What SEO services do small businesses need
Deciphering the required SEO services for a business can be challenging as it varies depending on the nature of the business. Do you have a store in a specific location or an online store? Are you a blogger, affiliate, or someone who offers either physical services like plumbing or online services like consulting?
Small businesses typically do not possess quality content and face limitations in promoting their products or services.
Nowadays, templates and content management systems have made it easier to create quality websites, but writing quality content remains challenging. Furthermore, simply having quality content on a live website is not sufficient; one must also understand how to effectively promote it in order to demonstrate its value to Google.
Are SEO services affordable
Search engine optimization holds great importance in today’s society as it enhances your discoverability and boosts the visibility of your brand. When it comes to small businesses, SEO serves as a highly cost-efficient marketing strategy that yields enduring advantages, given that you collaborate with a suitable SEO service provider.
Small businesses can benefit from companies that provide affordable SEO services. These companies invest time to comprehend the unique requirements of your business and develop a customized SEO strategy using established and successful methods.
Certainly, individuals have varying definitions of what constitutes as “affordable,” including when it comes to SEO. Thus, if your small business generates significant annual revenue, in the range of hundreds of thousands, then a monthly expenditure of $5k should not be a cause for concern.
If your business does not generate a significant income, investing the same amount of money will only hinder its progress.
Types of affordable SEO services for your small business
Now, let’s take a closer look and examine the various affordable SEO services available to small businesses.
1. Technical SEO
A positive aspect of technical SEO is that it only needs to be addressed once. Although adjustments may need to be made as algorithms change, if you establish it correctly initially, it will remain effective. The following are the key elements of technical SEO that a small business should incorporate into its online marketing strategy:
- URL and site structure: Although many businesses opt for setting this up internally, it’s probably the best course of action to ask a small business SEO consultant or a reliable IT services support company for help. This is especially true if you’re running an eCommerce store, as it’s the most difficult to structure.
- Optimized titles, headings & descriptions: Use the identified keywords in your title and meta description, among others. Don’t go cheap out on it. Even if you believe people won’t read it, Google will.
- Image Compression: While necessary for the sheer visual appeal, images are probably the biggest problem when it comes to technical SEO and page load times. Compressing the visuals (with tools like Smush for WordPress) while keeping their quality is essential.
- Caching: Caching your site will make it load even faster. Luckily, good caching can be achieved for free with plugins like W3 Total Cache or Autoptimize.
- Structured data: This is imperative for eCommerce websites, as they can help enhance Google results for products.
2. Content SEO
The importance of SEO remains the same regardless of the type of content, as online materials are not limited to written content, especially with the increasing preference for video content over traditional formats.
- Keyword research: This is the basis of your on-page SEO strategy. Knowing what your audience is searching for will help you optimize your pages accordingly.
- Copywriting: Quality copywriting isn’t cheap, but it is worth investing in. Effective copy sells and that’s exactly what you need on your website. Even though prospective customers want information first and foremost, you need to convince them to convert.
- Content Calendar: Content needs to be weaved carefully and strategically. Developing a clear, thought-out schedule can really help your business grow with ease. Based on keyword research, you have to map out your content and decide which one to prioritize. Also, your content should integrate seamlessly into your site’s structure.
3. Link building
In today’s digital landscape, link building ranks as the most challenging task to accomplish. Despite the well-known advantages it brings, obtaining links for your website is a daunting endeavor, particularly without financial incentive. Moreover, Google can impose penalties, even though this may appear unfair.
Although there may not be much that can be done about it, there are methods to progress forward.
To start off, it is important to analyze the links of your competitors. In most cases, your industry rivals, particularly the ones that already have a high ranking in the SERP, are likely implementing successful strategies.
There are numerous backlink analysis tools available at an affordable price which can determine the backlinks being utilized. Moreover, these tools aid in identifying and removing undesirable links, allowing you to concentrate solely on valuable ones.
Analyzing your competitors can assist in identifying their strengths and weaknesses, allowing you to highlight your own strengths.
Blog commenting is another method to obtain valuable links. Despite some SEO professionals viewing it as spam, it can still yield positive results. The key is to avoid excessive commenting, as it would only confirm their belief.
