With nothing else to do during lockdown, we all have been glued to our shiny devices trawling through our favourite online shopping pages, looking for little opportunities for a serotonin boost. This has meant ensuring your website is easily discoverable is more important than ever!
To take advantage of this trend, businesses must develop a marketing strategy for increasing organic traffic to their sites. Thousands of people are searching for products at any given time, with an intent to buy, making their traffic extremely important for you to capitalise upon. With 51% of sales a result of organic traffic, it is important that your business can be easily found when searched. Basically, if people can’t see your website, people can’t buy what you’re selling. Visibility is essential and SEO is the fundamental tool for gaining it, but what even is it?
Search Engine Optimisation
It’s no longer about simply having a website. It’s about your discoverability. SEO makes it easier for people to find your business and website when using search engines such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo. Put simply, websites that have a stronger SEO are ranked higher on search engine result pages (SERP’s). As we all know, nobody looks at page two of Google search results, making it imperative that your site’s SEO is robust.
So, now that you understand the importance of Search Engine Optimisation, how can you utilise it to market your small business better?
1. You Need to Identify What Your Customers are Searching
The first step in optimising your SEO is understanding who your customer is, and what they are searching for. Keywords are common words or phrases that people search for when trying to find products and services. For example, if you own a florist business you may tailor your website to include phrases and keywords such as, “Local florists” and “Flower delivery”. Ensuring your website matches these words is integral for people to discover your business, it highlights how your website is relevant to that person’s queries. You can do this by changing titles, descriptions, and body content, to reflect these keywords.
- Tip: Don’t overuse these keywords and phrases, as this may reverse the desired effect and make your page rank lower in search engine results.
2. Focus on Your Local Area
Guess what? Most people love supporting local businesses and dislike leaving their area to buy products and services. By optimising your SEO to reflect local-based inquiries, you can gain more organic traffic, whilst helping your local community; that’s a win-win for me. To do this, all you need to do is create a ‘Google My Business’ profile, which will include information like your address, phone number, and website. Simple!
- Tip: Customers can leave reviews on your profile that you can respond to, generating personal conversations, boosting your presence and amiability.
3. You Should Include a Meta-Description Tag
Don’t be freaked out by this seemingly complex term; a meta-description tag is simply a 150-word description of what your website is, which search engines (like Google) display in their results. Whilst it not only acts as an advertisement for your website, but it also helps search engines understand how relevant your website is and, you guessed it, will rank it higher in results. Think of it like a movie trailer, people read it to make sure the website matches what they need, just like the search engine uses it to ensure your website matches the search term. Ultimately, meta-descriptions are there to encourage customers to click on your website and are a nifty tool when used correctly.
- Tip: Ensure you use your focus keyword as search engines will identify your page as relevant, as well as highlight it for customers to view.
Ultimately, SEO is about understanding your customers. Identifying their intentions, what words they use, the questions they are asking and the content they want to consume. It’s a bit more like psychology rather than technology, but once mastered it can provide immediate and effective results that translate into greater sales for you and your small business.
Need Help? Get in Touch!
At Elite Words, we understand the complexities of SEO and how to utilise it in order to help your small business, so have a chat with us today so we can optimise your strategy. Contact us today. We’re here to help.
