Are you a small business owner who relies on search engine traffic from your website, and looking for a steady stream of new leads? Then concentrate on your on-site search engine optimization(SEO), as it helps search engines analyze your website and the content connected to it and identify if a searcher’s query is relevant to your website or not. Ever since its launch, Google has been evolving its algorithm so that it can better understand a searcher’s intent and deliver search results that meet that user’s needs. So, as Google’s algorithm develops, make sure your website also develops accordingly. Experienced providers of mobile SEO services would know how to work out things better for small businesses.
Why Is On-Site SEO Important for Small Businesses?
SEMRUSH’s State of Content Marketing Report says that “attracting more traffic is a priority goal among marketers, with some 71% hoping to draw more consumers to their websites”. On-site SEO allows your webpage to rank higher on the search engine results page of Google, Bing, and other popular search engines. This makes it easier for people to find your brand online. SEO is part of a strong foundation for small business success because you can witness a large surge in your search engine traffic, brand visibility, and revenue just by optimizing your website – that is, without building a single link.
If done right and perfectly, SEO can lower customer acquisition costs, making it an appealing avenue for small businesses looking to grow without breaking the bank. That is, you don’t have to spend huge amounts of money to implement an SEO process for new websites and get more consumers interested in your brand.
When it comes to on-page optimization, there are numerous strategies that you can adopt. Here listed are 4 effective on-site SEO tips for small business websites.
- Focus on Technical SEO: One of the strongest backbones of a website is technical SEO – the structure of your website – refers to website and server optimizations. It helps to improve search results and organic rankings as search engine spiders crawl and index your website more effectively. While crawling, the goals that should be met include secure and faster-loading pages, all working links, and more. Don’t underestimate the importance of technical SEO, because to have the best chance of ranking in search engine results beyond keywords, link building, and blog post content, you have to build a strong technical foundation for your website, or else everything will fall apart.
Even if your content is valuable and amazing, problems with technical SEO will hamper your site’s ability to rank highly in the SERPs. So, before producing new content to draw potential leads, take stock of the quality of your content from a technical perspective. If you don’t have that technical background, certain aspects such as page speed optimization, the structuring of data, and ensuring up-to-date security and encryption protocols are best left to an experienced digital marketing company. However, there are certain things a person with no technical background can do, such as
a. Creating a sitemap and submitting it to Google, to help you manage your presence in Google Search Results
b. If your website has a lot of pages that don’t get traffic, prune those old pages or else your rankings will be negatively affected.
c. Fix broken and old links; otherwise, the SERP robots will downgrade your content.
d. Use relevant images with appropriate captions and optimize them.You can also utilize tools such as Alexa’s SEO audit tool to check up on the technical SEO of your website.
Case Study
Neil Patel has mentioned in his blog how HubSpot managed to increase their traffic by 51.14% in just one month, by making technical SEO changes to their websites.
Image Source:
https://neilpatel.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/image11-9.png - Improve Site Speed: People prefer to visit websites that load quickly, and Google knows this. Whether you’re running a desktop site or a mobile one, site speed is critical, because no one wants to sit around waiting for a website to load. Note that with every second it takes for your page to load, more people are giving up on it. Moreover, if Google sees that people are leaving your page within the first five seconds of landing on it, they’re going to drop you down in the search results. To avoid this, check your site speed using tools such as Google’s PageSpeed Insights, GTMetrix, Pingdom, WebPageTest and others.
By checking your site speed, you will not only get page load time, but also recommendations for improvement. Some tips to improve your page loading speed are:
a. Compress your images without losing their quality
b. Use browser caching
c. Minimize the space of HTML coding
d. Implement Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)Case Study
Neil Patel shared how the company WIRED started implementing AMP to do a better job of reaching their customers. The company found out that their conversions were simply not happening because mobile user experience was too slow, which caused speed issues and visitor retention problems. They decided to invest time into AMP that made a huge impact for them. They increased their click-through rate from organic search results by 25% and found a 63% increase in Click-Through Rate (CTR) on ads in AMP stories. WIRED was also able to add AMP stories to over 100k articles on their site.
- Keyword Placement: Place relevant keywords strategically throughout your website content so that the search engines can properly index your site, entice searchers to visit your page, and persuade visitors to stay on your page. Choosing the right keywords and placing them in the proper places – title tag, Meta data, page description, main body content, links, URL, images and so on – is a necessary element of SEO.
- Focus on Local SEO: Local SEO or multi location local SEO is a strategic process that focuses on emphasizing the optimization efforts of smaller businesses that operate on a regional – and multiple locations regionally -, as opposed to a national level. It prioritizes appearing on SERPs in a specific location so that it helps market your brand, products, and services to local leads and customers. Google highlights that nearly one-third of all mobile searches are location-based queries, such as “restaurants near me.” Even if the “near me” is not added, Google’s algorithm would automatically prioritize local options if you just searched “restaurants”.
One of the most important parts of local SEO is setting up a Google My Business (GMB) Profile, which is free and easy to maintain. Along with this, content, on-page optimization, and link building – all with a focused, localized intent, are part of local SEO efforts. Also, register your business in local directories such as Yelp, TripAdvisor, and the Yellow Pages so that you get a wide exposure among new audiences.
The above-mentioned strategies are just a few. There are other ways – such as streamlining content marketing, focusing on site security, checking for broken links, incorporating high-profile outbound links and so on – that can help small businesses improve their on-site SEO.
Understand that your business website – be it small or large – is a critical cornerstone of your brand. Therefore, whenever you’re starting a new small business or similar entrepreneurial endeavor, the first important thing is to create a website for building a brand. Once you’re done with creating a website, do proper and perfect on-site SEO in it with the above-mentioned actionable tips and ensure that people who could be your customers can find you online. While implementing on-page optimization, remember that Google likes to change the rules constantly. So, you must keep your eye open for changes in the world of SEO and stay updated with the latest rules. Or else, rely on a professional digital marketing company that offer mobile SEO services could help implement on-site SEO to your website and thereby attract more leads to your site.
