Search engine optimization (SEO) has become an essential aspect for every business in this day and age. However, after researching Google Search Trends and Statistics, many small businesses still find it challenging to build a winning SEO strategy that aligns their budgets and resources with the goals they’ve set.
With SEO, you can increase organic traffic to your website by having it show up in search engines’ top results. This comes with a lot of benefits, including more exposure and free targeted traffic, both of which are good for business. This is why SEO needs to be part of every business’s marketing strategy, but you need to spend money to succeed at it because SEO takes time and effort before yielding positive results. If you’re just starting out and don’t have the resources or the knowledge needed for effective SEO, then this might not be an option for you — at least until that coveted first-page ranking has been achieved.
[Related: 4 Month SEO Strategy Plan]
But what about those who want to increase their online presence without investing too much? Many small businesses find it challenging to align their budgets and resources with the goals they’ve set as far as SEO is concerned. Perhaps this is why many companies have been going straight to PPC advertising, or pay-per-click marketing, which comes with a promise of lower costs and faster results.
However, there’s still a way to build an SEO strategy without spending so much money. Here are the quick tips:
1. Use Long-tail keywords
Long-tail keywords are phrases that contain three, four, or more words. They are generally not as competitive as short-tail keywords, but they usually convert better because they draw the attention of those ready to purchase.
2. Increase Your Content Velocity
This means publishing reports, explainer videos, and infographics on your site regularly. Google favors sites with fresh content, ranking them higher in their search results pages (SERPs). You can also use this tactic to increase your page views per visit (time on site), which is another factor that plays into your rankings.
3. Create a Great User Experience
Your website should have fast loading speeds to avoid losing visitors due to long waiting times. Also, you should include easy navigation on your site to make it easier for visitors to find what they are looking for on your website. If you want to create a great user experience, you can also use tools like Optimizely and Google Website Optimizer to test the speed of your site’s loading times.
4. Get Links From Relevant Sites
Links from relevant sites or links that are published high up on these sites are more important than ever. You need links that point back at your domain – this is called inbound link building.
So if you are running an online apparel shop, you will need links coming from e-commerce sites so that search engines know what industry you belong to.
5. Focus on Local Search
Local SEO can help you grow your business by reaching customers in the neighborhood. If you’re a plumber, then this is probably one of your primary goals – to get more clients that live near you.
The best local SEO practices include:claiming your Google Business Listing and getting reviews from people who have used your service and leaving these reviews on third-party sites like Yelp. Make sure to optimize all your web pages so that they rank well for relevant keyphrases, add links to other local businesses and create an authority site, and also create citations for yourself on industry-related directories.
6. Optimize Mobile Search
Today, mobile devices have gained a huge share of the searches done on Google, Yahoo, and Bing. If you didn’t know, mobile search is a lot more complicated than it seems because users need quick answers to their questions.
This means that if your local business doesn’t have a mobile-optimized website yet, now is the best time for you to start working on one. Otherwise, you will be losing out on many searches from potential customers who use smartphones and tablets to look up information related to your niche.
Conclusion
When creating a local SEO strategy, make sure that all parts of your website are easily accessible from both desktop and smartphone devices. Always give and educate visitors an option so they can contact you directly through phone or email and ensure your web pages load quickly and work flawlessly on all devices.
If you’ve got lots of time to spare, another way you can increase your local search rankings is by shooting videos about things related to your niche. While this may seem like a lot of work (and it is), creating videos has never been easier, thanks to modern technology.
Wouldn’t it be nice if someone created the next “Gangnam Style” video for you? All you have to do is put in some hard work. It’s also important that every webpage on your website loads quickly. The faster each webpage loads, the sooner visitors will get what they need from your site and move on with their day.
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Author: Andre Oentoro is the founder of Breadnbeyond, an award-winning explainer video company. He helps businesses increase conversion rates, close more sales, and get positive ROI from explainer videos (in that order).
