There’s no denying it: big wins with SEO as a small business is harder than it ever has been. Not only are you competing against self-promotion from the search engines themselves, but the increased competition compared to just a few years ago makes good rankings a difficulty for some.
You shouldn’t simply roll over and accept defeat, though. You should see it as a challenge to make a small business like yours take on the likes of eBay and Amazon at their own game, competing with them for lucrative keywords and coming out on top.
Here are easy SEO tips catered to small businesses to help you do it.
1 Quality over quantity
Long gone are the days when you could just update your blog daily with a simple 300 word article and see results; there are just too many people out there trying to do the same thing. Instead of posting one small article every day, invest your time more wisely by writing a knowledgeable, authoritative article over a series of days. Search engines prefer in-depth content that will be beneficial to its searchers and can provide you plenty of traffic in return for your efforts.
2 Emulate and improve
Noticed that competitor A is ranking better than you for certain keywords? Take a look at what they’re doing that has the search engines so interested. Admittedly, this can be quite the task if you’re a complete newcomer to SEO, but look at tools like Screaming Frog and read up on on-page SEO to see if there’s anywhere you should improve. Once you’ve made improvements, don’t rest on your laurels, keep adding worthwhile content and gain the edge.
3 Target realistic keywords
As much as we all wish it wasn’t the case, you aren’t going to land at the top of Google for a query like “batteries” when you have giants like Amazon to contend with (not to begin with anyway). Huge corporations might have SEO teams to match, but they’re only human – they will miss out on a few things. Here’s where you come in. Find keywords that are searched less but still retain value that larger businesses haven’t properly optimised for and put emphasis on ranking for it.
4 You need to be a PR machine
There’s a lot of talk within the SEO community about the role becoming more PR orientated with each passing year. Although there is some truth to that, it isn’t quite the case as technical SEO is always going to be massively important. However, you should still heed the words of prominent digital marketers by sending emails to people/brands who might be interested in working together. Whether you’ve mentioned a business in a blog and feel like they might to share it with their social media audience or are requesting a link, you should always set aside some time for PR.
5 Avoid “too-good-to-be-true” promises
Even if you don’t actually own and operate a website/business, there’s a good chance that you’ve received a few spammy SEO emails before. These typically offer you the chance to rank at the top of Google for a cheap fee with no work needed from you. Simple fact of the matter is that you can never be guaranteed to reach first position on search engines for your keywords, so if one of these lands in your inbox, kindly direct it to your spam folder instead. Good SEO takes time, effort, and perseverance; these “companies” are most likely going to provide negative results to your rankings instead of positive.
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