Just keep in mind that online stores, similar to brick-and-mortar stores, face a lot of competition. It’s crucial to offer excellent customer service and deals, but first, you need to stand out. To rank high in search results, you need to use top-notch SEO techniques and show search engines that you offer what users are looking for.
To get a thorough understanding of SEO, here are some helpful pointers we’ve compiled for you:
- What is SEO?
- Why does your small business need SEO?
- Additional Factors to Consider in SEO
- How to improve your rank and convert customers
- Your blog SEO checklist
What Is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?
Search Engine Optimization, also known as SEO, is a set of strategies aimed at improving a website’s organic (non-paid) search engine ranking. SEO involves a wide range of techniques, both on-page and off-page, to ensure that search engines recognize and rank your website effectively.
On-page SEO focuses on optimizing individual web pages by enhancing content, structure, and HTML coding. This includes conducting keyword research, producing high-quality and relevant content, optimizing meta tags and headings, improving page load speed, and ensuring mobile friendliness.
Off-page SEO involves activities conducted outside of your website to boost its visibility and reputation. This includes generating high-quality backlinks from reputable websites, engaging in social media, listing in online directories, guest blogging, and partnering with influencers.
By implementing effective SEO strategies, you can enhance your online presence, attract more targeted organic traffic, and compete with larger competitors in your industry.
6 Essential Things You Need to Know about SEO
SEO can be confusing because of the ever-changing rules and its technical nature. Here are six essential things to know about SEO:
1: SEO is different from paid search
Many small business owners mistake SEO for paid search. SEO, also known as organic search, involves optimizing your website to increase free traffic. On the other hand, paid search refers to the paid ads displayed at the top of search results.
2: SEO is a marathon, not a sprint
SEO requires continuous effort, such as regularly updating website content and acquiring backlinks from reputable sites. It’s a long-term strategy that demands ongoing attention and maintenance.
3: SEO requires keyword research
Keyword optimization is a crucial aspect of SEO. Understanding the phrases people use to discover your website is essential for effective optimization. Professional keyword research can reveal valuable insights, including identifying your competitors’ keywords.
4: SEO is not about keyword stuffing
Overusing keywords, known as keyword stuffing, can result in penalties from search engines like Google. A reliable SEO solutions provider can guide you on the appropriate keyword usage to avoid adverse effects.
5: You’ll need a tool to track your website analytics
Utilizing tools like Google Analytics allows for comprehensive analysis of website traffic, behavior, audience, and conversions. These insights enable informed decision-making for refining SEO and marketing strategies.
6: No one can guarantee you a top rank on search results
Beware of promises guaranteeing instant top rankings. Such claims often involve unethical practices that can lead to consequences such as website banning.
Why Does Your Small Business Need SEO?
Here is why SEO is important for your small business:
1. Drives more customers to your website
About 68% of all online experiences begin with an online search. So, if your website appears on the first page of search results, there is a greater chance that users will discover and visit your site.
Conducting keyword research and using other SEO techniques will enhance your website’s visibility and relevance to search engines, leading to increased targeted traffic and an overall improvement in your online presence.
2. Keeps your business competitive
Having a strong online presence gives you an immediate competitive advantage over the 30% of small businesses that do not have a website. This increased visibility helps you distinguish yourself from the competition and establishes your brand as an authoritative figure in your industry.
3. Builds brand awareness
Implementing a strong SEO strategy will attract customers actively seeking your products and services, positioning you as an industry thought leader and highlighting your brand’s unique value proposition.
4. Boosts your in-store and online sales.
A strong SEO strategy helps customers quickly learn about your products and services and encourages them to make a purchase. This boosts your conversion rates and increases both in-store and online revenue.
By incorporating an SEO strategy into your online marketing approach, you’ll find it easier to attract new customers and retain existing ones.
Get a free SEO analysis for your website
Additional Points to Consider in SEO
Good SEO involves more than just optimizing your business website. It also involves managing online reviews and leveraging social media. Additionally, it’s important to keep in mind that the fundamentals of SEO are evolving rapidly, so it’s essential to consider the following:
- The importance of online reviews for consumers is ever-increasing. Research shows that 95% of website visitors read product reviews before making a purchase, and 58% of them are willing to pay more for products with positive reviews.
