Good morning! Do you have one minute to read and one hour to do? If so, you can improve your small business’ marketing in a big way. Each week, we will provide new ideas. Grab your morning beverage and let’s get started:
This Week: First SEO Steps for Small Businesses
If you’re a small business, suggestions for what to do about Search Engine Marketing make your eyes glaze over. It can get technical really fast. But that’s no reason not to take a few simple steps to at least get in the SEO ballgame. This will allow you to start getting more notice from the search engines when people search for your products.
STEP ONE
Make sure you have access to make changes.
Have access to make simple changes to your website. This is really important and not all small business owners do. You absolutely should be able to make copy changes. If not, call up your web designer and ask for a tutorial. Being able to make small changes will save you a lot of money over time.
STEP TWO
Optimize for search engine results.
Optimize your webpage titles, URL’s and descriptions so the search engine can navigate your pages. Once you can edit your site on your own, you can easily do this.
Try this link for instructions.
Remember, it’s really common sense. Yes, you can follow the expert tips, but also just think about what you choose to click where you do when you use a search engine. What was as the last thing you searched for on Google or Bing? Use the best answer you received as a model. The goal is to give each of your website pages the information they need to show up well in a search.
STEP THREE
Keep the content on your website fresh.
This is a key factor in the search engines finding your site authentic and useful.
Many business websites are outdated and contain yesterday’s messaging. You may notice that your social pages are evolving faster than your website. At least once a quarter, sync up what viewers are seeing on your social, in your paid ads, and on your website.
STEP FOUR
Start to work on page speed.
The longer your page takes to load, the more likely your visitor will bounce out. For today, make sure there are no overly large images. If so, edit the image to a smaller size or just trade out the large image for a smaller one.
STEP FIVE
Don’t go it alone.
Here’s an article with links to 10 SEO online tools that can help you: https://www.businessnewsdaily.com/6948-seo-tools.html
Try a couple of tools now and circle back in three months and see if you are ready to try another.
Consider hiring an SEO consultant to make some “one-time” higher level adjustments to your website.
Payoff: From here, you can keep adding SEO to do steps as you grow in your understanding of search engines and your own website. It’s a process and important to have at least started. Like many other areas of digital marketing, it is never done. There will always be ways to improve your rankings, but in the meantime, get going. The stakes are high!
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