Building SEO Strategies for Small Businesses

By Josie Mae Mitchell

Search engine optimization (SEO) is essential for growing your small businesses. Through utilizing SEO,  you can increase traffic to your website and businesses without paid advertising. SEO involves strategically inserting keywords in your content that you know your target audience will search for online. Utilizing keywords and optimizing your content will help potential clients find your business. With a proper SEO strategy, your small business can compete with large businesses that have a huge advertising budget. 

Marketing Choices can help you create the perfect SEO strategy for your small business. Our team of marketing professionals is dedicated to helping you with all of your digital content and marketing needs.

Keyword Research For Your Small Business

The first step in finding the best keywords for SEO is establishing a distinct target audience for your content. Who is your content for? Who are your business’s potential clients and target audience? Advertising to everyone at once is impossible. Centering your target audience is important in finding out which keywords will resonate with your consumers. 

There are many ways to research which keywords will help your content thrive. One option is to examine popular, similar businesses with the same target audience for inspiration. Search online for your type of business and see which websites or content appear first. The websites that pop up first have very good SEO. Look through the business’s website to see which content-related words they make prominent and include throughout. Likely, those will be helpful keywords for you. 

You can also use the search bar in various search engines to see what your target audience is looking for. Start a search related to your content and see what appears. The phrases your target audience are constantly searching for should be your keywords. 

There are also many online tools that can do SEO keyword research for you. For example, Google Keyword Planner can estimate search volume of keywords and help you discover the keywords right for you. There are many other search engine extensions and websites with similar functions.

Local SEO for Small Businesses

For many small businesses, your local community is an important part of your target audience. The support of people local to you can be essential, especially if you have a physical business location. Having local citations, or online mentions, of your small business is the best form of local SEO. Local citations are places where your business’ name, address, or phone number are mentioned on another website. Yelp, Google Maps, and local tourism sites are possible online locations where your business might be cited.

Optimizing your Google Business account is one great way to be included in more local citations and come up in local searches. Having a Google business profile will put your location on Google Maps and show your website to people nearby. More people will be likely to discover and visit your business. 

Additionally, you can use keywords related to your location. Adding location phrases to your other content-related keywords and phrases will help local customers see your website. For example, if you have a Vietnamese restaurant in Boulder, a key phrase could be: “Vietnamese food Boulder.” 

Localizing and optimizing your content is important as well. 

On-Page SEO For Your Small Business

While keywords are necessary for SEO, you can optimize your content in other ways too. Optimizing the elements of your website, such as content, structure, and tags, is called on-page SEO. 

First, ensuring the quality of your website content is the most important factor in small business SEO. If your website is not appealing, attracting viewers in other ways will not matter. Consistent viewership is important for platforms who advertise your content, and viewers will not revisit low quality websites. Additionally, if your content is unappealing, it will not encourage viewers to support your business. 

Make sure your website specifically relates to your target audience and local audience in ways besides keywords. To localize your content, you can include photos of local landmarks and use geotagging features on social media. 

Take time to research the culture and needs of your local and target audiences. Keep tracking what your audience is searching for and make your website appeal directly to them. Ensure all of your content remains on brand on your website. Customers do not want to be confused about what you do. 

Small Business SEO Tracking 

It may take time to learn which SEO strategies work best for your content. Additionally, the search habits and keywords of your target audience may change over time. Through the analytics your website and social media platforms will show you, track which strategies increase your website traffic the most. 

If one strategy stops working, do not be afraid to change it up. Keeping up with search trends and the needs of your target audience is an essential part of content marketing. Lastly, do not be afraid to reach out for help. 

Marketing Choices Can Help Create Your SEO Strategy 

Contact us at Marketing Choices for help creating your SEO strategy and optimizing your digital marketing as a whole. From developing a marketing strategy to managing campaigns, Marketing Choices can handle your content marketing and online advertising needs. 

We are a team of smart, social, and creative people who deliver colorful solutions for our client’s Marketing Plan. To contact Marketing Choices and learn more about our services, you can email us here. We look forward to helping you through your journey.