Everyone’s going online for shopping these days. Even before they go shop on physical stores, they’d consult Google for reviews or ongoing sale or the best places to buy. Everyone’s just depending on SERPs, for a more informed decision and this is what you should take advantage of if you are an SEO for SMEs digital marketer.
Growing a business has been easier than ever now that it can be placed online. Reaching more people is as simple as establishing good presence online, or is it really just that simple?
While digital marketing has been this modern era’s most reliable strategy of ensuring profitability, the methods take more than just publishing a website online. SEO, apart from PPC, CPC, and paid social ads, is a powerful means of solidifying your business online.
Most digital marketers are already familiar with SEO but sad to say, many of them still don’t know how to implement strategies in their websites. So this is why I came up with this blog today.
Being an SEO specialist for years, I’ve seen countless of techniques that work for most websites. Of course, there are custom methods too since each website is a bit different from the others. But there are general things like concepts, rules, and techniques you need to follow to at least get started with your website’s SEO for SMEs.
In optimizing your website, there are two general ways you can utilize. These include:
1. On-page Optimization
Like its name suggests, on-site optimization techniques refer to the activities you do within your website to increase its visibility and traffic. Both content and the HTML source code should be optimized in this method.
2. Off-page Optimization
Meanwhile, off-site SEO for SMEs are the activities you do outside of your website to improve your ranking. Techniques include link building, campaigns, social media, and search engine promotions. The objectives of all are focused on increasing your domain authority by getting links from other websites.
Implementing these two can be challenging, most especially when you aren’t an expert in SEO. Sure, there are simple ways to optimize your site, but there are also technical things you should understand. But your efforts will be rewarded a thousand fold. With SEO done right, you’ll enjoy several benefits apart from making multi-figure profit.
SEO is more than just putting your website on top of the search engines. It’s a way for you to get a better chance at converting your efforts to sales.
If you still aren’t convinced, here’s a more elaborate rundown of benefits you’ll enjoy by doing your SEO right:
- Increased traffic. The main purpose of SEO is to put you on top positions on search engines. They are like prime lots in real estate. These spots – top 1-10 – on search engine results page generate the most profits. Since people know that the top results are what Google deems to be the best answers to your queries, websites seated on those spots get the most clicks and impressions, which, consequently, lead to more visitors and more conversions. impressions and clicks, which leads to more website visitors, and ultimately, more conversions.
- Searching where ROI is possible. SEO lets you track and quantify results. This way, you are able to see how your digital marketing efforts are converted into sales and what strategies don’t work. Hence, you can adjust your activities so you can take the better path that results to sales. From keywords that results to sales to URLs that users click on, all these information can help you see your ROI in comparison to your SEO investments.
- Cost-effective campaigns. SEO is significantly more cost-effective than the traditional methods of marketing like TV advertisements or billboards. If you get it right, it can even compete with your paid campaigns on social media and PPC. SEO lets you target very specific audience who are actively looking for your product or service online. So it is advantageous if you’d learn the proper consumer targeting. Having your efforts show up in front of the right people is the key to a successful digital marketing campaign.
- Increases site usability. SEO can make boost the usability of your website, hence improving user experience. Like I’ve said, SEO can speed up your site loading and fix the map of your links as well as your website’s architecture. This makes it easier for users to find your site and navigate through the pages. By simplifying the process of finding information in your site, users gain optimum experience and this increase user retention in your site. And when users keep coming back, the possibility of them finally making a purchase becomes higher.
- Increase brand awareness. As your SEO strategies for SME put you on top of the SERPs, your site will become more popular and more people will know about who you are. This increased visibility will then lead to higher traffic rate and brand credibility. And when more people trust your brand, the more products and services you can sell.
Now that you know what SEO can do to increase the profitability of your website, the next is to find out the right SEO for SMEs strategies to employ on your website.
In Google, the era of satisfying people instead of robots has come. While most of you have been scraping keywords that will make search engines happy, BERT algorithm changed the rules to being helpful to users instead.
