You’ve got a small business upstart and developed a website and a Facebook page and you think you’re ready to go.
Wrong!
Now you’ve got to get people to go to that website and engage with that Facebook page and the only way you’re going to do that is by gaining a great SEO.
The problem is that most small business owners lack the tech savvy to improve their SEO.
What is SEO?
SEO simply stands for “Search Engine Optimization.”
It is the backbone of all web activity.
Well, what does that mean?☝
When you make a webpage and list yourself on Google, Bing Yahoo and the other search engines, they now list you in the category of business that you’re in. For example, if you’re a landscaper, you’ll be listed under “Landscape Contractors,” unless you state otherwise.
You also are inevitably going to end up on the bottom of the list and depending on the number of competitors; you could end up on the second or third search engine page.
But according to research most customers only contact of the first three businesses listed.
You’ve got to be able to know how to do the work to obtain the top listings.
That is not easy.
Let’s go back to that landscaper for a minute.⛏
Forget about the website for a moment and concentrate on the actual search engine listing. You are only allowed on category of business as your main listing.
In the case of landscaping the category choices could be “landscape contractor,” “landscape designer,” “landscape architect,” or “landscape installation.” If you don’t decide on the right one for your business, you’re dead before you even open the door.[/vc_column_text]
Good SEO work only gets better over time. It’s only search engine tricks that need to keep changing when the ranking algorithms change.” – Jill Whalen (@jillwhalen), WhatDidYouDoWithJill.com
Research
You have to research every possible option a person may Google or Bing and it has to be the popular one. For example, where I lived most people referred to a backyard pond as a “garden pond.” So I went and listed the primary service as that.
But that’s not what people Googled, instead they were looking for “water features.” That meant my listing was completely worthless and my SEO for the business stunk. The listing sucked, because absolutely nobody was looking for garden ponds, they were really in the market for a water feature.
Additional research showed that potential customers were not seeking out what seemed like the obvious- “landscaping, Menomonie, WI.” Rather they were putting “landscapers near Menomonie” in the search engine.
If you didn’t have that category specifically listed with Google and Bing, you weren’t going to improve your SEO in the least.
Another aspect that many small businesses don’t consider is that the algorithm of the search engine only allows your business to primarily serve one community. So if you live in the small town of Hawkins, Texas, you probably do your business in the much larger, nearby community of Tyler.
But the catch is that you just can’t claim to serve Tyler and that’s the end of it. Rather the way search engines work is whatever community you list your address as is the community you are said to serve, in this case Hawkins.
There’s ways around this, but they’re nothing the average small business is going to think of or be able to do.
The website nightmare
First of all, most websites for small businesses are junk-sorry to tell you that.
Most often they consist of a home page, contact me and little else.
I’m going to be covering how to make a decent, effective and responsive website design in another post, so right now we’re just worried about websites and improving SEO.
What I’ll ask you to do first is to visit any website and right click your mouse. There are numerous options there, but you want to choose “view page source.”
Have you got it?
It looks like it’s written in some sort of techno-Chinese, doesn’t it?
Well, it actually tells you everything about the page, the keywords that are used and the information you’re going to have learn, in order to improve your SEO.
There are tags and Meta tags you need to use, which is every possible word or phrase a person might Google in order to find your business. This must include the keywords people are likely to use in order to find your business.
I could write an entire paper on the topic of how to use tags and Meta tags, but you still probably wouldn’t get it, because it’s frankly, a real pain in the ass to figure out.
Okay, so now you actually get that far, but now you’ve got to be able to navigate the website to find out exactly how to add these keywords and tags in the first place.
Trust me, you’re going to busy for some time, I can guarantee that. Then after a few days of hard work you’ll check your ranking on Google and Bing, and find out that you actually didn’t improve your SEO in the least and foul words will be spoken.
Don’t throw your computer across the room in fit of rage.
There is a solution
Spare yourself the anger and frustration of trying to figure this all out on your own and turn to the people who can figure this out in no time.
“Simpleit“.
It’s just that easy.
Simpleit are your SEO and web advertising experts and the great thing is that they specialize in helping small businesses just like yours.
We are not interested with the big-box or multi-nationals; Simpleit helps mom and pop small business compete with these big guys by massively improving their SEO and web advertising.
This is Main Street at its best.
We know the ends and outs of SEO and can put that knowledge to work for you.
Contact Us Today, and let us handle everything from A to Z.
