As a small business you can dominate local search if you use the right techniques to help you do so. Of course, there are some problems and challenges that you may encounter along the way that you’ll want to know about before you get started.
Waiting Until you Launch Your Website to Think About the Search Engines
You can’t afford to wait until your small business website is launched to be concerned about SEO. Instead, this is something that should be incorporated into your planning, design, and launch because there are many different factors that you need to consider along the way. You need to think about your content creation, website layout, information architecture, individual page content, pages you add and delete, and any URL changes (especially 301 redirect mapping). All these things have a massive impact on what happens to you in the search engines.
Thinking About Search Engines as a Short-Term Business Development Channel
SEO isn’t “pay to play” like PPC, nor does it function like any other marketing outlets. The search engines make the rules here. A good provider’s expertise and management will help you navigate through this ever-changing landscape. Fortunately, there’s a lot of upside potential here, but there’s also no real guarantees. While reliable strategies will improve your rankings, traffic, and conversions there are over 200 variables in Google’s algorithm that are uncontrollable. Invest wisely and consider this a long-term small business strategy.
Having Your web Developer Handle Your SEO
While good web developers know some SEO basics, they’re not highly experienced here because there’s too much information and variables at play making them two different specialties – like the difference between a heart surgeon and an ophthalmologist. Even the few web developers who are extremely knowledgeable don’t have the tools, experience, and skill set they need to create and manage a comprehensive campaign for your small business.
Buying into Something That’s “too Good to be True”
SEO is challenging because it requires a lot of expertise and experience to truly understand and manage it effectively, especially since the rules change and negative performance occurs. You won’t find a shortcut that doesn’t lead to poor outcomes – like wasting your time, money, and effort. This is why you need to distinguish between legitimate agencies, consultants, and in-house managers, and non-professionals so you’re sure to work with a specialist. If you can’t afford SEO, you’ll need to work on educating yourself instead. Even if you do hire someone to work on this for your small business you’ll still want to know enough to make sure their strategy regarding on-page, off-page, and technical strategies makes sense. These are the primary areas they should address for you.
Thinking Organic Traffic, Website Visibility, and Conversions Means Your Strategy is Working
Your small business needs a detailed tracking process to know what’s working. A great place to start is with Google Analytics or SEMRush – both are free to install. This will give you many tools to track your rankings over time. When you notice that your rankings, organic traffic, and conversions are improving, you’ll know that you’re on the right track with your SEO plan. Even if you don’t see this happening right away, if you offer the right content to the right users and follow basic ‘best practices’ eventually this will happen. Of course, you may grow tired of making these mistakes and trying to figure SEO out for yourself. In this case, you should contact I SEO U. With years of experience helping businesses like yours rise to the top of the SERPs, we look forward to helping you have this same success.