Search engine optimization for small business is a strategic process which reflects business structure of the business, market specifics and marketing goals. Let’s take a look at a few factors which will explain why custom SEO approach is more effective than just following broad techniques of the search engine optimization while promoting your business online.
In the article How Internet Marketing Works, I have emphasized that market research must be done at the very beginning, before the process of website optimization takes place.
Geographic Market Definition – Is your target market local, national or global? If you are a pizza shop owner and you are located in downtown San Diego will you benefit from website visitors from Kiev, Ukraine? Not likely, unless they want to buy the whole shop to start baking perogies. In this case it is clear that you are targeting to promote your business to people in San Diego. Therefore your choice of keywords also has to reflect that. But let’s get more specific. How many people do you expect from driving from Oceanside (for those who are not familiar with San Diego area, it’s about 35 minute drive to downtown San Diego) to taste your delicious pie? A few. Therefore keyword “San Diego pizza” which is quite competitive by the way, is not your most valuable keyword. Now, “downtown San Diego pizza” is better. That is the one that most likely will bring to you customers and takeout orders. Defining geographical market helps to define most valuable keywords.
Defining Business Niche – If you sell globally, it is a good idea to seek for long-tail keywords which may describe quality, price value, technologies, advantages, etc. Let’s take water filters as an example. Water filter keyword is highly competitive. What is special about water filters you sell? Do they remove fluoride? What technology do they use? Osmosis? Are they portable? Are they easy to install? Do they have a warranty? You may be be surprised to find out what expressions are being used for online searches. The more specific search criteria is, the more valuable the visitors are and they more likely to spend the money because they found exactly what they were looking for.
Proper use of language – Know the language your market speaks. No, not German or English, I am implying to the fact that different cultural groups of people use different language patterns. Is your target market B2B or consumers? If it is B2B, utilize most common industry terms and use them while targeting your keyword selection. If you sell to consumer, what is age, sex income and interest group you are selling to? What could be their related interests? What are most exciting things about your product or service? What do your prospects really want? Why do they buy these things? This type of common sense analysis will helps creating most effective SEO strategy.
Creative use of competitive environment – Every experienced SEO professional will express the importance of competitive analysis; unfortunately, in many cases in online marketing it results in copying most successful competitors’ formulas without elaborate analysis as to why these formulas have been employed. First and most important, warning: Do not copy content from someone else! It’s unethical, may violate copyrights and get you banned from a search engine or at least cause you rankings. Major search engines are pretty good in catching duplicate content. Internet competitive analysis will provide you with cold data which can and should be used to improve marketing formulas used by the competition. Blindly repeating exact steps of some of the competitors is not a good idea, because if a website has over a thousand unique content pages and thousands of back links, ask yourself how much will it take for you to spend time doing all this? Some of the competition may have formidable web presence for years and which resulted from thousands of hours of cumulative efforts. Also, take in consideration the fact that search engines consider the longevity of the website in their ranking.
Action Planning – Since search engine optimization process posses certain degree of complexity, preparedness and clear plan of action is very helpful. Good planning and execution have been known to produce much more measurable results in SEO. I have found following steps very helpful while working on small business SEO:
Creating a list of goals you would like to achieve through search optimization process
Researching thoroughly your keywords and create a grouped list of keywords
Creating a list of competitors and performing a detailed analysis of their actions and marketing formulas.
Developing your own marketing formulas
Creating a plan of action and prioritizing your goals
You can compare SEO process to a surgery or mechanical work where if you made an error at the beginning, you will have to spend substantial amount of time fixing it.
Small business Search Engine Optimization is the foundation of online marketing success. It is an ongoing process and in today’s economic environment SEO has become one of the most economical and powerful ways to market.
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