Are you a small business owner with a limited marketing budget, but you really want to get the most out of your website? Would you like to increase organic traffic to your website and effectively convert those clicks into customers? If so, read on for some simple SEO strategies to help get you started.
1. Construct the ideal ‘customer persona’
The first step to SEO success is defining your audience. What does your ideal customer look like? This might sound like an obvious step and something you already have in hand, however, it might surprise you to learn that 42% of marketers don’t know anything about their audience aside from age, location, and gender.
The key to impactful SEO with limited resources is knowing everything there is to know about your typical ‘perfect’ customer. The more data you have, the better positioned you will be to construct powerful messaging that will have a massive impact.
2. Conduct proper keyword research
Next, you need to be thorough in your keyword research. It’s all about identifying what your ideal customers are typing into Google when they are actively searching for the various products and services that you offer.
When you have a comprehensive list of short and long-tail keywords with varying competitiveness and conversions, you can start constructing content and optimising your website around these keywords.
In doing so, Google will have a much easier time identifying your website and precisely what it is that you do. As such, your rankings can start to improve and your ideal customers will be far more likely to find your website online!
Without proper keyword research and placement, you are effectively tearing down the signage in your store, blacking out your windows, and hoping to get more business through the door.
Of course, don’t neglect your onsite optimizations either! It’s all very well targeting the best keywords and adding them to your website’s content and headers, however, if you do not have your technical SEO dialled in, you’ll be wasting your time.
3. Focus on local SEO
If you’re not quite sure what local SEO is; whenever you type “restaurant near me” or “24/7 shop in [your location]”, the local ‘Google My Business’ listings that come up at the top of the SERP are businesses who have most likely been working on their local SEO efforts.
Particularly as a small business with a limited budget / resources, starting with your local SEO can yield incredible results.
For example, rather than an SEO agency trying to target broad and competitive keywords in order to attract customers from all over the world, they could instead narrow their focus with local businesses instead (e.g., SEO agency Singapore).
4. Develop a content marketing strategy
Once you understand your audience inside and out, you’ve conducted thorough keyword research and know which key phrases can bring your business the most value in terms of volume and conversions, and indeed you have established your GMB profile and made the necessary optimizations to your website, it’s time to develop a content marketing strategy.
What are the best marketing channels going to be to reach your perfect customer? What language / brand-voice will best resonate with them? Which mediums will have the greatest impact? (e.g., video content for product reviews / blogs for delivering high-value information). How regularly will you post?
These are just a handful of the questions you need to ask when developing a strategy of your own. However, make sure that you do take the time to put together a comprehensive plan so that each piece of content you create has the greatest chance at delivering maximum engagement
Quality over quantity!
5. Strategize a quality link building strategy
Finally, you need to think about how you are going to build your backlink profile, which is an essentiality if you wish to rank effectively for your chosen keywords. Think about each quality backlink as a ‘vote’ from other credible and relevant websites effectively telling Google that you are an authority and thus deserving of ranking well in the SERPs.
- Submit your NAP details to local directories.
- Partner with local businesses.
- Create high-value guest blogs for industry-relevant websites.
- Develop and share superior quality ‘share-worthy’ content.
Conclusion
And that about sums it up:
Know your audience
- Target the appropriate keywords and optimise your website accordingly
- Claim your GMB and focus on local SEO
- Develop a high-quality content development strategy
- Focus on building and attracting high-value backlinks
As you can see, there’s an awful lot of work involved and these are just scraping the surface. There is far more to SEO than meets the eye, however, if you commit yourself to perfecting the 5 areas mentioned above, you can indeed start attracting more organic traffic through your website.
If you feel overwhelmed or unconfident in your abilities to take all of these responsibilities in-house, we highly recommend hiring the professionals to assist you.
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