To be able to succeed in the digital world that is too competitive, startups and small business owners need to understand and follow search engine optimization techniques for growing, sustaining and building a digital presence in a competitive market.
Keep reading to find out tips for search engine optimization and see results in only a couple of weeks.
Before we go into the topic let us see some search engine optimization Stats for 2020
Google has received nearly 2.3 trillion searches this year. (Internet Live Stats)
On the first page alone, the first five organic results account for 67.60% of all the clicks. (Zero Limit Web)
Long-tail keyword searches have a click-through rate of 3% to 5% higher than generic searches. (Smart Insights)
“Where to buy” + “near me” mobile queries have grown by over 200% in the past two years. (Google)
“Best” + “right now” mobile queries have grown by over 125% in the last two years. (Google)Organic Search Drives 51% Of Traffic to the websites (Report by brightedge.com)
Well, If you wish to run a profitable small business having a digital presence is must, for which it is important to have an extremely good SEO plan that combines appropriate keyword research, understanding of segmented and targeted audience, proper website structure (UX Design) to guarantee optimal website visitors experience which may help increase website visibility in search engines and it also needs other techniques to make sure you win the top place in search results.
1. Doing on-page and off-page optimization is equally important.
On-page optimization involves technical SEO mostly concentrates on the website performance and content on the website to improve the page quality in terms of user experience and quality content. The main aspects involved in on-page SEO are Title and Description Meta tags, Heading tags, URL structure, Alt text for images, site speed, internal links, website responsiveness, keywords frequency, robotos.txt, XML sitemap, etc. When it comes to off-page it involves generating authority to your website pages. Just doing on-page optimization is not enough these days, you need to get quality black links to your web-pages which will make your page more popular amount the audience and also for google crawler as well, you need to create linkable content in your industry which is unique. So, to get proper black links you need to do guest blogging, do some research on your industry that if there are any broken links on websites which are related to your field of expertise and then create content for them and pitch them to replace your content on the broken link by giving a back-link to your site. Also, you can answer Q&A on the site like Quora, you can also create several infographics with the original data that you might be having which results in a lot of usage of your content.
2. Have a proper keyword research strategy
Having strategy in place to attain SEO goals is a key factor for SEO success, it is necessary to take your time to do some proper research for a keyword that you wanted to use for your website SEO and use the best performing keywords of your industry, which will help your business. This means you must have a prioritized list of your most performing keywords in your industry so that it's possible to define keywords and phrases most often utilized by prospects during their online searches and include these in your meta tags and descriptions of your website and also try to write your content using the selected keywords. Note: It doesn't mean you should stuff the keywords forcefully, but try and write articles and blogs related to your keywords. Also, use these keywords in various digital marketing campaigns you'll be executing for bringing your prospects to your website which will give you more visibility for particular keywords.
3. Creating Content that is engaging your audience,
gives your website a real boost in search visibility. Well, while keywords and other matrix are important in search optimization but the reality is content plays an important role, you need to be interesting and unique with your content when you are showing it to either google crawler or a human reading your blog. When doing thorough keyword research within your niche, find out what topics get substantial traffic, and then direct your efforts there initially apart from writing your own unique and creative content. Just remember one thing, always write your content for your audience first and then try to optimize it to search engines, not vice versa.
4. SEO is always a recurring process,
It's not a digital marketing technique that gives instant results but you will be seeing great long term results. Search results are always in flux, as search engines will frequently redefine its ranking factors in their algorithm updates, for example, Google made 3200 algorithm changes in one year. You need to understand the same and ensure your website is structured to adapt change for best SEO results. Sites that adapt changes quickly will get the advantage of being shown on the top of Google searches, even when they're relatively new by betting a lot of the more recognized or bigger companies in the same industry.
5. Monitor your outcomes and act on them,
Google Analytics is one tool which can give you all the details about your website performance in Google. You can analyze different dimensions based on their acquisition, behavior, geographic, Interest, Search Terms, etc. You can also understand which keywords are giving you better traffic and what pages of your website are performing better on the search engine.
6. Backlinks are still the key factor,
Always take some time in finding ways to link to internally relevant locations within your site and then invest a quality amount of time looking for quality external links, don't try to get links from the websites which have no domain/page authority. Even if you get a few links try to get it from good sources.
To conclude these days, I see a lot of startups and small business hiring digital agencies and digital marketing companies, yes taking professional's help will surely result in better outcomes, but I think you need to do your part in strategizing the SEO plan as no one can understand your business and your customers better than you.
Hope you will get better results by following the above tips, If you want to add any tips for your peer small business owners please do comment below.
