8 Tips To Improve SEO For Your Small Business
When promoting your small business through your website, the approach to search engine optimisation (SEO) is different than with a large corporation with seemingly unlimited resources. Using your own resources, you can improve your rankings in search results through these 8 tips specifically for small businesses.
Keep website design simple
When talking to your website designer, keep it simple by using CSS and HTML. While JavaScript and Flash are used to interact more with site visitors, these types of code might not be read by search engine bots. These bots also cannot discover keywords in the form of images. Your navigation should be simple and easy to follow related content and links. Add footer links to the bottom of the page to direct users to your most important pages.
Target low-traffic words
If your business is just starting out, choosing keywords that have low traffic is the best way to approach SEO as you can get higher search engine rankings by effectively pooling your limited resources together. After brainstorming for keywords describing your business and its products or services, construct how your site’s design and the content will revolve around these keywords. Include targeted keywords in the design and structure of your website by including them in your HTML tags, homepage, etc. Create pages, posts or articles by using the keyword(s) they are targeting.
Optimise homepage description
If your business only has one page for its site, describe your business through the keywords you chose. When using keywords, have your most important keywords in the text of the homepage description.
Write blog posts with targeted keywords
Blogging can be an important part of increasing the number of links and page shares to your site. When writing blog posts, consider how many times your keywords appear within the text body, also called keyword density. A 0.5 to 1.5% keyword density is common and sufficient for SEO purposes. Keyword density depends on the length of the post. For example, for 200-400 words, mention the keyword two to four times. If you don’t have time to blog yourself, you can find writers on sites like this one.
Optimise for social media
For your site, include links to your social media accounts to increase the number of people who follow your site or brand. Build up a following on one social media site and then expand. You will be wasting your resources splitting your time between multiple social media sites if you cannot gain relevancy on those sites. Using some social media sites would be better than others depending on the site’s content. Facebook and Twitter are popular sites but there are other alternatives. For example, if your content and keywords revolve around a large number of visuals, use Pinterest, Flickr or Instagram, which are image-centric social media sites.
Network with other sites
Partner with another site so that you can share and exchange links to benefit both your sites. Link exchanges can help you gain a new audience through higher visibility.
Engage in email marketing
Going beyond simply using social media to analyse the popularity of your content, use mass email marketing campaigns to inform your users and gain more insight into who is using your site. After sending out emails, you can analyse how many users were compelled to read your email or how many clicked through links within the body to see which information was the most helpful or interesting.
Set up Google Ads and Google Analytics
Sign up for Google Ads and Analytics to further optimise your site for SEO. After signing up to place word ads on your site to gain revenue with AdWords and using Analytics to analyse site data, link these two accounts to know how your keywords are turning into profit for your site. From the information you get from your accounts, build future SEO marketing campaigns or adjust your keyword usage.