Search engine optimization (SEO) is one of the pillars of digital marketing. Before implementing other online marketing forms, you must first prioritize your SEO campaign. What good is a visually appealing and highly functional business website if your target consumers won’t be able to find it?
SEO aims to boost your online visibility and website traffic. It can put your site and content on the search engine results pages or SERP’s top ranking. The process primarily involves optimizing your website, creating relevant content, and building site linking. However, there is more to it than meets the eye.
That said, here are some SEO strategies to implement for your small business next year:
1. Use Google Search Console to optimize your SEO
As far as SEO is concerned, the initial step is to use the Google Search Console (GSC). GSC is a digital tool used to optimize your SEO campaign. It gives you access to pertinent SEO data such as your web page impressions, organic clicks, and relevant keywords. It also allows you to track, analyze, and report your SEO strategies. Lastly, it helps fix site issues and improve your SEO performance. With this in place, you’ll be surprised at how your small business can take the spotlight in SERP.
2. Set up a Google Analytics account
There’s another digital tool you can use – Google Analytics. What good is your business website if it doesn’t have an analytics account? This digital resource provides you with free access to various tools that will help you analyze your business data in one place. For instance, you can track and monitor your SEO data and help you make the necessary adjustments in your SEO strategies. That way, you can ensure a successful SEO implementation for the good of your business.
3. Continue to conduct keyword research
First off, let’s discuss the value of on-page SEO. This sub-category focuses on the content on your website. While technical SEO deals with the technical elements on your site, off-page SEO pertains to anything you do outside of your site that can influence your SEO.
For your on-page SEO to be effective, you must integrate keywords on your content pieces. However, you must conduct keyword research to see what words or phrases your target consumers are most likely to type in the search engine field. Also, look for long-term keywords, conversational phrases, and natural language people use for voice search.
4. Boost your on-page SEO
There are a few key steps to take for boosting your on-page SEO. After conducting keyword research, you can incorporate these keywords into your content. For the most part, you’ll strategically put them in your articles for on-page optimization. However, know that you can also insert keywords in the following:
- Page title
- URL
- First 100 words of your text
While at it, don’t forget the following on-page practices:
- Integrating two to three internal links
- Having two to three external links
5. Create more relevant and valuable content
Your content must be your top priority. Why ? Content is king in the digital world, as it’s what people look for in the first place. No matter how good you are at incorporating the right keywords and drawing visitors to your web page, your content won’t matter if they don’t resonate with these visitors. Hence, the rule of thumb is to create valuable and relevant content, whether blog posts, product photos, video clips, or infographics.
6. Update your website for SEO purposes
Of course, crucial to your SEO campaign is updating your website. Why ? Google will always favor websites that are aesthetically appealing and highly functional. It will always opt for websites with an excellent user experience.
Know that Google algorithms will crawl your web pages to see any site issues. Hence, ensure the following:
- Ample white space
- Well-structured User Interface (UI)
- Streamlined site elements
- No website clutter
- Easy navigation
- Fast loading time
- Minimalist design
- Responsive web design
To ensure all those attributes mentioned above, you must consider hiring a web design company. These professionals can kick your business website up a notch and put it in the top SEO ranking. However, make sure that they specialize in SEO campaigns as well.
At this point, you now know how to boost your SEO campaign next year. Consider the SEO strategies mentioned above, from using GSC to boosting your on-page SEO to opening a GMB account. With all these in place, you’ll have a robust SEO implementation next year and for the long term. You’ll be surprised at how this can boost your profit and grow your small business in time.
