- You need a robust SEO strategy to gain organic traffic to your small business website.
Every business needs to appreciate the benefits of digital marketing in the 21st Century. Search engine marketing is among the most reliable digital marketing channels they can rely on. This is why SEO is so important for small businesses.
The Importance of Search Engine Marketing for Small Businesses
So, you’ve worked through numerous sleepless nights to design a spectacular website for your business. It’s finally ready to be launched and you can’t wait for people to storm your website. But there’s one slight catch.
In an ideal world, internet users would miraculously stumble upon your website and visit it. But if you’re even remotely familiar with digital marketing, you’d know that the reality is far from this. Creating a well-designed website isn’t enough.
You need to take the right steps to ensure that your target customers find it at the right time on the right platform. In other words, you must use the right techniques to take your website to the top of relevant search engine results pages (SERPs). It has some of the highest ROIs for small businesses. The average e-commerce companies earns about $2.75 for every $1 that they invest in SEO. Your business might see even higher returns.
It’s crucial because today’s consumers are constantly using the internet to educate and entertain themselves, as well as purchase new products. This, in turn, means they’re always on the lookout for relevant and useful information on search engines, such as Google and Bing.
Now, imagine how much organic traffic your website could attract if it appeared in the topmost organic search engine listings every time your target audience search for information related to your product/service, brand, and industry.
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In this blog, we’ll explore three useful techniques to skyrocket your business’s search engine ranking. Let’s get started.
1. Build a Robust SEO Strategy
You can’t take your website to the top of SERPs without developing and implementing a powerful search engine optimization (SEO) strategy. Simply put, SEO is a set of techniques that are used to drive more organic traffic to your website from search engines.
In other words, it helps your website rank higher in SERPs for relevant search queries. However, it’s worth mentioning that SEO is no longer about flooding website content with keywords. Instead, you need to use the right white hat SEO practices to boost your website’s visibility in search engines.
From keyword research and content creation to competitor analysis and link building – SEO involves various complex steps. To begin with, you need to identify the terms and phrases your target audience is likely to use when looking for information on search engines. Rock-solid keyword research is the key to achieving SEO success.
Next, run a Google search for the selected keywords to identify your online competitors. If the search results for a particular keyword feature an established brand, it indicates a higher level of competition. You must evaluate the keywords in terms of search volume, cost, and competition to decide whether they’re worth targeting.
At this stage, it might be helpful to check how your competitors are integrating these keywords and what type of content they’re publishing. You can use competitor analysis tools, such as SpyFu and SEMrush, for a closer glimpse of your competitors’ SEO strategies.
Next, you need to publish high-quality, original, insightful, and engaging content that’s relevant to your target audience. Also, make sure you include the target keyword in important sections, such as you could use PageOptimizer Pro free on page SEO Checker to see how well your page stacks up against your competitors in Google.:
- Introduction
- Conclusion
- Subheadings
- Title tags
- Image alt text
- URL
- Meta description
Moreover, it’s crucial to ensure that your content fulfills the search intent associated with the target keyword. Lastly, leverage guest posting and broken link opportunities to attract genuine and authoritative backlinks to your website.
Also, don’t forget to optimize your site architecture to ensure that search engine spiders can easily crawl and index new web pages. Setting up an SEO campaign is certainly no easy task, because there are so many moving parts that need to be accounted for. So if you’re not sure where to start, you can consult a reliable SEO agency to help you get on the right track.
2. Enhance the User Experience
Attracting plenty of website visitors isn’t enough. If you want your website to climb up the SERPs ladder, you need to also retain the attention of your website visitors. In other words, you must deliver an outstanding user experience to ensure that your audience can easily and quickly find relevant information.
Start by improving your website’s layout and navigation to make it easier for visitors to move to different web pages. Next, improve the site speed by optimizing various elements, including images and the source code. Also, make sure you select a fast, reliable, and secure web hosting provider for your website.
Use plenty of white space and clear calls-to-action (CTAs) to direct your visitors’ focus to the right web elements. Also, structure your content using meaningful subheadings and short paragraphs to facilitate scannability. Lastly, make sure your website is responsive across a wide range of devices, including smartphones and tablets.
3. Prioritize Web Accessibility
Even the most well-designed and optimized website won’t rank high in SERPs unless it’s accessible to all users, including those with disabilities and special needs. If your website isn’t accessibility inclusive, users with disabilities won’t spend a lot of time browsing it.
This, in turn, will adversely affect website engagement metrics, such as bounce rate, and ultimately, take a toll on your search engine ranking. It’s particularly crucial considering that leading search engines, including Google, have outlined clear accessibility guidelines to make the internet a more inclusive space.
The key to designing an accessible website is to ensure that it achieves AA level of compliance to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1. This involves various steps, such as adding descriptive and meaningful alt text to all images and providing transcripts for multimedia.
Also, you need to implement a logical and straightforward site structure to enable keyboard-friendly navigation. Next, you need to ensure that your website is compatible with assistive technology, such as screen readers and Braille readers.
If this sounds like a lot of work, you can always use an AI-powered web accessibility platform to automate the process of making your website accessible. For instance, the tech start-up named accessiBe was started by a trio of experienced and expert marketing agency owners.
It uses an AI engine to scan your website, as well as to detect and rectify accessibility issues. All you have to do is add a line of JavaScript code to your website’s source code. Another accessibility solution called Level Access provides a free risk assessment tool to check whether a website is accessible or not, and then provides a report.
Start Your SEO Strategy for Your Business Today!
In today’s competitive online landscape, a high search engine ranking is the key to skyrocketing website traffic and conversions. It is, therefore, crucial to build a strong SEO strategy that’ll help your website rank higher for specific keywords. Also, make sure your website is accessible to all users and delivers a top-notch user experience.
What techniques are you using to amplify your website’s search engine ranking? Share your suggestions in the comments section below.