Whatever the size of your business, SEO is crucial and should be prioritised when writing your marketing plan. Here are five tips to get your started…
1. Google My Business
First things first, make sure you’re locally listed! With 46% of all Google searches being for local information (socialmediatoday.com), it’s imperative that your business is featured on Google My Business.
2. Refine your keyword strategy
Firstly, be realistic about which keywords you’re going to be targeting, and make sure to look at the search engine results page. You’ll most likely find that targeting long-tail alternatives work better with your modest budget than looking to target coveted top-of-page-one position of a highly competitive and expensive keyword.
Long-tail keywords are usually specific phrases with three or more words. For example, a small sandwich shop based in Manchester would find it difficult to reach top-page results and high conversion rates with the keywords “sandwich shop”. Instead, using long-tail keywords such as “sandwich shop in Manchester” would gain more traction.
Here are some tips for your long-tail keyword strategy:
- Mix it up: make sure to use different keyword “themes” (e.g. for sandwich shop, don’t just stick to “sandwiches”, use other keywords such as “lunch deal”) and incorporate them into the text of your website.
- Identify your current keywords: search for the long-tail keywords within your website that are getting high impressions but low clicks, as then you could assign more of your budget to them which could lead to an improved click return. You can do this in Google Search Console’s Performance reports.
- Be the go-to place: Google’s ‘People also ask’ results are a great way to discover some of the best long-tail keywords as usually, they’re in the form of a question. To find out more, head to Google and go to the ‘People also ask’ results.
3. Take advantage of free SEO tools
If you’ve got the budget for it then check out some of the industry-recognised ‘all in one’ SEO solutions, such as Moz, SEMrush or Ahrefs, but if you don’t, here are some free alternatives:
- Google Search Console provides information and reports about keyword performance, page impressions and clicks, indexing and crawl stats, sitemap status, mobile usability, incoming links… plus more.
- Google Analytics measures website performance.
- Google Trends assesses the popularity of search queries over time and in different regions.
Answer the Public
Answer the Public is a great tool for discovering new long-tail keyword opportunities and content ideas. It uses auto-suggest search results from Google and Bing
Screaming Frog SEO Spider
Use this tool to analyse page titles and metadata, discover broken links, create sitemaps, and much more.
4. Sweat your assets
Once you know what content themes perform best, repurpose your existing content. Here are some tips:
- Change it up: find your most popular posts and see if you can combine some of the content to create one post. Use some of the post content to publish visual posts such as an infographic, presentation, or video.
- Update key content: if you have any popular posts with key data, update it and keep it fresh!
5. Don’t forget about links
The more high-quality backlinks you have, the better chance you have of a higher-ranking website. However, they must come from reputable websites in order to make a difference.
- Be a guest writer: write for industry blogs and publications so that you are seen as a thought leader.
- Sign up to directories: business directories can give your SEO a small boost.