Every site owner thinks it’s more complicated than it is to market themselves online. In reality, it’s super simple to get these 5 internet marketing for small business tips right in order to set yourselves up for success, and possibly get ahead of the competitor within the internet marketing front.
Sure, when it comes to applying SEO techniques to your website, there’s more complicated strategies and tactics that can be used. That’s where SEO consultants like myself would come in, however these fundamental SEO and internet marketing for small business tips are what I ended up spending a majority of my time on, simply because the small business owner didn’t understand to apply these helpful tips in the first place.
Internet Marketing for Small Business Tips
Write about your services
Too many times to count have I seen this fundamental tip completely missed when it comes to adding information about the services the business provides. I cringe when I see a service page that has a list of services performed and nothing more. It’s not service specific either, hair salons, construction companies, healthcare professionals ALL do this incorrectly.
In order to have a better chance of being found on Google, you must create more pages to your site. The more pages your website has, the more opportunity it has to be found by people searching for specific terms.
A few simple tips come from this recommendation as well;
- Each service should have it’s own web page.
- Each service page should have 300-500 words of content discussing the service, areas of support, anything relevant that the customer may search for
- If possible, pages should have testimonials / before and after shots of projects / something captivating that could convince a person to hire you
Get social!
Another fundamental thing that is often considered a missed opportunity. At this point, for local SEO purposes every single business should have a Google+ Business Page, Facebook Page, and a Twitter profile. Those three social media sites can have the ability to help your website, but also give people an outlet to write about your business(good or bad). What a better way to get the temperature of your business over time, or use it to push out services/daily specials you may have.
While it’s true that a lot of this is common knowledge, it is frustrating as a consumer when you can’t find anything about a particular company online. In this day and age, it’s almost alarming to not see something about a company within the social media sphere, which is why it’s astounding that it still isn’t an accepted practice when owning a business.
Utilize business directories
No, I’m not condoning the practice of submitting your website to every single directory you come across on the internet. In fact, employing that tactic can actually hurt your site than help it. Specifically what I’m talking about, is finding local directories in your area that you can trust, using the website Moz Local.
Moz Local is a free tool for providing you their own healthy directory of websites that are considered signals to ranking for local searches. The goal of your business citations within each directory should be correct. Every detail from address to phone number should be the same across all sites. Doing this allows Google to make the connection and consider these local citations to your business. Local citations are good for business.
Manage your reputation
Remember the advice above to create a social media presence for your business? Once you have established that presence online, you’re going to need someone to manage the accounts, be in charge of the day to day posting, and be able to effectively handle a positive or negative situation online. Bad reviews are going to happen, the ability to respond to a bad review will effectively help you in the long run for when people search your business. They’re going to see that negative review, but they’re also going to see how you handled that negative review. Nothing like turning a negative into a positive right?
These few internet marketing for small business tips can immediately help you wrangle in your internet marketing skills for your small business instantly. It’s not always about taking the short way out, and a lot of the times small business owners are looking for that route.
Of course these internet marketing for small business tips are easy to grasp, but can take time and patience to perfect. However, even the novice of people looking to help their own business online can make an impact with a bit of research and practice. When it comes to the Optimization of your website, it’s not always about showing up in the rankings higher than everyone else. Rankings will come, by doing these kind of optimizations. The more people that visit your website, they more chances to convert, and optimizing for those experiences can have a more profound benefit that just your rankings. It can help; ROI, reputability of your company and brand awareness.
The factors that get improved with these kinds of simple internet marketing for small business tips help immediately and in the long run of your business success. Feel free to leave a comment or send me a message if you have any questions, I’m always willing to offer advice!
Sure, giving them the benefit of the doubt and after some quick institutionalization, the main goal then shifts to nailing down the local aspect and focusing on leads and conversions that are more conducive to their business.
If having good content were the case, I wouldn’t have seen a site that had limited spun content rank number one for a certain keyword just by having back links and a ton of fake social media accounts give likes and shares. In the past few weeks, that site has dropped in the rankings but it trumped the thought that content was king.