Top 10 SEO Strategies Small Businesses Should Follow in 2018

Everyone wants to attract more eyes to their website. Strong and effective search engine optimization (SEO) strategies have the potential to push your site to the top of Google’s organic search rankings, leading to growth for your business.

SEO is a fast moving field. So it’s no surprise that you find people who are swayed by new developments, trends, and practices. However, there are some SEO gold standards that all SMBs should adopt in 2018.

Define your audience

SEO drives traffic to the website. But that would be of no use if your website is not displayed in front of a relevant audience. Therefore, you want to identify the type of audience you are targeting and learn about their search patterns, demographics, geographic location, preferences, etc. A step in this direction can be taken by setting up a Google Analytics account which will allow you to get more information about them on a daily, weekly and monthly basis.

Put your audience first

When creating your blog posts, it is imperative that you have a reader-first mindset. What your readers actually got out of your writing should be top of mind.

Never assume you don’t have direct competitors

There will always be someone who has already used the keywords you want to target. Do your homework to find out who these competitors of yours are and how you can set your SEO strategy apart from everyone else’s.

Improve your page speed

Google places great emphasis on page speed. A great page speed improves the visibility of your site. According to Gomez.com, even one second delay in page load time can decrease customer dissatisfaction by 16 percent. All this is the most important in the case of mobile users.

Use long tail keywords

Using long tail keywords in your strategy is key to the success of your business. For example, considering the keyword “SEO Tips” can take a long time to improve ranking in Google. However, using long-tail versions of the keyword “SEO Tips” such as “SEO Marketing for Your Business” can increase your chances of ranking high in Google.

local SEO

Small businesses should especially focus on local search. If you’re running a brick-by-brick small business, local SEO is of the utmost importance. It was recently discovered that 50% of consumers who search locally on their smartphone visit a store that same day. The figure stands at 34% when it comes to searching on a computer or tablet. Therefore, it is based on the things that the visibility of your business should rank high in your area. Otherwise, you risk losing out to competitors.

Get your website mobile friendly

Survey results reveal that 60% of traffic comes from mobile devices, and that number is likely to rise. Therefore, it is up to you to ensure that your site is optimized for mobile visitors and is not difficult to navigate on mobile devices. This becomes even more necessary because Google is in the process of giving higher ranks to sites that are optimized for mobile devices.

voice search

With the passage of time, the use of voice-based search is increasing. Now it is clear that you can ignore the voice search at your own risk. Since voice search queries are so different from typed queries, you’ll need to optimize your content for voice search.

Be authentic

SEO is not a sneaky or deceptive practice, although there are people who tend to think so. Tricking search engines by using shady tactics will not help you. By doing so, you risk losing the trust of search engines.

Focus on quality over quantity of links.

Quality rather than quantity should be your main consideration when it comes to building links for your website. Building a lot of poor quality links has the potential to damage your website’s credibility.

SEO is an ongoing process. However, starting with a solid strategy will translate into online success for many years to come.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Back To Top