As the owner of a new small business, you probably don’t have a huge online marketing budget. You will likely understand the importance of having a website, but search engine optimisation (SEO) may not be at the top of your priority list.
Although spending money on SEO may seem unnecessary when you are just getting started, without it, you may not get the leads you want from your website, and your business can suffer as a result. Fortunately there are affordable small business SEO services available, and these can make the difference between your business hitting the ground running, or stalling.
Here are a few SEO points you might want to consider if you are in the process of setting up a new business, or revamping your online strategy for a current one. If you can take SEO into consideration during the early stages, you can help avoid headaches further on.
Understand why SEO is important
Although you don’t need to become an SEO expert when you start your small business, having an understanding of the basic principles of SEO and why it is useful can help. The purpose of SEO is to attract visitors to your website through online search engines such as Google.
Having a website that is visible when internet users type in relevant terms to a search engine means that potential customers will find your site. If your site doesn’t come up in the listings, or if it is ranked low on the page results, it’s likely that you will be missing out on business. The whole point of creating a website is to gain exposure to your business, but if nobody sees it, it may as well not be there.
Choose your keywords
Keywords are specific words and phrases that can help search engines classify your website and allow internet users to find you more easily. To be effective, your keywords need to match the phrases that a potential customer might type in to a search engine when they are searching for a business like yours. The keywords should be added in to the content of the site, along with the page tags and meta descriptions. If you can identify your keywords before the site is built, it will be easier to make sure they are being used from the start, which is easier than having to go back and insert them into the code or the content at a later date.
Measure your traffic
Once you have your website up and running, it is important that you monitor who is visiting you, how they are finding you, and where on your site they are spending time.
Keeping track of your traffic can allow you to see what pages are the most popular, which keywords your customers are using to find your site, and a host of other useful information, which can help you manage and adjust your SEO strategy wherever necessary.
Find a professional to help
Once you have decided on the basics of your site, you may want to enlist the help of a professional small business SEO service to help increase your website traffic right from the start. SEO is an ongoing process, which needs to be refined to keep up with technological developments and changes in the way users access the internet and search for businesses. The right professional SEO service can help you expand your business, and ensure it keeps growing into the future.