Any small business that wants to thrive in this day and age has to employ some level of digital marketing. As we’ll discuss in this article, much of modern business exists online, and reaching costumers is different than it used to be.
Search engine optimization is a huge piece of the digital marketing puzzle, and we’ll examine a little bit about why it’s important and how to do it well. There are other essential elements of digital marketing that we’ll dive into as well.
Hopefully, our exploration of SEO and digital marketing tips will give you some insights that boost your bottom line and leave you better prepared to do business in the digital age.
Let’s get started.
15 Essential SEO and Digital Marketing Tips
We’ll dig into the fundamentals in this article, so don’t worry if you don’t have very extensive knowledge of SEO or digital marketing. Some of the terms might seem foreign at first, but we’ll look into the definitions of any words that you may not have heard of or acronyms that are commonly used.
If any of those definitions slip through the cracks as we go through our tips, though, a quick Google search should clear up any confusion. Another thing to keep in mind as you read through this article is that anyone with a website and some simple web-knowledge can conduct a great campaign.
Related: SEO for Business Growth: 6 Ways SEO Leads to Growth
In other words, the work that you do on your own will have an impact on your web traffic if you’re doing things well. The more effort you put into these practices, though, the more success you’ll see.
Keep in mind that there are professionals that optimize sites and do small business marketing for a living. These are people who will kick your results into the next tier.
If you don’t have it in the budget to hire a digital marketer or think you can hack it on your own, though, take a look at the following ideas and use them to move forward.
Related: SEO for Business Growth: 6 Ways SEO Leads to Growth
1. Understand the Search Engine’s Goal
Too many businesses try to optimize their page before they consider the quality of the content they’re putting out.
It’s important to remember that search engines are businesses that intend to put out a product that’s superior to their competitors’ products. In this case, that means providing the search results that are most relevant to user searches and will offer the most benefit to users.
If Google’s search results start slipping, for example, users might switch over to Bing. As a user, you’re not looking for the website that’s optimized the best. You’re looking for a website that provides the most value according to your search.
So, keep in mind that improving the quality of your site is always the best way to optimize it. You could optimize every aspect of your site but still fail because the content is worthless to users.
2. Do Regular Keyword Research
Keyword research is the backbone of any SEO campaign. Keyword research is the process of finding out which terms are being searched by your users.
The idea is to identify popular terms then create content that is optimized for those terms. Optimizing for a particular term requires that you use the keyword in particular places throughout your content and in the right amounts.
“Keyword research” might sound a little intimidating at first, but the process is made pretty simple with the help of tools. There are a million keyword research tools that you could use, all of which provide unique benefits.
Your bread and butter, though, should be Google Analytics. Analytics serves as a really simple baseline for you to start using. The tool shows you how much traffic your specific pages are getting, which links users are coming from, and a whole lot more.
Most importantly for this point, though, it offers key insight into search terms and how much traffic they’re getting. The key is to find terms that have high traffic and low competition.
The term “new car” probably has a lot of traffic, but there’s a very small chance that you could beat out top motor companies for the top search results.
3. Optimize Locally
Competing for terms that huge companies are optimized for is kind of pointless. Those companies have a lot of domain authority and linking power (which we’ll discuss next), meaning they hold those spots with little chance of losing them.
Again, the search engine wants to provide results that will serve the most people, and the largest volume of people are searching for those companies.
So, the trick is to optimize for terms that are popular in your area. Search engines account for location in their algorithm so you can optimize for terms that have little competition. You can specify your location in the keyword research you do and make changes to adjust for the results you find.
Many people make ‘near me’ searches. A ‘near me’ search would be something like “coffee near me” or “great mechanics near me.” Another popular way of searching includes the actual city that the person is in.
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So, something like “coffee in Lincoln, Nebraska” could be a popular search. You can optimize for terms like that and expect to compete with only your local businesses. Many of those businesses might not put a lot of effort into their digital marketing, so you’ll be in luck.
4. Focus on Link-Building
Link-building is the process of getting other websites to include links to your site in their content.
If you’re lucky, those sites will be in your niche and have a good deal of domain authority. Generally, larger, more popular sites have higher domain authority. So, if Tesla links to your car-related business, you’re going to see an uptick in your search positions.
On the other hand, if a small toilet company links to your shoe website, you won’t see a whole lot of difference. Link-building comes with time, and it’s something that you have to see as a kind of investment.
As your site gets more popular, other websites will be more inclined to link to it. Additionally, sites will link to you more often if you have excellent content.