You’ve probably noticed unnatural construction of keywords too most especially in geo-focused keywords. Phrases like “best-selling cakes Florida” or “cheapest SEO agency Florida 2019” are too awkward when used as is in a content. But there was nothing you can do since search engines love these kinds of keywords. But today, being more natural and conversation in coming up with keywords is the new trend. So instead of using these keywords, you should now complete them with prepositions like “cheapest SEO agency in Florida for the year 2019.”
Besides, there’s always a difference between “in” and “on” and “at.” Meanings of keywords can change because of them so BERT says you have to complete your sentence or phrase for your keyword so that users will get the most relevant answer to their question. We already gave an example on this in our BERT Algorithm article.
Now, you can be creative in coming up with keywords too. Instead of focusing on the obvious keywords that people use to locate you, you can explore other phrases too that refer to your offerings so you can rank in those words too. For example, you are selling luxury bags for women. The obvious keyword for your product is “luxury bags for women.” But girls can also look for “affordable luxury bags for women” or “luxury accessories for women.” It’s really up to you how you determine them. Be creative and implement them in your:
- Content
- Web pages
- URLs
- Headings
- Image descriptions
- Metadata
- Page titles
- Emails
Videos are becoming extremely popular in content creation. Vloggers are now earning way more than bloggers do. This is because shoppers feel more connection when they watch reviews online rather than when they read descriptions. They also like the better visualization videos can offer rather than pictures. They feel like they’re making a more informed shopping when they watch video reviews first.
So leverage video contents on your website too. Convey your message and be more personal when promoting your products and services through videos.
SEO in video contents enters when you are making their captions or when you are sharing them online. Be sure to add your keywords and links in the description. You can flash texts in the video itself too.
Later you can share them on social media platforms or publish them in your website.
Let’s face it. Almost everyone in the world is on mobile rather than desktops or laptops. Phones and tablets are easy to carry and use compared to computers. So when you design your website, be sure to optimize them for mobile users too.
Create a mobile version of your website so that those who navigate it through their phones can have the same optimal experience as those who visit your site through their computers.
Likewise, setup accounts on social media platforms. There are a billion users who go to social media every day so if you want to get more customers, social media is where you should be.
With such a large number of people visiting such a platform daily using their mobiles, you advertising your product there gives you a very greater chance to find people who might be interested in your products or services.
Leverage emails you collect from your lead capture and setup an attractive email campaign.
Reach out to your customers regularly through their emails with inviting promos and freebies like ebook, vouchers, or discounts. Besides, almost everyone need an email to create a social media account so you are sure that you’ll find as many prospects on email as on social media.
Gone were the days when people can endure reading long and boring contents. Today, as blogs dominate content writing, people are finding more interesting stories that are as informative as the technical ones.
So be conversational in your blogs to encourage engagement which will give you a better chance at convincing users to avail products or services from you.
On-page SEO is still one of the most crucial strategies to boost your sales. You definitely have to work on optimizing your whole website so that Google will recognize it and people with find it.
To boost your on-page SEO for SMEs, you should:
- Create unique and descriptive title tags.
- Increase the load speed of all your site pages to reduce bounce rates.
- Write descriptive and optimized alt-text for the site images.
- Optimize headings and write relevant descriptions.
- Use internal links to improve navigation and indexing.
- Use keywords on URLs and make it easy to read too.
- Write meta descriptions to help boost your visibility online.
Find an influencer on social media or a blogger with heavily visited site or a Youtuber you can collaborate with. They may ask some fee from you but the audience you’ll reach and the probability of selling more will be worth it. You’ll be lucky too to find influencers who are willing to make a post for you in exchange of free products only.
Final Words
SEO is the most affordable way to make huge profit online. Nothing can beat its power. It is the key to the success of any modern business. It doesn’t only increase your visibility and reach but will also boost your web traffic which provides you with more opportunity to captivate shoppers. SEO even has tools to help you strategize on improving your conversion rates. So make sure to prioritize everything I’ve shared here and rest assured that you will see higher income in no time.
