Introduction to SEO, For the Small Business Owner
SEO is a complex thing to do well. There is no getting around it.
The point of Search Engine Optimization is to get your site ranking highly in search results with terms your potential customers use to find your goods and services.
Why does a search engine rank one page over another? Google uses a secret mixture of hundreds of factors to determine what makes one page better than another. Everything from how much content is on a page to how fast a page loads can affect rankings.
How should a page with good SEO be built?
Here are some overall guidelines:
- Be specific in your content. Your page is competing with billions of pages around the world. Google wants to show the best ones. Include geographic references to help narrow who the page is for.
- Research what keywords are popular in your area and include them in your content. For the most important keywords, devote entire pages for content just for that keyword.
- Each page should be about one clear topic. That topic should include likely keywords people will use to search for you.
- Each page should have relevant content about that topic, at least 300 – 500 words, and include properly tagged images and links to related content on your site.
- Outside links (from other websites and social media) pointing to your page help show how popular and helpful your page is.
How should a small business optimize their site?
First, build a site worth visiting. Even if someone finds your site, does it look credible enough for them to stay around? Does the site answer users’ questions about that topic? Will they contact you as a potential supplier?
Second, build the website in a search friendly way, if you haven’t already, using the guidelines above. Your pages will be findable using specific enough terms (“Kyle Loranger graphic designer”), but may not come up in more generic searches (“graphic designer edmonton”). If you are in a very specific field users are searching for, this may be all you need.
Third, if you are depending on your site for new customers to discover you, and you are in a crowded field such as real estate, hire an SEO specialist. They can create an online marketing strategy, edit the content on the site and provide measureable results. Expect to budget $1000 – $2000 a month for six months to a year. Also consider a social media manager to help spur traffic from your Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts.
Fourth, consider pay per click advertising. A PPC marketing specialist can help you develop a strategy, a budget and media buying plan.
What KLD can do to help your SEO
We can take it to the second stage outlined above, where your website is built in a web-friendly way. To do our work, we’ll need a free hand to make content edits as we see them.
- Research searched keywords in your area
- Structure your content, add tags to photos, add links to other relevant content on your site
- Edit content, page titles and page urls to include key terms
- Add in Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools to measure and report on search volume
The result will be that your site will be findable in Google for very specific search terms.
