5 Essential SEO Tips for SMBs

For most small businesses, it is important to build brand awareness.  Your customers need to know about you if you want your business to grow.  You need to be visible.  One of the best ways to create brand visibility is through search engine optimisation.

The truth is, more than 65% of consumers conduct online research before they actually make a purchase.  Regardless of the kind of business that you’re in, it is important that you optimise your digital presence.  So, when your customers are searching for products or services on Google, you will be visible to them.  

While search engine optimisation can deliver excellent results, it requires a lot of time, effort, and yes, even money.  Fortunately, there are some hacks that you can use to speed up the process.  Here are SEO strategies that can help you boost your rank.

Research Your Keywords Well

What are the keywords that your target audience may likely use to search for your products or services.  For instance, if you sell handbags, your target audience may use the words “women’s bags” when making their queries.  It is important that you optimise your website with the right keywords.

To find these keywords, make sure to use research tools like Google Keyword Planner or Moz Keyword Explorer.  They are quite easy to use.  Just type in your keywords and find all the relevant combinations.  Based on the popular keywords, you can determine which ones are most useful.  However, be careful when choosing the keywords to use.  Avoid keywords with high competition.  Businesses with high domain authority websites will likely be competing for the same keywords.

For small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs), it is better to focus on niche keywords.  This way you can reach out to a smaller specific audience.  Specific keywords might work better than the most popular keywords.  Competition is usually lower, so SEO efforts needed for these keywords are relatively easier.

Create Your Listing

One of the best ways for SMBs to boost their online visibility is to create their listing on Google My Business.  Through this, people can control how the search engine would display their business on page results.  Listing your business would also provide Google with the right information.

You can provide various details like your contact information, location, and business address.  You can also add relevant photos to offer prospective customers a glimpse of your business premises and products.  You can also provide answers to frequently asked questions.

Google My Business listings are quite helpful when it comes to optimising your website for voice-based or “near me” searches or queries.  It is crucial to outranking your competitors in local searches.

Many third party apps and services pull information from Google, so make sure to update your information on Google’s My Business Page.  This will represent your business more accurately and consistently across various platforms.

Through local listings, you will be able to get insight about your customer’s behaviour.  You can determine how people find you and where your website’s visibility is low.  You can then tailor your campaign based on this.

Optimise Your Website for Mobile Phones

The number of people who use their phones to surf the Internet, send out emails, check out information has increased by leaps and bounds.  In 2018, mobile phone users generated more than 50% of total web traffic.  The first step to get more traffic to your website is to optimise it for mobile users.  Responsiveness should be a priority.

If your website is optimised, people won’t have to zoom in and out trying to check the information in your website.  A mobile-friendly website is accessible from various gadgets regardless of size.

This can help improve your search rank.  Google has updated their algorithm to take into account searches using mobile phones.  It is called mobile first indexing.  Google checks on mobile web pages to index them and determine your site’s ranking.  You have to ensure mobile responsiveness in your SEO plan.

Google recommends that your mobile and desktop sites should have the same crawlable content and indexable formats.  This applies to both videos and texts.  Make sure to use structured data on both the mobile and desktop versions of your website, and add the meta descriptions on both versions.

Optimise Your Website for Voice Searches

Google Home and Amazon Echo has made it possible for people to multi-task.  You can do several things at once.  You can play a mobile game, and be ordering your dinner, or setting a doctor’s appointment.  You can finish several tasks all at once.  You can place calls or search items on the Internet with the help of your phone or computer’s voice assistant.

Voice searchers can have a huge impact on revenue.  So, make sure to redesign your website to support both visual and voice searches.  Voice searches are expected to increase revenue in as much as 30% by 2021.

By knowing the important of voice-based searches, you can change your tactics to stay ahead of your competitors in the coming years.  Most voice-based searches are done using mobile devices, so you need to make sure your website is truly mobile-friendly.  Your content needs to focus on short keywords.  They need to be more conversational because voice searches are usually in the form of conversational language.

Voice searches are also typically longer.  People do not search for “Los Angeles London flight fare.”  Instead, they would probably ask, “What is the cost of Los Angeles to London flights?”  Voice queries begin with what, how, why, when, and where.  So, keep this in mind when you create content for your website.  Focus on answering people’s questions.  Create content that can attract and engage more potential customers.

Create Video Content

Produce more videos that can create more audience.  It is estimated that video traffic will account for 82% of online traffic.  Video content can drive a lot of traffic to your website.  Create more videos to leverage video content to boost your search.  Make sure search engines crawlers will understand what your video is all about.