- Search behavior is evolving from keyword-based to intent-based, personalized search. This shift is driven by AI tools like Siri, Alexa, and Cortana, leading to an increase in spoken searches versus typed searches.
- Mobile optimization is crucial in SEO strategies due to the prevalence of mobile device searches. It’s essential to adopt a mobile-first approach in website design and development.
- Local search optimization is gaining relevance with the proliferation of mobile searches.
- Google’s display of “snippets” or rich answers on the first page of search results is reducing the need for consumers to visit websites for information.
How to Improve Your Google Rank and Convert Customers
Utilizing SEO can be a game-changer for small businesses. By optimizing your website and effectively promoting your content, you can attract a consistent flow of organic traffic from Google.
When people search for products and services to solve their problems, they often turn to Google. For example, someone in need of bike repair might type “bike repair” into Google and find relevant search results.
The key to a successful SEO strategy is creating high-quality content that ranks on the first page of Google.
Let customer feedback drive your SEO strategy
Understanding SEO requires knowing the history of Google. Google ranks websites for specific search phrases or keywords. In the past, marketers could overuse keywords on their websites, a practice known as keyword stuffing, to quickly rank in search results.
However, Google has since stopped this by creating an algorithm that identifies the most relevant and authoritative content based on various factors. Essentially, gaming the system is now almost impossible.
For small, local businesses, the best approach to SEO is to identify their customers’ primary concerns and turn them into high-volume target keywords. Start by asking: What common problems do my products solve? What unique services am I offering? What kind of help are potential customers looking for?
When it comes to SEO for small businesses, specificity is crucial. Since there’s a lot of competition for certain keywords, it’s important to find a way to stand out to avoid being buried on page 2 of search results. Fortunately, you can use your location to narrow the competition. For example, if you’re a dog groomer in Kampala looking to attract new customers, you can optimize for the keyword “dog grooming Kampala.”
For small business owners selling products online, it’s beneficial to explore how your products solve people’s problems. By creating content and positioning yourself as an expert in your field, you can attract new customers.
Make sure your on-page SEO is optimized.
On-page SEO involves optimizing individual web pages to enhance your overall ranking and attract more relevant search engine traffic. Each page should feature unique and concise title tags, distinct meta descriptions, and internal links.
Write clear, concise title tags
To improve your search engine ranking, it’s important to have unique and descriptive meta titles with targeted keywords.
Shorter titles perform better as longer ones can get cut off. It’s also important to consider the order of appearance, especially for large eCommerce sites with many categories, as having too many categories can dilute the SEO.
Include the keywords in the first few words of the title or headline to increase your click-through rate (CTR).
Write enticing meta descriptions
This text summarizes the content of a webpage. Although it doesn’t directly impact ranking, it serves two important roles:
- It determines your search snippet, the short text that appears below the title tag in search results. Providing users with context about the article, it can impact your click-through rate (CTR).
- It makes your site look unique and more valuable.
You can use this description to share product descriptions or other helpful information.
Add direct product links
Organizing a website with hundreds of products requires a hierarchical approach. It’s not feasible to showcase each individual product on the home page. Categorizing the products can make them easier for customers to find, but it may also lead to some important pages ranking lower in search results.
One way to address this is by featuring the best-selling products with direct links at the top of the home page. This practice can improve the ranking of these products. However, it’s important not to overdo it. Limit the number of featured bestsellers to no more than 10 at a time to avoid overwhelming visitors.
Match internal anchor text to keywords
Many people make mistakes with internal linking text. If you want to rank your category page for something like “women’s shoes,” don’t use a label like “Footwear (WS01).” This can confuse search engines and may not even be clear to your visitors.
Internal anchor text links should align with your keyword strategy. Link to pages using the keywords that you want your website to rank for in search. These internal links should use common language and labels that people easily understand.
Get rid of low-value links
As your website expands, it’s important to guide visitors to the most critical content. This means highlighting content that focuses on competitive keywords, service pages, and your top-selling products.
Over time, your internal link structure may become less effective. As your website grows and you add more products and content, it’s crucial to prioritize your most important pages. Take a close look at the pages these important ones are linking to, and remove any links that are no longer serving your purpose.
