The major strength of business owners is running their business, and it could be challenging for most of them who want to personally take care of their online digital marketing to learn and implement SEO. SEO may even be too overwhelming for small business entrepreneurs who are not tech savvy. The terms and practices may seem to be too complicated, but there are some basic SEO practices that are not at all too difficult to digest.
Here are five easy SEO starter tips to help beginners improve their business’ online presence and rank better in search engines, particularly Google:
Create a Business Blog
If you have been noticing that your visitors are not returning to your site, creating a business blog is one way to keep them interested and motivate them to come back and check your website for new articles. It is important for both your target customers and Google that your blog offers fresh, original, and relevant information to your readers. Creating quality content for your site visitors not only benefits your SEO, it also helps reignite your connection with your market. Make sure that you optimize your blogs with just the right amount of relevant keywords added naturally into your content.
Engage on Social Media
Set up social media profiles across the major platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and LinkedIn. Creating an account on these social media channels is free, and they give you online exposure to millions of your target audience who are actively engaging online. Make sure to use your business name for your profile names to make it easy for your target customers to remember your business and also to make your profile more searchable not only in these social media channels but also on search engines.
Fix Your URLs
Pages with URLs containing gibberish at the end such as www.yourbusinessname.com/page?0123456-abcd/ have very low chances of driving organic traffic. If your business’ webpage appears in an online user’s search results and your URL is not clearly describing your page content, chances are, they won’t click on your link. Make sure to provide a clear title for everything on your website to make the most of every Google appearance.
Check Out Your Competition
Search the keywords you are aiming to rank for and see which website is currently on the first page of the search results. Once you have this information, study the offline and online tactics they implement and create a strategy to outrank them. By learning your competitors’ strategies, you can then innovate your marketing strategies to match their success.
Set Up Google Analytics
You can set up a basic Google Analytics account for your website which is free of charge. Google Analytics is a great online tool to help you analyze your website traffic, providing details on bounce rate percentages, social traffic, referrals, top landing and exit pages, and other helpful information. You may want to keep a spreadsheet to keep track of your data and compare month on month differences in web traffic.
These basic SEO tips are easy yet effective in strengthening the online presence of your business. If you are just a beginner with SEO, these will be enough to help you get started. Once you have implemented these and you are ready to apply more advanced SEO techniques, it would not be a bad idea to invest on online SEO training so you can be equipped with more powerful methods.
Michelle Rubio has been working with SMEs across the United States, Canada, Australia and the UK for the last five years. She is a highly-experienced blogger and SEO copywriter. You can see more of her works and experiences in her LinkedIn profile.