SEO can seem daunting to small businesses. There’s content, coding, organic search, paid search and more to consider. It’s nothing a little effective online marketing can’t cure. I’ve listed several common small business SEO ailments, their symptoms, and offer a few tried-and-true remedies.
We’re turning the page to 2014. These are the SEO challenges coming up in the New Year.
1. Creating Content
Small businesses are betting on content marketing. According to eMarketer, 74% of small businesses planned to increase their content efforts in 2013. The trend continues for 2014.
The challenge, however, is that creating content can seem overwhelming for small businesses. If you’ve tried it then you probably know it takes time to formulate ideas, do the research and do the writing or recording necessary to create something great.
Here are two tips to help you with creating content.
Start by setting up an editorial calendar for the year. Then you can tackle content in chunks – by month, week, or even day. Use community, seasonal, industry and other “triggers” to develop your calendar. For example, if you participate in a major trade show, tailor your content to event-related topics in the weeks leading up to the show.
Also, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel when creating content. You can repurpose content for use across various channels. Reformat a news release as an article, as a blurb in an email, as a link in social media, as a guest post on an industry site.
2. Promoting Content
So you’ve created content. That was hard work. But you’re only halfway completed with your content marketing task. You’ve done the “content”. Now you have to do the “marketing”. Even the best content is useless unless your prospects and customers can find it.
Start by promoting your content to current customers and subscribers via email, social media, etc. They will be your advocates as they share the content with their networks.
Next, email people that have an established audience that matches your target reader or customer.
Identify a website that has an audience. Create content that would be valuable for their audience. Write an email introducing yourself to the website owner and share your piece of content. If they see your content as valuable for their audience they will likely share it with their audience. The website owner will do this because it makes him or her look valuable.
That’s what you’re shooting for in this scenario.
3. Building Brand Recognition
Not every online marketing effort is focused on opens, clicks or immediate conversions.
Increasing sales and growing your business is the ultimate goal and an important way of doing that today is to build brand recognition.
Google’s Matt Cutts addressed a question about brands a few years ago where he said that they don’t necessarily think about brands, but instead focus on trust, authority and reputation. Google and other engines want to show results from reliable sources and one way for you to do that is to build your brand recognition.
But don’t confuse this with simply being recognized in your industry. It involves building recognition along with trust, authority and reputation as well.
Provide good products and services so your customers share positive reviews (trust).
Establish your business as an expert in its field (authority). You can do this with relevant content, customer reviews, webinars/videos/podcasts, presenting at conferences, and more.
You also can create goodwill for your brand by contributing to charitable causes and participating in fundraisers (reputation).
4. Putting the SEO in Social
If you’ve created a presence on key social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram, and others then kudos to you. But that’s not enough. Just as you use keywords and keyword phrases in your site content, do the same on your social media sites. For example, back in 2011, Twitter was handling 1.6 billion searches per day. People are searching on social media sites like Twitter to find specific information. It’s the next evolution in search and social.
Use your words carefully on social media. It’s not just about updating your current followers. You want to use keywords relevant to your entire audience so those that are searching for specific answers find your updates.
5. Mobile Is A Must
Just when you think you’ve got a handle on SEO, along comes mobile. No matter how big or small your business is you can’t ignore mobile.
Mobile now accounts for over 13% of all Internet browsing compared to 10% one year ago (via Net Market Share, Browsing By Device Category Trend).
The biggest way to make your business appealing to mobile users is to create a mobile user-friendly experience. Many companies are opting for responsive designs, which takes your current website design and transforms it based on the browser your website visitors are using.
Google is watching how you handle your mobile experience. In the near future, if you don’t offer a good mobile experience they will not rank your pages high for searchers on mobile devices.
6. Information Overload
If you’re suffering from information overload by the first five tips above, don’t worry. It’s easy to get overwhelmed when developing – and maintaining – your SEO strategy. That’s the final and perhaps biggest SEO challenge facing small businesses in 2014 – dealing with all the information.
Here are my recommendations for dealing with all the information.
First, focus on the quick wins first. This is basic cleanup for your SEO strategy. Things like taking care of duplicate title tags and duplicate content on your website.
Second, content is the highest priority for many small businesses. Above all else in the SEO world today it’s important to start implementing a content marketing strategy for your company.
Finally, start implementing a mobile strategy for your website. More people are browsing the web on their mobile device each day. This trend will continue so it’s important to stay up-to-date otherwise you’ll fall behind the competition.
Did I miss anything?
Share your SEO challenges and advice for 2014 in the comments.
Photo Credit : Pete / Flickr Image
