Many small business owners get frustrated when they think about how to go about getting more traffic through SEO. There are many aspects of SEO that can be complicated but it doesn’t have to be. With the right plan of action, a few key elements added into your website and marketing strategy and you could find yourself rising in the ranks in the search engine as well as watching your visitor count climb in a few short months. In this article we will discuss five easy steps you can implement for your small business SEO.
1. Start with your website
Take a look at your website or blog. If you have a lot of content, be sure that you are targeting keywords that people are using to find information or to purchase something. Make sure that you have other keywords linking to relevant content on other posts. This will ensure that both the searchbots will crawl all your pages as well as give your readers additional information they can read to gain even more knowledge or make an informed buying decision. This is what is considered “onpage seo”. This is often a step that many small business owners overlook when thinking of search engine optimization.
2. Don’t disregard Article Marketing and Web 2.0 properties
While changes have been made by Google in their latest Pengiun and Panda slaps that saw a lot of small businesses wondering what happened with their article marketing strategies, the fact still remains that content is king. As long as you continue to put out quality content both on your blog/website and you own web 2.0 accounts the traffic will still keep coming in. This also means using “offpage seo” techniques as well when ranking for keywords. The simple fact remains that while Google may be a top dog in the search engine world, there are still a ton of other searchers using the lesser known search engines available and you will still be found the more you get your links out there. Places like Hubpages, Wizzley, Squidoo, and Ezine Articles still see almost just as many viewers as they did before.
3. Don’t forget the importance of Social Media
More and more often now SEO and local marketing companies are seeing the value of adding social media into their marketing efforts. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and many other places are great gathering places for people to meet, learn and share information, videos, and stories. By setting up business accounts at these sites, you can build up followers, pick up new clients, share recommendations for other valuable businesses, and perhaps even get into a joint venture with another company where you could both benefit.
4.) Put up Advertisements
There are a few methods you can use for putting up advertisements to utilize your keywords and help with SEO. You can use free classified sites like Craigslist, FreeAds or Kijiji.com or you can invest some money into Pay Per Click on Google, Bidvertiser or even Facebook. These are all sites that reach a lot of viewers and can help you increase your traffic and teach you what keywords are the best for bringing in that market that will purchase something from you.
5.) Think about hiring a local marketing company
If you can afford to hire a local marketing company or SEO consultant, they can work with you to show you the best ways to bring in quality traffic with SEO techniques. Some small business owners do not understand how to find the best keywords that will convert into sales. Most companies use tracking systems so you can see just what works and what doesn’t without having to try to figure it all out yourself.
