Certainly, a lot has already changed in the world of search engine optimization (SEO), the sophisticated practice of helping people find your site through search engines. Many companies and organizations have leaned onto the SEO magic to drive more customers. But will this effort to stand out in the ocean of other search results also be useful for small businesses? Of course. Read away before starting your remote team and kickstart your SEO journey.

Learn your keywords.

Keywords are the key to your existence in search engines. They tell the search engines about the contents of your webpage so they would know what to display. As such, it gets critical and makes a search gap when the keywords you use are far from how a normal person would input them on the actual search box. In other words, you have to use the right keywords to appear in the right search results. You can validate your chosen keywords on Google AdWords to ensure that they are frequently used in online searches.

Check your page speed.

Page speed affects your SEO performance simply because the faster your pages load, the more efficient your page becomes and the better experience it provides its visitors. In a recent study by Kissmetrics (2020), it was found that if a page takes longer to load than 3 seconds, over a quarter of visitors will click away and choose a different page from the roster of search results.

Get a link from a site with relevant content.

For new businesses, this could be your roadway to authority, credibility, and trustworthiness. Getting others to use your link on their website can also improve your ranking. The more websites that tag you or carry you a do-follow link, the more likely you will rank on search engines. You may ask other websites if they could link your website or any of your articles on any of their most relevant ones. Moreover, you can do a link exchange in which you can offer that you will tag them on your website if they can do the same. For this, you must also note their domain ratings (DR 40+) as a link from a high domain-rated website can get deliver you to your goal faster than websites with lower DRs.

Take your unique offerings to your advantage.

SEO is partly about competing with prospective customer attention so it is highly recommended that you come up with ways to stand out from a pool of search results. One way to do this is by looking for keywords that correspond to your market differentiators. This could be in the form of unique offerings, geographic location, or simply a promotional offer. Make use of an email productivity tool to help you organize your messages as well as the responses.

Publish trendy high-quality content.

As a new small business, you are expected to come up with fresh ideas so you can attract visitors and prospective customers. In the context of SEO, websites that produce unique, specific, and high-quality content can help your site gain more traffic and traction. Content such as blog articles, videos, infographics, and others, whether they are informational or purely entertaining content has to be something your visitors can enjoy so they can make regular visits. The key to making good content is to understand what your audience prefers or likes so you can create content suitable for them.

Orchestrate your social media.

A great website is usually accompanied by a plethora of social media channels. Nowadays, many people tend to use social media platforms as their search engines and they use such to search for products and reviews before making a purchase. Although social media may not directly contribute to your SEO ranking, it can amplify your other marketing efforts as a start-up business. For example, the link you share across social media platforms can help increase your brand exposure and campaign readability towards your website contents.

Use readable URL structure.

Keep your URLs as simple, compelling, relevant, and accurate as possible so that both users and search engines can understand them. Think about it. It will take a hard guessing game to identify what the URL www.littlegg.solutions/blog/43847562 is all about rather than www.littlegg.solutions/blog/best-SEO-practices-for-new-small-business. Although URLs can pass with ID numbers, codes, and a few special characters, the best SEO practice would be to incorporate words that people can easily understand. If the visitors will not be able to understand it, it will never be an advantage to your search engine ranking.

Retain your domain name.

Frequent changes in your domain name could make you lose your visitors and the traffic they bring to your site so this is a major no-no. Many businesses tend to make the mistake of changing their domain from time to time and this can pose a problem on built link exchanges as well as the client’s familiarity with your new domain name. Unless there is a very considerable reason for a change, still be very deliberate.

Measure and evaluate your results.

As a new small business trying out a new SEO strategy, you are most welcome to use free or affordable tools like Moz, SEMRush, Google Analytics, or Ahrefs.com. These sites can provide you with your website’s performance and give you an overview of who your visitors are and other relevant information. Measuring and evaluating the results of your SEO efforts can be very critical to your success as these can determine what improved and what needs more improvement.

Written By Bash Sarmiento.