What is the process of blog commenting?
In order to promote your website, you should first find and engage with relevant websites and blogs related to your small business or industry. Treat this engagement in a similar way as you would on LinkedIn. By establishing connections with other websites in your field, you may have the opportunity to negotiate a link-building arrangement to boost your website’s visibility.
By further expanding on our previous point, if you engage with bloggers who are relevant to your topic, you could establish a strong enough connection with them to request guest posts or even offer to write one for their websites.
The difficult part now is content marketing. What does that mean? Although it is beneficial for long-term SEO, simply writing articles will not suffice. Honestly, you need to write blogs that are appealing to readers and encourage sharing. Believe us, it is not simple.
By following a systematic approach, you can rephrase the given text while retaining its original meaning. This involves considering all the aforementioned points, assessing the market or industry influencers, establishing connections with them, and/or creating unique content that you are confident they will be inclined to share.
4. For content marketing
- Keyword research: Keyword Research is crucial if you want to set the basis of your OnPage SEO strategy on content marketing. If you don’t know what people are searching for, you don’t know what to optimize your pages for.
- Copywriting: While good copywriting isn’t cheap, it’s worth investing in it. Good copy sells, and that’s what you need on your website, especially if you’re just starting out. Sure, a content marketing strategy is based on information not sales, but what if you could give out information that sells? That’s where copywriting kicks in.
- Editorial Calendar: Content marketing is a long-term game, so developing a schedule can really help you move things forward with ease. It’s mostly based on keyword research, but you have to map things out into hubs or silos and decide which ones to prioritize and how they can better facilitate and consolidate your site’s structure.
5. For rank tracking
It is important to measure an SEO strategy in order to assess the success of an SEO campaign. It is a wise decision to monitor the outcomes independently, regardless of whether you collaborate with an SEO company. Below are several techniques that you can employ to effectively monitor and evaluate your rankings and outcomes:
To utilize Google, simply open it and enter your keyword. It is advisable to do so in Incognito mode in order to exclude personalized search outcomes.
The Google Search Console is a tool offered by Google at no cost that allows you to track the sources of traffic to your website and also provides information on the average rankings for the keywords responsible for that traffic.
If you desire something more advanced, consider our rank tracker at CognitiveSEO. It will not only display your SEO rankings, but it will also alert you of any decreases and offer a graph for every keyword. Monitoring your competitor’s rankings is also possible with our tool, if that is of interest to you.
6. For video SEO
Video SEO can be beneficial for the expansion of your business. As the preference for video content continues to increase, it can be challenging to find cost-effective SEO services for small businesses specifically tailored to video optimization. Unlike blog posts, videos cannot be continuously optimized once they are published.
You can make changes to titles and descriptions to improve optimization, but overall, it is important to get things right from the beginning. Here are some tips to enhance ranking with video or incorporate video SEO into your content marketing strategy.
- Keyword research: Just as with regular SEO, you want to know what people are searching for before you create a video. Sometimes, it’s hard to match a topic or new idea you have to a keyword, but try your best to do it. This way you’ll get the best out of both worlds.
- Optimized titles & descriptions: Use the identified keywords in your title and description. Don’t cheap out on the description, even if not many people will read it. Populate it with complementary info such as links to sources.
- Short Product Presentation Clips: If you sell products online, make sure you have video presentations of them. People are busy, so short and to the point ones will be best. These days, you can do everything with a phone. There is a multitude of video editing software for both Android and Apple.
- Consistency: While posting a few clips here and there might work if they rank high for your target keyword, if you want to have real success with video, you’ll have to do it on a regular basis.
- Interlinking between videos: Let’s face it: most video content happens on YouTube. And YouTube wants its users to stay on YouTube. So have multiple videos related to one another. Send people from one video to another so that they spend more time on YouTube and YouTube will reward you.
- Repurpose content: If you’ve already been blogging for a while, you can use those topics to create video content. Then, simple interlink the video and blog post. You can do this vice-versa, if you’ve been focusing your time on video content instead.
