If you feel that you are clueless when it comes to using computers, you are not alone, as much as you may feel that you are. If you were not born with digital devices in your hands, it is easy to get overwhelmed by everything there is to learn. One area that is vital for small business owners to learn about is marketing, more specifically search engine optimization. This is meant to serve as a guide for anyone who does not know the first thing about how to market his or her small business online.
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What Is Search Engine Optimization?
When you search for something in a search engine, such as Google, how does the search engine know which results to display first? Part of the answer is search engine optimization, More commonly abbreviated SEO, search engine optimization refers to carefully choosing the words and phrases that appear on your webpages to make your website more likely to appear when people search for terms related to your business. For example, an aquarium company based in Boston might want their website to appear when someone searches for “fish tanks in Massachusetts”, and search engine optimization can help with that.
How To Use It
Now that you know what SEO is, where do you go to use it? There are several SEO companies that hire writers to compose articles containing potential search terms and website links that they know how to use to promote your site. Think about how you and others who you know use search engines. Those are the types of terms that you want to use in those optimizations. Use short, simple sentences and incomplete phrases that people might use to find broad information on a topic. Get in the heads of your consumers to understand how they work.
Use It Consistently
One thing you have to remember about SEO is that you will not be the only business using that strategy, so it is important to stay on top of it to keep your name at the top of the search results. You should also update the terms you want to connect to your business as you begin offering new products and services. The more search terms you invest in, the broader your reach will be. As people begin to find you more often, search engines will naturally start to promote your website more as more people visit it.
Artificial Intelligence
Basic forms of artificial intelligence are easy to use to decide which terms you should be trying to promote. There are more types of internet marketing companies that can help you make these decisions than you can keep track of. IoT is a great way to get a hang of all things technological. What is IoT? It stands for the Internet of Things which refers to the network that connects all kinds of digital devices that are connected to the internet. Your devices and your customers’ devices are always connecting data, and artificial intelligence can use that data to learn new things.
Keyword Research
Keywords are the words people input into search engines. Basic keyword research is something that anyone can do. Google Trends is a website that makes it easy to see how many people are searching for a given keyword as well as other information like where those people live and how those keyword trends have developed over time. The best way to figure out the best terms to boost without doing intensive, professional research is by spending an hour or two playing around on that website to see which terms get the most views.
Optimized Names
If you are at a point where you have not created a business name or you could still change it, you might want to consider a name that will give you good SEO. A generic company name, such as a common surname is not good for your business’s SEO because search engines will be more likely to show popular social media pages and other businesses with similar names rather than your business. Instead, create a new, unique name that is difficult to get confused with anything else. Search your potential names on a search engine to see if anyone else is using it.
Body Content
While hiring SEO companies is a great way to boost your name quickly, you can write body content on your website yourself in conjunction with that to boost yourself even further. It is difficult to say what the exact parameters for the ideal SEO article are, but as long as you write a passage that gets your message across and uses terms that are related to your business it should be effective. Remember to break up your online articles into smaller sections and use headings to make your website easy to navigate.
General Tech Skills
While all of these tips are great to know, they are not worth much if you do not have general tech and internet skills and the ability to protect yourself online. Local businesses and services, such as public libraries and community colleges, likely have cheap or free computer skills classes available to help people who are not used to the internet landscape. There is no shame in admitting that you are struggling with something. If you ask for help or work up the courage to search for the answer online, people will be willing to help you since you went out of your way to attain new knowledge.
Successful companies are the ones that learn how to adapt to new technologies as they crop up. Small businesses have just as much potential to grow as any large corporation, but they have to run a competitive business that uses the same strategies as those businesses. Search engine optimization might seem like an insurmountable obstacle at first, but there are so many resources available to you that can help you along the way. Use them to your advantage and you will find yourself dominating your competition before you even realize that you have become a technological whiz.