Many small business owners do not know much about SEO. They start businesses and then struggle with generating leads to make sales when they can use some actionable SEO tips to generate tons of leads and grow their business.
See Also: Resources that will help you start, market and grow a sustainable business.
If you fall into the category of businesses that are not taking advantage of SEO to drive organic, free traffic to their website, then you are on the right page. Today, I am going to show you 7 simple SEO tips that you can start using immediately to generate traffic to your website and grow your businesses monumentally.
But before we go into that, let’s answer the question; what is SEO?
See Also: B2B Digital Marketing Strategies That Businesses Need To Explore
What Is SEO?
SEO is an acronym that stands for Search Engine Optimisation. It is a practice that entails optimising your web content to be discovered by search engines and people who need the information contained in your content.
Many small businesses have used SEO as a strategy to grow their customer base and hugely impact their bottom line. In this post, I’d be showing you 7 SEO tips you can use to do the same for your businesses.
See Also: 8 Reasons Why Your Company Needs Content Marketing
Did someone say ‘I would rather watch a video of this great content’? We got you! Simply click on the ‘play’ button below.
SEO Tips For Small Businesses
Find What People Are Searching For
One of the key aspects of SEO is understanding what your target audience are searching for. What do they input on Google when they are looking for the kind of information you are offering? That’s what a keyword is. Simply defined, a keyword is a query that a searcher inputs into Google or any other search engine when they are looking for information.
To succeed in your SEO, you need to do keyword research. As the name suggests, keyword research is one that you utilise to understand what your target audience are searching for.
There are tons of keyword research tools out there, but my personal favourite is Ubersuggest. It is a free tool offered by Neil Patel that allows you to input some words that are related to your industry and get some keyword suggestions along with the number of searches that keyword has per month.
Armed with this information, you can then make a decision if the keywords are worth your time or not. This one of the SEO tips that small businesses should use to grow their traffic and revenue.
See Also: 10 Marketing Strategies To Grow Your Business As An Entrepreneur
Take Advantage Of Long-Tail Keywords
There are two major types of keywords- short-tail keywords and long-tail keywords. Short-tail keywords are keywords that are very short and straight to the point. “Flowers” is an example of a one-word short-tail keyword but “where to buy flowers” is also another example of a short-tail keyword.
Long-tail keywords on the other hand are those that are a little bit more descriptive and contain more words. Using the example we cited earlier, “where to buy flowers and get them delivered to your house within a day” is an example of a long-tail keyword. Notice that long-tail keywords are more descriptive and contain more words.
As a small business, you want to optimise for long-tail keywords. This is due to a number of reasons that we will be discussing.
First, short-tail keywords often have more searches than long-tail keywords which makes the competition for those keywords extremely high. Long-tail keywords have lower searches so the bigger companies usually ignore them. A good strategy will be to rank for as many long-tail keywords as possible in your industry.
Additionally, long-tail keywords are often more descriptive and have more buyer intent. For example, if someone searches for “flowers” he may be looking for general information about flowers, but if someone searches for “where to buy flowers and get them delivered within a day”, chances are that they are looking to buy.
See Also: 10 Best Practices For Email Marketing For Small Businesses
Register For Google My Business
An important SEO tip for small businesses is what is referred to as “local SEO”. This simply means optimising your business in such a way that people searching for businesses like yours in the community where you are located will be able to find you.
If customers are looking for dry cleaners in Lagos, chances are, they will be searching for either “dry cleaners in Lagos” or “dry cleaners near me” instead of just searching for “dry cleaners”. Therefore, you want to make sure that your business is optimised to be found in those situations.
One of the easiest ways to start ranking locally is by registering for Google My Business listing. Google My Business listing is a feature introduced by Google to help local companies show up in search results when customers are searching for their kind of business. It allows you to rank locally for important keywords.
It is very simple to register for Google My Business. Simply click on this link and follow the prompts to register.
See Also: Digital Marketing Skills To Acquire In Nigeria As An Entrepreneur
Spy On Your Competitors
Is it even legal to spy on your competitors? In SEO, it is perfectly okay for small businesses to spy on their competitors. The idea behind spying on your competitors is to make sure that you are up to date on what is working for them, and recognise the opportunities that they are not taking advantage of. That way, you can set yourself up for success.
Spying on your competitors is super easy. All you need to do is to sign up for services SEMrush, Spyfu, and even Ubersuggest and you will be able to enter your competitor’s domain to spy on their keywords, backlinks, and other important metrics
See Also: Digital Marketing Channels For Small Businesses In Nigeria To Explore
Make Your Website Mobile-Friendly
According to research by Broadband Search, 60% of the world’s total search volume come from mobile devices. This means that the majority of search engine activities currently happen on mobile devices. With the explosion of the smartphone and the development of broadband internet, more people are accessing the internet via their mobile devices.
Therefore, a great SEO tip for small businesses will be for them to create web content that is mobile-friendly. If you are using WordPress as your content management system, you can install the WordPress AMP plugin to render your pages as Accelerated Mobile Pages.
Accelerated mobile pages are extremely beneficial for SEO purposes.
Get Other Websites To Link To You
Getting other websites to link you is one of the most important considerations that Google and other search engines take when they are ranking web pages. As a result, you want to have a plan where you get other websites to link to your content.
Doing this is actually easier than it sounds. When you create amazing content that helps solve the problem of searchers, chances are that other websites will link back to you. But you also need an active strategy where you reach out to websites in your niche that are not direct competitors and ask them to link to you.
Keep Your Website Free Of Broken Links
Since we have established that Google and other search engines rank you based on the number and quality of links to your website, it, therefore, follows that it is important that your website does not allow a lot of broken links. Broken links signal to search engines that your users are having a bad experience on your website thereby prompting them to rank you lower.
To help avoid this, use the Google Search Console to identify broken links on your website and fix them.
Conclusion
SEO is integral for small businesses to generate leads and close sales. In this post, we explore seven simple SEO tips that small businesses and entrepreneurs can utilise to rank better and generate more revenue.
Thinking of starting your own entrepreneurship journey? Here are 35 booming business ideas and step-by-step guides to start them. It’s a strategic and financial breakdown of the most lucrative businesses in Nigeria. Get it now and start building the business of your dream.
Let’s create visibility for your brand today and put your business on the world map. Contact us today to make your brand the preferred choice among our audience of entrepreneurs and business leaders.
To keep track of our activities, follow us on Instagram.
