When larger and more established businesses flourish, it's becoming more difficult for small businesses to compete for search engine visibility. Not every website on the web is created equal, and that is what Google sees.
However, there are things that small businesses can do to harvest the larger part of SEO.
The first, is to make sure that their website's codes and design are search engine friendly. With the ability to be "friendly" to search engines, valuable contents that target specific keywords can easily be crawled by them. The next is backlinks. The more external sources are praising and echoing your contents, the better search engines will rank websites. And the last is social media activity. The more social and friendly a website is to its customers, the more engaging they will be in the eyes of public.
After knowing the three mentioned above, the race between small businesses and larger more powerful companies is like a race between a tortoise and a hare. Smaller business is slow and unsure; they might stumble into something and struggle to get out; they may be scared of the outside world, let alone competing with the faster hare.
But the thing is here, the tortoise's slow pace can be a sure way to put good foundation in the facets of SEO. The better the foundation, the better the business will compete with even larger websites that do not care much about SEO.
Below is some of the ways that small businesses can do to put itself in a more advantage position:
Analyze And Know What People Want
Large businesses tend to have a larger pool of audience. With that many people to take care of, the diversity can be difficult to manage. For smaller businesses, that's a different story.
Small businesses can analyze what people actually want, by targeting a smaller demography. That targeted audience should have something in common - know what they want, and deliver that to them.
When brainstorming for a blog post ideas, there are various of sources you can depend to come up with topics. Figure out what people want on search engines, find the best keywords by country and language to represent the contents, and create a powerful post that your targeted audience will love.
Using analytics software, analyze the patterns and the behavior of your visitors. Know what keywords attract them the most, and which of your post answers their questions.
Have an internal site search feature available so users can easily jump from one page to another without having the trouble to click through uncertainty.
Create And Draft Contents Based On Targeted Keywords
After knowing what people want and what keywords are best to describe their intentions, the next thing to do is craft an idea for a content.
From text, infographics, videos, e-books, images, papers and much more. Create your contents based on what people actually want. As a small business website, you need to balance your time and cost production. And one of the best way to do it, is by creating a blog that highlights your business.
Using keywords, try answering people's most-wanted questions. Take the authoritative role and describe the answer in details, but appealing to both technical and non-technical audience. Reference other sources when necessary, and most of all, always put some personal 'touch' or opinion on your every post.
Not only that it will give your post a bit of a unique character, it will also put you as an expert on the field.
You may need to sacrifice some details and aim for quick answers.
Publish, Share, Repeat
The post you're creating isn't just about getting backlinks for the sake of SEO. Always remember the greater value you can give to your audience if you can establish yourself as an expert in the field, fueling your brand upwards against your more powerful competitors.
What this means, your posts should be worthy of sharing and caring. As a small business, you should produce content that represents your products and offerings, and at the same time, establishing yourself as the subject's expert about your business.
Usually 500 to 1,000 words per post should be sufficient for most cases. Without being spammy or repetitive, those many words should be enough to answer most questions.
Be sure that you have time to create new posts regularly. The more contents you create and share, the more organic traffic and inbound links you will receive. And the more valuable you posts are to your visitors, the better you can establish your brand.
While the puzzles may come in many pieces and difficult to solve, but as long as you know where it starts and where it should end, you should get a glimpse of the bigger picture.
Promote And Let The World Know
There are billions of internet users. And out of that many, subtracting by the number of niches and the market share already taken by competitors, there still should be plenty of people to target.
If you think that publishing a web page and hope for the traffic to come is the way to go, you're totally wrong. That isn't how the internet works, and that will never be the case. Remember that the greater amount of effort you spend will result in greater results.
If you're active in promoting your posts on social media networks, on news feed, RSS aggregators, forums, Q&A websites and others, the better the results will be. But make sure that you use the correct platform to promote your contents. For example, LinkedIn is better for business-related contents, while Instagram and Pinterest are better for visually pleasing contents.
After sharing your contents to the platform of your choice, make sure that you engage with people that engage with you. Even if you're putting yourself as an expert in the field, it's wise to not lecture people. Instead, start a meaningful conversation and push your marketing message slowly.
Every business on the web has humans working behind them. Start behaving like humans on the web and be flexible and casual.
Always remember that social media is a place for human authenticity.
Monitor, Track And Tweak
After doing all the above, now it's the time to know how they perform.
Add your website to analytics software to better analyze insights. Install the tracking code on every page of your website, and track how each of them perform. Understand which keywords drive the most traffic and into what page, know where your audience come from and what they're seeking. Analyze bounce rate and tweak things to lower it. See where your visitors are coming from (direct, social, referrals, organic, etc.).
Making your website thrive is not an easy tasks. There are countless of others that are doing the exact thing as you, and here is where you should do better than them. This won't be an overnight project, especially when you're up against more established competitors. But keep your mind clear and focused, and target at least a few months for the progress to happen.