Optimize your site speed
It’s important to remember that if your webpage takes too long to load, potential customers may become impatient and abandon your site for a competitor.
According to research from Google, 53% of mobile users will leave a site if it takes longer than three seconds to load. Slow website speed can also negatively affect sales, as nearly 70% of consumers say page speed influences their decision to buy from an online retailer.
To ensure good website speed, there are two easy things you can do to shorten load times:
- Monitor your website speed with Google PageSpeed Insights. It automatically applies best practices to your pages and assets without requiring you to modify the content. It will improve both web page latency and bandwidth usage by changing the resources on that page.
- Stop uploading enormous images to your website. Large images lead to slow loading. If you’re using WordPress, there are plugins that will optimize your images by reducing the file size as you upload them so that you can increase your site speed. Otherwise, use image compressors like tinyPNG.
Do research on your competition
It’s crucial not to overlook competitive research. Understanding what other businesses are doing can help you differentiate yourself from your competitors. Consider what products or services are in high demand in your area and how your prices compare. By gaining insights into what already exists, you can develop unique offerings.
While many people shop on Amazon, there are successful online businesses that thrive by offering added value, such as exceptional customer service, personalized services, and helpful content. Quality small, local businesses that provide excellent customer service can attract loyal customers, regardless of price.
Choose Your target keywords
To brainstorm specific questions and concerns that your ideal customer would search on Google, relate the keyword to a product or service you offer.
Keep in mind that not everyone searches the same way, so conducting research is important. To research keywords, you can use Google’s Keyword Planner. You’ll need a Google Ads account for this. If you haven’t signed up for one yet, now’s the time. Don’t worry, you don’t need to set up a campaign or spend money on ads to use the Keyword Planner.
Follow these steps:
- On your Google Ads dashboard, click on “Tools and Settings” in the upper right section.
- On the left side, click “Keyword Planner.”
- Select “Discover new keywords.”
- In the prompt, enter some keywords relevant to your business. For example, if you’re a plumber in the Kampala area, you could enter keywords like “plumber kampala,” “plumbing Kampala,” “best plumber in Kampala.”
- You can also set the language and the location that you’re targeting.
- Click “Get Results” and you’ll be presented with a list of suggested keyword ideas.
Optimize your title and description
Looking for title and description inspiration? Start with the SERPs. Check out what your competitors are doing.
If they’re ranking, it’s because Google sees them as the best fit for that search. Use this as inspiration and find ways to stand out. What makes your business unique? What do your customers love about you? Highlight these aspects in your metadata.
Create very good content
Your small business’s search engine optimization (SEO) is likely to get a significant boost from excellent content. Many small business owners simply publish their products or services and contact details on their websites. However, they may not realize that they can attract more customers by sharing tips and expertise as well.
Engage your customers and prospects with useful, entertaining content to increase your authority in the market and expand your audience.
List your small business in local directories
Incoming links, known as backlinks, indicate to search engines that your site is credible and relevant. Adding your company to local online directories can help you acquire more backlinks, which can improve your SEO and potentially boost traffic to your website. Ensure that you are utilizing trustworthy directories.
Here are a few directories to get you started:
- Yelp
- Google My Business
- Bing Places
- Yahoo! Local
- Foursquare
Promote your website on social media platforms
Remember to focus on building your social media following so that you have an audience for your latest posts, promos, and news. Here are some great ideas to grow a following within your local community:
- Share and engage with local small businesses and community events
- Congratulate your local teams on their wins
- Participate in community service and share pictures
- Encourage reviews and thank customers when they do review (and respond professionally when you get negative reviews)
- Share special discounts or sales on social media
Search engines prioritize providing users with the most relevant and helpful content. Interestingly, when content is shared on social media platforms, it often receives increased visibility in search engine results.
Request customers for reviews
In this article, it was mentioned that many online shoppers look at reviews before buying something. So, it’s a good idea to ask customers to leave reviews after they buy something by offering them discounts on their next purchase.
Positive reviews and feedback can help you increase your sales. You can also ask satisfied customers to leave reviews on local listings, social media, or your website.
Use niche, long-tail keywords
When small businesses start with SEO, they often focus on highly competitive keywords in the hopes of attracting a wide range of customers rather than a specific type. For instance, the keyword “plumber” has 301,000 monthly searches, making it very competitive.
