Big businesses can count on their brand identity to generate traffic. Since they already have a large following, they do not have to struggle driving traffic to their websites. But for small businesses, the playground is a bit different since they lack the brand identity of big businesses. 

Small businesses rely mostly on SEO to generate organic traffic that can turn into sales. Consequently, such businesses must build an optimal SEO strategy to have a better competitive advantage. Packages such as Salesforce come packed with SEO tools to help small businesses but to take advantage of these tools, you need to work with the best salesforce consulting company. 

Hiring a consultant works best if you understand what your business needs. So, before you start looking around for an agency to help your business, let’s look at how you can improve your SEO game.

How To Improve SEO For Your Small Business 

1. Develop A Data-Driven Strategy

If you want to resolve your marketing woes, get rid of assumption-led strategies, and adopt an SEO marketing strategy anchored on data. Collect both online and offline data and to better understand your customers search strategies. The information you gather should inform your SEO strategy to improve customer experience. 

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What data are you supposed to collect? You can’t attract clients to your website if you do not know their search terms. Organic search traffic leads to a significantly higher close rate compared to other outbound leads. So, research profitable keywords. 

Knowing keywords is essential, but knowing whether they are profitable will make a big difference. Conduct a thorough competitive analysis regularly to generate data that you can use to improve your SEO. 

Always review Google’s Search Console for any changes in keywords. Search terms change with trends. A search term that is effective today may not be so useful in a month. You have to be aware of these changes and adapt to trends if you want your business to rank higher. 

2. Optimize Voice Search

The penetration of Google Home and Alexa shows that voice search has claimed its place in the digital platform. With the introduction of Google BERT, Google’s newest algorithm, you can now understand searches better. 

Most searches are a result of curiosity or the desire to acquire specific information. When people make queries, they are often from a position of wanting to learn. As such, they may not know the best way to formulate the search, the right words to use, or even the spelling of certain words. 

Voice search has made search more convenient as users do not have to worry about things like spelling. Users can speak to their phones as they would to a real person. With BERT, voice results are more accurate and reliable, getting more people to use voice search. 

As voice search increases in popularity, you need to be at the frontline of optimizing your website for voice search for Google Assistant-powered devices. This way, you will get more featured snippets. 

3. Focus On Local Customers

Every business wants to go international in the digital marketplace. You sell products that customers can order across the globe, and you can ship everywhere within a few days? Sounds good, but for a small business, you should take things slow. 

In the current digital marketplace, distance, prominence, and relevance play a significant role in local search rankings. So, have you claimed your business in Google My Business? If not, you need to do so and optimize your content for local searches. If users review your site, strangers will likely trust opinions from reputable sources like Google Places. 

4. Improve Your Website’s User-Friendliness

A website being user friendly has nothing to do with your content but plays a critical role in improving your SEO ranking. The kind of experience users have on your website will affect its ranking. If search algorithms notice that users do not spend much time on your website, it will lower your ranking. 

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If you have quality content, you want to make the user experience pleasant so that users will stay on your website longer. Can users quickly get the information they are searching for on your website? If they can’t, they will go elsewhere to your detriment. 

Ensure that your website has an easy-to-navigate structure since users want to find pages or content easily. Improve load times and optimize content as well. 

5. Content Marketing

So, you have great content, and you expect people to share it and increase your visibility, but it is not happening. Well, if you think people will just share your content easily, you are grossly mistaken. Get out of your comfort zone and push your content because if you do not get the audience you need, your competitor will. 

Most small businesses struggle to make it in content marketing, but have you ever wondered why? The problem is that they are getting the marketing wrong. If you are getting the wrong audience, they are not going to share your content. 

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Create content that addresses specific concerns from your target audience. This way, you will get the right people to read, link to, share, and cite your content, leading to increased visibility. 

6. Social Media

Social media is one of the most fundamental things you can have to grow your small business in today’s world. It is vital to have a social media presence as it expands your audience reach and lets other potential customers know about your brand.

It is hugely beneficial for SEO as you can boost your business traffic using social media, and it will let search engines know that people are coming to visit your social media page.

You can increase your traffic to your website by putting your website on your social media page, and it can significantly improve and generate more engaged users and followers. There are many ways to grow your social media following by using a few simple tips and techniques.

Using social media will help rank your business higher up as social media profiles appear on search engines when people search for your business, so having optimised pages is essential.

Conclusion

With the increased penetration of the internet, businesses have also gone digital. But this also comes with increased competition.