narrow approach to your SEO strategy could leave you thinking, “How specific do I need to be for optimal local SEO?”
The answer to this requires you to focus on the three main aspects of local SEO:
- Proximity
Is the business close enough to the searcher to be the most optimal result for their inquiry? - Prominence
Which businesses are the most prominent among the results the searcher was looking for? - Relevance
Does this business provide or sell the product or service that the searcher is seeking?
In order to answer these questions, companies will need to submit NAP (name, address, and phone number) citations, which are simply just online listings of your company, to various online platforms. Doing so is a good starting point for optimizing your local SEO.
Submitting accurate, updated information about your company not only increases your brand awareness, it also can help your overall search engine rankings, like on Google Search and Google Maps.
If you run a remote business and operate from home, you’re probably thinking…
“I’m not going to plaster my personal phone number and home address across hundreds of websites.”
That’s where a Virtual Phone Number and Virtual Office Address come in handy. Chat with a rep to see how we can help protect your privacy while you promote your business.
If you’d like more information, we also have a couple of guides to help you out:
- Need Phone Numbers for Your Business? Costs and Solutions
- Virtual Mailing Address for Your Business
- How to Setup | Virtual Address for LLC Registration
Moving on:
Before you move further, it’s important to note that there are three different types of platforms you can submit your local citations to, including:
- Major Local Business Data Platforms
These are the platforms that are absolutely necessary for a business to submit a citation to such as Google, Yelp, and Facebook. - Geo/Industry-Specific Platforms
These platforms are more geographic and industry-specific to your business and the area you are located in, such as your city’s chamber of commerce website or a business directory on a local news website. - The Wider Web
This platform is much more broad and can include various news sites, government databases, blogs, apps, and more.
The quality of the platform you submit a citation to can have a direct impact on your company’s online ranking, so refer to this guide if you need tips when scrutinizing a website before putting in your business’ information.
Once you’ve had an understanding of each different type of platform you can submit your citation to, you can actually begin the information uploading process across a wide variety of platforms that best suit your business.
Whatever method you decide to take, you should start by making a business profile on Google My Business, which gives you a relatively straightforward method of entering all of your company’s necessary information to be listed online.
After you’ve done that, you can start branching out and submitting NAP citations to various other websites, such as:
- Apple Maps
- CityGrid
- Factual
- FourSquare
- Superpages
- Yelp
- YellowPages
Although this is just a partial list of websites you should be submitting local citations to, there are hundreds you can include that can help boost your presence.
While it is crucial you include a basic NAP citation, many of these websites allow you to include additional, unique information about your business, such as business description, email address, driving and parking directions, website and social media links, business category, reviews and owner responses, photos, videos, and more.
It’s also essential to understand that oftentimes, citations and listings can show up without any action from you. This is mainly due to data from certain platforms flowing to other websites since data-sharing is increasingly common.
That’s why it is important to keep track of your citations and make sure the information listed is accurate. If there is inaccurate and old information listed on these websites, your company risks losing customers, which can hinder your reputation, revenue, and lead customers to favor your competitors.
But you just got done going on a citation-submitting spree, and now your company’s information is spread across 50 different platforms. How are you supposed to manage all of the information on those websites?
Of course, it is difficult to manually oversee your business’ information across several websites and easy to lose track of which ones you haven’t updated.
Luckily, there are tools that exist that make it easy for you to make any updates to your listing, whether it’s a change in business hours, location, or rebranding.
For instance!
Yext is one resource that easily scans the web for your business’ citation information, provides you a comprehensive list, and even includes any errors or discrepancies in those citations. Using Yext makes updating your citations much more simple and less tedious.
Once you’ve knocked out citation submissions across the internet, you can become more specific in the information you provide to the public and show what makes you different from the rest.
Using Website Content to Increase Sales
Showcasing your niche offerings is what will inevitably set you apart from the competition.
If you can identify unique products or services that your rivals may not offer, you can make that the center of your SEO.
And at the core of this is content. Content is king when executing the best possible SEO strategies.
But how exactly can you incorporate content in a way that is organic and does not feel like a forced advertisement?
When creating this content, it’s important to make sure you do research about which keywords, particularly local keywords, can help strengthen your company’s content.
Using tools like Google’s Keyword Planner makes identifying the strongest keywords easy and can help you improve your website’s ranking.
