Do you want your family business to be the first one people see when they search for a related term on Google and other major search engines? This can have far-reaching benefits and consequences, if not done correctly.
Whether you are a hairdresser or a local taxi company, a vegan cafe, or anything else, the process of implementing an effective SEO strategy can be the difference between people finding your business or opting for the competition. In this article, we’ll look at the basics of SEO for small businesses and how they can serve you best.
Organic Search Results
Paid search results are the ones you see displayed as the top results on any given search. They are identifiable by the small ‘Ad’ notice in the corner. If you click them the company, who has made the ad will be deducted a small fee from their Pay-Per-Click budget (PPC).
This can be a useful form of digital advertising, but you will also want a high ranking in the Organic Search Results – these are the results underneath the paid ones. They are free and can be improved with effective Search Engine Optimization (SEO), a good SEO agency can help you to get it right.
Important Keywords
The Google search engine, and other search engines, have crawlers – programs that trawl the Internet and collect data about the quality and relevance of websites. This information is stored in the index and used to match results to a user’s search query.
If you offer high-quality content on your website and blog, and if you have keywords that are relevant to your product, service, or industry, the search engine will be able to match a user’s query to your website according to relevance. This means the user is more likely to engage with your business.
On-Page SEO
Because of the way search engines operate, crawling for keywords and quality content, you have to optimize your online business so that it is findable for relevant customers. One way to do this is to optimize your On-Page SEO.
On-Page SEO refers to the way you organize your keywords on your website. After doing your keyword research, and identifying the keywords most relevant to your business, you need to set them up on your website in a way that is best suited to the internet crawlers. Put your keywords in your Title, you H1’s and H2’s. Beware of keyword stuffing, as this will work against you.
Backlinks
The search engine algorithms are top secret, and they often change to keep us guessing. But the SEO outlined so far is known, as is the process of Backlinks. If websites link back to you, it indicates to the search engine that you are a quality resource – this will help you rank higher in the organic search results.
Content Marketing
Content Marketing is also crucial to an effective SEO strategy. Suppose you are regularly producing content that contains your keywords and links to other quality resources. In that case, the search engine will find your business more easily and rank it more highly in the index.