You can also communicate with other websites and try to gather some links through your relationship to those sites. This is important because search engine algorithms see links as votes in your favor.
If other sites are linking to you, the thinking goes, you must provide valuable content.
5. Establish a Content Schedule
Whatever your preferred form of content, make sure you’re prepared to post regularly. Many sites use blogs because they’re an excellent platform to optimize on and a lot of users seek information through blogs. So, for the purposes of this article, “content” will generally refer to some form of a blog post.
It’s important to post often because it gives you opportunities to optimize for more terms. Each post you create should be in response to a popular keyword that you’re trying to rank for.
As you gain more popularity through this process, traffic will filter into your other pages and more users will be likely to purchase your products and services. Additionally, an increase in traffic on any of your pages will improve your site’s overall rankings across the board.
6. Structure Your Content
As you move forward with content creation, try and make your posts in a way that provides some kind of structure. Think of the organization as a kind of tree.
The trunk is your home page, contact page, or a different essential page of your site. The main branches will be your product pages and areas where customers can make conversions (we’ll discuss conversions next). Finally, the twigs and smaller branches are the content that you post regularly.
Word your posts in a way that subtly directs users back toward the larger parts of the tree. That way, a person who finds one of your smaller keyword-optimized articles will be interested to see what else your business does and potentially make a conversion.
7. Keep Conversions in Mind
All too often, content creation and digital marketing get caught up on increasing traffic and forget what the point was in the first place. The point is to get people to do business with you.
A “conversion” is an instance when someone finds your site and does the thing that you’d like them to. That could mean making a purchase, downloading something, or subscribing. Whatever your “conversion” is, gear your content toward it.
If you find that you’re getting a lot more traffic but your bottom line isn’t affected, you might have to think about changing things up to make users more inclined to do business with you.
8. Business Listings
Business listing sites are crucial to gather reviews. If you receive a bunch of good reviews from customers, search engines will take it as an indication that your site is worth ranking.
You can’t get reviews, though, if you aren’t listed in the most popular sites. Sites like Yelp and Google’s business site are very important to be listed on. Also, ensure that all of your business’ information is correct and that there aren’t any typos or outdated information.
9. Incentivize Reviews
We really can’t overstate the importance of reviews. Try and encourage customers in your physical business to review you online, and make it easy for your online customers to review you.
That might mean linking to a review page in your content or including that link in your digital receipts. Whatever your method, and there are a number of methods, do your best to get people to give you feedback.
If your feedback is bad, that doesn’t mean you’re out of the running for rankings.
10. Engage With Your Customers
Bad rankings provide an opportunity for you to be responsive and make changes to the issues you’re having. The more responsive you are, the more likely you are to get that review changed or even show customers you care about what you do.
This doesn’t affect any ranking factors specifically, but it speaks to the idea of providing value and being a useful entity for users. That activity will come back around and boost another ranking factor in some way.
In terms of social media, though, engagement improves a lot.
11. Be Present on Social Media
Be sure to have social media accounts on all platforms where your users could conceivably spend time. Identify the platforms where the majority of your users spend time and focus more energy on them.
It’s important to engage with customer communication and support your blog posts through shares and postings on your social media accounts. This is an excellent way to bring people to your site outside of search engines.
12. Pay-Per-Click Marketing
Almost all social media platforms offer some kind of pay-per-click (PPC) options. This form of marketing allows you to present ads to users who are actually interested in the kinds of services you provide.
It lets you broadcast your message to users like yours or individuals who have expressed interest in the products or services that you offer. That way, you’re not spending money marketing to people who probably have no interest in your business.
13. Be Persistent
Again, this process should be thought of as an investment. If you put your head down and do the work, you’ll see results in a relatively short amount of time.
It might be taxing to create regular content and optimize all of it, though. Just remember that these tasks will bring business to your door, especially if you’re focusing on local searches.
14. Get In-Person Feedback
It never hurts to get a fresh pair of eyes on your site. You may be working tirelessly to optimize but get too close to the process.
Talk with a close friend, family member, or customer and see what they think about your site. If the content is well-written and the site is arranged in a pleasing way, great. If they don’t enjoy the site, then you may have some rearranging to do.
15. Don’t Rule out Professional Help
SEO professionals can help you get off the ground with your process. If you’re not feeling like the work you put in is giving any results, consider working with someone who does it for a living.
At the very least, a professional can establish a great foundation for you to work off later.
Want to Learn More?
Hopefully, these digital marketing tips gave you somewhere to start. There’s a lot to learn, though, and we’re here to help.
Explore our site for more essential tips on how to make your business thrive online.