For example, if you’re a bakery owner that specializes in gluten-free cakes based in Kentucky, Google Ads Keyword Tools makes it simple to find terms and phrases that customers are looking for connected to your company and its location.
Once you’ve compiled the best possible words and phrases that are related to your business, you can weave them throughout all of your content in a way that boosts your SEO.
You can then look for both general and local online business directories, get your company’s information published, and make sure you have a backlink to your website on your listings.
How to Optimize for Mobile Phone Users
Hopefully you now feel like you have a foundational grasp on how SEO can enhance your company’s website.
But there’s even more ways to set your company’s website apart from rivals!
By branching beyond keywords and phrases, you can make your company’s website even more accessible to all audiences.
For instance, voice search has exploded in popularity over the past year. Smart assistants like Siri and Alexa have made researching businesses that much more simple.
Now, if you’re looking for your local neighborhood grocery store’s business hours, you can simply say, “OK Google, tell me [grocery store name]’s hours.”
This can be done on many mobile devices or simply on a web browser.
This is one of many reasons why it’s so important to make sure all of your company’s information is accurate online.
Not only is incorporating voice search as part of your SEO strategy ideal for your company’s bottom line, it also makes your business more accessible to customers who have disabilities and rely on this type of technology to operate their devices.
This inclusivity is essential for progressive companies who want repeat customers and a good standing with the local community. Making sure that your website is truly accessible can make the difference between retaining and losing customers.
If you want to be absolutely certain that your website’s presence is attractive to users, you must optimize your website for mobile devices.
But what strategies can you take to ensure that your website runs smoothly on mobile devices?
- Use a tool like Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test to see where your website stands on mobile optimization.
- If your website fails such a test, you should reconsider altering your website’s design, or implementing a responsive design..
- You can also look to create a separate mobile website, with a mobile-specific URL.
- Building a mobile app is another option and can often run more seamlessly than a website. However, they are also more expensive to build and upkeep.
Lastly, think about other services that can enhance your business’ standing and help boost your reputation locally and even worldwide.
For instance!
Reflect on other areas of your company that may help boost your customer service, and that could lead to more positive reviews on your website or other business listings.
Using our tools, customers can easily access company information in a way that is professional and quick. The user experience is crucial to a good reputation, and customer experience has never been more important to a successful business.With our virtual receptionist plans, you can offload overwhelming tasks such as:
- Scheduling appointments
- Taking phone calls and messages
- Quickly answering customer inquiries
- Assisting customers with order fulfillment
Allowing a trustworthy professional to take care of these necessary daily duties helps you improve your customer service, an absolutely crucial part to any successful business.
Being the company with infamously poor customer service means fewer customers, and of course fewer customers means you risk losing major revenue.
The customer experience is the crux of a healthy company, so making use of modern-day strategies like virtual receptionists and proper SEO can have a great impact on your business’ standing.
Ensuring that the customer experience is well-thought-out not only improves your company’s reputation, it also allows you to focus on amplifying your SEO strategies.
Conclusion & Further Reading
So let’s review your necessary SEO checklist.
When planning out an SEO strategy for your local business, remember to have the following details as part of your arsenal:
- In-depth keyword, phrase, and term research that relates to your business both globally and locally
- NAP citations that feature, at minimum, your company’s name, address, and phone number. However, we suggest going further and including other details about your business to enhance your SEO.
- A website that is user- and mobile-friendly and runs efficiently.
- Content on your website that interweaves all of the important keywords you’ve identified from your research. This can range from an ‘About Us’ page, an embedded link on your website to your company’s social media profiles, or a blog that discusses your industry and related local news.
There are various ways you can boost your brand’s presence and awareness locally and worldwide, but updating your methods for the future can make or break you as a company.
And if this guide hasn’t been clear yet, SEO needs to be part of this strategy.
SEO is more important than ever before, and if it is not part of your growth strategies, your business risks being left behind and being overtaken by rivals.
No business is too small or big to neglect these methods.
While it may be hard to believe that a small business could need digital methods for modern-day marketing strategies, it’s clear that using these tools can truly establish your company as an important part of your community and industry.
Optimizing the best SEO practices allows your small business to become your community’s go-to destination for your products and services. Having a reliable reputation means your company will play a significant role within your neighborhood, allowing you to serve customers local and beyond.
