Most small business owners have woken up to the realization that optimizing their website is the only way to increase their web traffic and therefore drive sales online. The realization that “build it, they would not come” has sunk in. They have also been understood how the ROI on SEO is much more than any they could get from traditional advertising method or even Pay per Click advert.
Since organic SEO can bring sustained web traffic to your website, optimizing your website becomes a necessity. But as a small business who does not have the budget right away to start an SEO campaign, here are some SEO tips that you can use right now as a small business even before outsourcing your website optimization to an SEO firm.
A. Get started with Analytical Tools:The first consideration for any website is the ability to track how your users find you and what happens when a user gets to your website. Luckily Google has provided two different tools that can help you understand this via the Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tool.
While the website tools might be a little advanced, all business should have Google analytic tool installed.
Follow the steps below to add your Google analytical tool to your website
Step 1: Now head over to Google using your favorite browser
Step 2: Search for Google analytics
Step 3: Login if you have an account with Google or simply signup if you don’t.
Step 4: Register your website with them
Step 5: You will be asked to validate your website. Follow the instruction carefully and validate your website.
Step 6: Come back again after one week to have a look at your data.
Tip:
You might want to take the statistics on your website to another level. There are others paid tools that helps you track events within your website. KissMetrics from Crazy Eggs is a good tool worth using if you don’t mind paying $150 every month
B. Keyword research
Have you heard the words “Users Intent “, “Keyword Phrase” or “Long Tail Keywords” and wondered what they mean? These terms are what search engine optimization is built around. The simplest way you can begin optimizing your website is to understand how users search for your goods and products when they are online. The terms they use are what are referred to as “Keyword phrase”.
While researching a keyword must not be taken lightly as there are various factors included that would help you get converting keywords, using the Google analytics data gotten from steps above, you can actually understand how people or search engines find your website. These phrases are keyword phrases that you can use on your website.
To find these phrases, go the “traffic source” section and click on “Organic”.
So how do you implement them on your website?
Step 1: Write down all the terms that you know is highly related to your service or product
Step 2: Go through the list again. Weed out the unnecessary terms or phrase that you don’t need.
Step 3: Whatever you left with are what your will be focusing on as your keyword.
Step 4: Use those terms to populate the appropriate pages on your website. Include it in your..
- Your Title Tag
- Your Meta Description tag
- Your H1 tag
- A relevant image on the webpage
- In your body content of your website
Tips:
Check out these tips on factors affecting keyword research if you want to learn more about what factors gives you a good conversion on your keyword phrase. If you don’t know how to do this, talk to your web developer, they should do it for you for free.
C. Blogging
Search Engines and people all love contents that can add value to their life. People are also interested in information about your products and services. Since majority of the people will want first hand information about you, it is better you produce such information yourself instead of allowing them to read about your product review from somewhere else. The best way to do this is to add a Blog to your website. Best practice dictates that you host your blog on your domain or a sub domain. Therefore you might want to have something like this:
www.vtnssolutions.com/blog/- adding your blog as a sub folder
http://blog.vtnssolutions.com – adding your blog as subdomain
Click here to read more about the difference.
Choosing a blogging platform depends on you but two major ones stands out. WordPress and Blogger.com. Pick any one, the choice is yours .
How do you get content for your blog?
Method 1. Go to your competitor’s website. Check what kind of content they produce? Do any of the topic sound familiar? Do you see something missing in the content? Do you notice a gap in the information or is the information not up to date? Use it to your advantage.
Method 2: Fire up Google search bar. Type in your keywords. Check out the top 20 results that are returned to your browser. Use the same method in Method 1 to generate ideas. The produce something better than what already exists.
Pitfalls to avoid in producing your content:
- Be concise
- Spell check and recheck
- Use relevant image
- Don’t be tempted to duplicate content from other website or copy paragraph from there.
- Make the length of your content at least 800 words. If you cannot, don’t force it. What matters is how original your content is.
Tips: Focus on producing contents that answers your customer’s questions or stir up your reader’s emotion.
C. Social Media
The presence of social media has changed the way people do business. While Google has said it has not just starting using social media as a ranking factor but just as a signal, it is worth putting it into consideration. The underlining factor with Google is the point that Google is trying to bring real life situation to the online environment. Suppose there is a book trade fair going on somewhere. As a book store owner, you want to participate because you know that there will people interested in your product. Same goes for social media. People and lots of people hang out there on a daily basis so what better place to showcase your business.
Social media like Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn has provided you with the provided you with all the tools you need. Create a page on the social platform of your choose and start sharing information with your customers. The best way to engage your users is to add your business partners, customers to your page. Also join their page. Also look for group that are related to your business and join them. That way you keep in touch with them and at the same time drive engagement to your website.
Tips: Avoid posting just any kind of information. If your post won’t add value to your fans, please don’t post it.
Conclusion
Search Engine optimization is a time consuming project and if you want to take it seriously, you might need to outsource part or the whole process of your SEO campaign to an SEO firm. But nothing is as much satisfying as the fact that you actually understand how it all works out. So go set up your Google analytic tool and you will be surprised how much you will understand about the whole process of search engine optimization.
Are you a small business owner? Download your SEO Tutorial free guide and start optimizing your website yourself?
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