Small business owners are incredibly busy and they’re often living close to the edge of financial disaster. When it comes to ongoing marketing campaigns, they often struggle to find solutions that will help grow their bottom line with what little time they can dedicate.
Search engine optimization has the promise to help small businesses compete in a marketplace dominated by corporate giants. Ironically, many small business owners are frustrated because they have tried SEO and not seen the results they had anticipated.
They understand that 93% of all online experiences begin with a search engine inquiry and are desperate to capture the potential consumers who are on google.com throughout the day. They also know that organic results are favored by many consumers and believe if they can only trap a small percentage of organic traffic they could convert prospects into customers and see significant growth.
In this article, we will outline five straightforward strategies that any small business blogger can use to transform a failing search engine optimization strategy into a successful digital marketing campaign that will produce leads and customers.
Many studies have recently demonstrated that position one rankings in Google are consistently held by pages hosting deep content. The trend has shifted toward well-researched topics that expound on details and offer statistics that are very helpful to users.
The average page one ranking has over 1,500 words on the page. This is a dramatic increase from just a few years ago when shorter content was the norm. Many small business owners have not adjusted their blogging strategy to include lengthier content.
But filling your blog with fluff is not the answer. The content needs to be very helpful to the end user as many believe Google has become quite efficient at detecting thin content. Their push has been to show content which truly answers the searcher’s inquiry and provides information to solve a problem.
Additionally, we’ve seen the aesthetic presentation of sites change dramatically to incent users to remain on the website for longer periods of time. Examples of these changes include larger fonts and wider line spacing. You’ll also notice that left-hand and right-hand navigation is less prevalent in blog layouts than it used to be. Overall, the move has been towards a less cluttered design which encourages the reader to linger and scroll through the very long content.
A second fatal mistake made by most small business owners seeking strong SEO is that they don’t understand the effort required for content promotion after it has been created. They are essentially confused by what success would look like when content is effectively promoted and syndicated. In fact, 55% of organizations say they are unclear on how to measure a well-run content promotion project.
Forward-looking marketers have caught on and realized that shifting more of their budget toward promotion has a strong return on investment from search engine optimization. These people understand the value of backlinks and are ready to spend more time after the blog has been written to ensure that it gets a top position in Google. To learn more on how to promote your content visit https://www.localdudesmarketing.com/san-diego-seo-services/
Most effective content marketers spend 42% of their marketing budgets on content marketing versus those who are less effective only budget 28%.
Pursuing backlinks is a tricky business. Small business owners need to understand some basics about how backlinks work in the Google algorithm if they’re not going to outsource the SEO activity to a qualified marketing company. In fact, many agencies outsource to a white label digital marketing agency to keep up with demands and meet deadlines.
Not all backlinks are created equal, and there are several industry-standard methods for measuring the strength of a particular link from a particular domain. A domain with stronger authority sends a stronger signal to Google that your website is worth ranking. However, relevance is also part of the Google algorithm and needs to be considered when targeting a potential backlink.
All things being equal, you would rather have a highly relevant backlink than a link from a highly authoritative website that is general in nature. This is because most SEOs believe that Google uses relevancy as a strong signal of validity when considering if your website will rank.
Email marketing is not a new technology. As such, many small business owners overlook how potent this technique can be for digital marketing in general.
Seventy-seven percent of consumers prefer to have communication via email, provided they have granted permission to the sender. The reality is that email remains a dominant software technology where most professionals spend the majority of their days. When outside the office most professionals also have ready access to their email via a mobile device.
Building a strong list of emails is a wise move for small business owners hoping to improve their search engine optimization. Once new content has been written and is well-researched. And of sufficient length, the email list can be used to gather the first audience. And begin to generate positive social signals for the new content.
The members of your email list also represent an excellent opportunity for social media distribution and potentially backlinks. These are people who have previously indicated they enjoy your content. And have given you explicit permission to contact them when new content is available. If you view them as a potential resource for content marketing distribution. They become an incredibly important component of how you get the word out.
Many small-business owners are frustrated because, again, they feel they do not have time to grow their list. In fact, 54% of small business owners surveyed said that growing their subscriber list was their top frustration with email marketing.
There are many passive techniques that can be used to grow a high-quality list which will not take much time past the initial setup. A popular technique is to use pop-up windows on your website to make special offers to visitors.
A structured pop-up that offers a free download, free trial, a white paper, or a myriad of other potential enticements can produce a very strong conversion rate for email capture.
The beauty of approaches such as these is that they are passive. The email list builds quietly in the background of the website as small business owners attend to their core responsibilities.
The final method small business owners can use to put their search engine optimization back on track is PPC retargeting. Many small businesses have become frustrated with pay per click advertising because of the increasing costs. Indeed, Google has seen handsome profits as they approach near-monopoly status in the digital advertising sector.
Retargeting is a smaller feature of Google ads that allows you to target advertisements. Only to people who have previously visited your website. Google accomplishes this by placing cookies to every visitor who comes by your website.
When you run a PPC retargeting campaign, you do not show ads on google.com (which is fairly expensive). Instead, you show ads on their display network, which are third-party websites who display ads on behalf of Google. Furthermore, you only show ads on these websites for users who have previously visited your domain.
Many subscribe to a “first touch attribution” measurement methodology. This means that leads are attributed to the channel in which they were first acquired. If a potential customer first finds you via organic search but does not immediately convert. You have the potential to advertise to them and bring them back to your website. If you do so successfully, this boosts your SEO conversion according to first touch attribution theory.
Others used last touch attribution theory where leads are attributed to the channel they were in when you last had contact. If you follow this theory, retargeting will not be considered helpful to your SEO strategy. If you don’t know how to retarget your potential customers.
Many small business owners are deeply frustrated that they have not been able to participate in the internet revolution in ways that benefit their business growth. SEO, in particular, remains mysterious to them. And they have tried blogging but have not seen a strong return on investment.
By adjusting how blogs are produced so that they are longer. And have better-researched content, small business owners can actually produce output that Google will want to rank. Creating well-coordinated email marketing, backlink building. And retargeting campaigns will further activities to the point where SEO becomes a critical component of their digital marketing strategy.
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