Due to this, it’s easier to rank for niche long-tail keywords with more manageable search volumes for small businesses. For example, if you are a commercial plumbing contractor, it would make sense to target a specific keyword relating to your services.
Creating content around specific niche keywords may result in fewer searches, but the audience that finds your website will be much closer to conversion, increasing the likelihood of attracting valuable leads.
Use a lead magnet to convert your website visitors
Search engines offer a unique way to engage with your target market. By providing the information they seek, you can establish a relationship of trust that will convert visitors into customers.
When presenting solutions to your target market’s problems, be sure to include a call-to-action (CTA) that they can act upon. Ideally, this CTA should also capture their contact information for future connections.
Here are some effective CTAs to help you convert visitors:
- Sign Up Now
- Get Your Free eBook
- Subscribe to Our Newsletter
- Get a Free Consultation
Offering a lead magnet or incentive to collect information can motivate potential clients to share their details. Common lead magnets include downloadable guides, consultations, and free newsletters.
When creating an incentive, ensure that it’s valuable to your audience and highly relevant to the targeted keywords.
Once you have contact information, you can easily inform prospects about promotions, new content, or products and services. Consistent interaction will help customers to build a relationship with your brand.
By providing valuable content on a consistent basis, more customers will begin to find you online and share your information with their network.
Do one task at a time
Optimizing your website for search involves many tasks, which can feel overwhelming. However, if you tackle a little each day, you’ll start seeing results as people find you through organic search.
To get started, consider these three ideas:
- Create a content calendar: Planning your content in advance and organizing long-tail keywords in a content calendar can help you stay on track. Look for inspiration from upcoming events, national days, and other creative concepts relevant to your business.
- Promote your content: Search engine optimized content remains relevant over time, so be sure to share it on social media. Encourage friends and customers to check out your content, share it, and link to your website.
- Improve your website: Allocate time every week to update your website. Ensure fast loading times, optimize images with alt tags, and craft compelling descriptions for your content.
Your Blog Page SEO To-Do List
Focus on one keyword per blog
When searching for information, it’s best to focus on using a single, specific keyword or phrase rather than multiple. Before moving on, it’s worth noting that you may need to experiment with different keywords until you find the right combination. Try plugging your chosen keyword into Google Search and pay attention to the suggestions that appear in the autofill feature, as they reflect common search terms.
Use the keyword in different places
You can’t use the keyword once; you have to use it in several critical areas:
- The title and page URL (in WordPress, the page URL appears right below the title)
- First paragraph and at least one more time in the body of the blog
- Meta description (more on that below)
- Alt text of the image
No keyword stuffing, by the way. If you use your keyword too often in the body of the blog, you’ll be penalized.
Use images
Since humans are drawn to images, search engines also favor them. Consider subscribing to a stock photo website and including an image in each blog post. Remember not to use images from the internet without permission; just because they’re available doesn’t mean they’re free to use.
Include a great meta description
This is the snippet that appears in search results, providing an insight into the type of content available on your blog. It should entice readers to click and explore further.
Choose one category
Consider blog categories as similar to food categories. Just as milk falls into the dairy category, each blog should fall into only one category. Keep the number of categories to a minimum, just like you only need a handful of food categories such as fruits, vegetables, dairy, meat, cereal, and bread.
Use sensible tags
Think of tags as the milk in the dairy category – they are more specific, and you can use multiple tags for each blog. To make sure you’re using relevant tags, consider the words or terms someone would use in a search to find that blog.
Install the Yoast SEO plugin
We suggest installing the Yoast SEO plugin on your WordPress site. This plugin evaluates all blog posts and web pages for SEO. A green SEO light indicates great optimization, orange is acceptable, and red is not. This makes it easy for you to determine if your blog is SEO-friendly when making changes.
Get Customized SEO Services for Your Website
SEO involves more than just using keywords in your website and content. It is a set of best practices that, when implemented correctly, can greatly benefit your website.
The points mentioned earlier may be challenging to follow and implement, but you don’t have to remember them all at once. Instead, you can take advantage of the SEO services offered by Rifa Design. Here, you will receive customized SEO services for your website. These services include on-page and off-page SEO to enhance your online visibility and exposure.
