Mention SEO to a small business owner and you might prompt the small business owner to send out an SOS. Search engine optimization intimidates many small business owners who believe you need a PhD in digital marketing to compete with the big boys.
SEO is not rocket science. In fact, we can help direct you towards running a powerful SEO program on your own.
What is SEO?
Some online marketing experts consider SEO an art, while others refer to the important online marketing tool as a science. Whether you prefer Rembrandt or Einstein, the fact remains that SEO represents the creation, publication, and marketing of information your small business presents on a website or through articles and blog posts. The goal of SEO is to rank high in the three major search engines: Google, Bing, and Yahoo.
Why Does My Small Business Need SEO?
The vast majority of online traffic comes from the big three search engines. Although some of your website traffic can come from social media, search engine are the main reason you receive visits from customer prospects. Search engines drive most of your online traffic whether your website presents content or simply offers products and services. Think of a search engine as a filter that directs customers to targeted information that your website offers.
Your future customers type keywords into a search engine box, hit the enter tab, and move to a new screen that lists up to 10 search results per page. Your primary SEO goal is to rank within the first three search engine results, with the ultimate goal of achieving the top ranking. Failing to rank on the first search result page dramatically decreases the amount of search traffic that notices your small business presence online.
How do you accomplish that? Let us count the ways.
10 Components of SEO
SEO comprises 10 components that help the three most influential search engines detect your online presence.
- Keyword research
- Market research
- Web Page optimization
- Link building
- Viral marketing
- Site structure
- Brand building
- Adapting to changing search engine parameters
- Staying current with SEO trends
- Creating fresh, actionable content
In the early days of SEO, using the right keywords in the correct percentage of content ranked as the most important element of SEO. For example, if you run a lawn care and landscaping business, you want to place the words “lawn care and landscaping” within your website content at a search engine acceptable percentage. However, Google has taken the lead in diminishing the important of keywords in the ranking of websites. Link building, which is the number of quality inbound links to your site, now ranks higher that integrating the most effective keywords.
However, a recent development has made creating fresh, actionable content the new power player for SEO.
Why Content is King
When you search for the best small business to handle your product and service needs, you want to trust the business before you take action. Fresh content that helps visitors to your small business website solve problems builds the level of credibility required to create trust between you and customer prospects. Google now places as much or more importance on fresh, helpful website content than the search engine giant places on any other SEO factor. Moreover, the big three search engines want your fresh, helpful website content to have a local flavor.
Local SEO
Before we knew about local SEO, your customer prospects had to add a geographical reference into a search engine to target your small business. For example, if you ran a consumer protection law practice in Denver, potential clients of your law firm would type something like “Denver consumer protection attorneys.” Now, just the phrase “consumer law attorneys” brings up the list of Denver consumer protection lawyers. The reason for this is local SEO. By listing accurately in several online directories, your business receives local SEO attention from Google, Bing, and Yahoo.
To learn more about how SEO can increase your small business sales, contact our digital marketing and web development company for more information.
