6 SEO Basics for Any Business
February 2021
While many business owners are quite savvy about Search Engine Optimization (SEO), there are just as many with limited knowledge about SEO. In today’s world, SEO is a marketing fundamental and any business with a website needs to incorporate at least a minimal level of SEO tactics. No matter the industry, search plays a big role in how consumers shop and make buying decisions.
First Things First
SEO is the practice of increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to your website through organic – unpaid – traffic rather than direct traffic or paid traffic to your site. To determine an SEO strategy, you must first have a solid understanding of how your business acquires customers.
The level of SEO your business may need depends on your business model. Thus, SEO strategies can vary significantly from business to business. For example, a home services company (plumbing, electrical, HVAC) typically needs a robust online presence to capture those who are actively searching for these services. But a small professional services firm (law, CPA) may have a business model where nearly all its business is generated by referrals from clients or other trusted advisors. Thus, it is important to look at your overall to customer acquisition strategy to determine the best SEO approach for your business.
No matter your business type, the following are six essential SEO strategies a website needs to perform well in search rankings.
1. Keywords. Keywords are the foundation of any successful SEO strategy. You need to research the words and phrases potential customers use to search for your services and incorporate them into your site’s content. For most small businesses, your keywords will be a combination of words that describe the products or services you provide and the geographic location where you provide them.
2. Page Titles and Meta Descriptions. In addition to incorporating keywords into your website content, you need to optimize each page by naturally using keywords in your page titles. Page titles are what search engines display in search results and the goal is to quickly communicate what the page is about and get a user to click on the listing. Essentially, you want to make sure the headlines on your webpages contain your keywords/phrases.
3. High-Quality Content. Content is king! You must have informative content throughout your site. Your content needs to provide answers to the questions visitors are searching for on Google or other search engines. And quality content is important to increase your chances of ranking high in search results. The more content the better and adding content to your site frequently through blog posts or newsletters will also improve your site’s search engine ranking.
4. Link Building. Creating internal links throughout your website is an important best practice. Review your content to ensure related pages link to each other as internal links provide a better user experience. In addition, if you can attract visitors to your site from high-quality websites through backlinks (a link to your website from another website), you can improve your site ranking. For example, having your business listed on a web directory can generate links to your site.
5. Site Speed. Page speed is essential for user experience. Just like people do not like to wait for a webpage to load, neither do web crawlers – which means your site is less likely to be indexed by Google. If your page speed is too slow, you will likely need to work with your web developer to diagnose and fix the issues. There are a number of free tools available to check your page speed including Google PageSpeed Insights.
6. Mobile Optimization. Unless you have an extremely dated website, your website should be optimized for mobile. As 60% of Google searches are performed on a mobile device, your website must be mobile-friendly. If you are not sure if your site is mobile-friendly, the Google Mobile-Friendly Test tool is a helpful resource.
If the above sounds complicated, you are not alone – and these are only the basics. Most small business owners do not have time to learn and handle all that is necessary for a website to perform well. And for companies that rely on their websites to generate much of their business, working with an experienced digital marketing firm is imperative.