Search engine optimisation (SEO) is an instrumental tool for all types of businesses. It is predominantly promoted towards online, and click and mortar companies, due to their position in the market. Yet SEO is also an effective tool for traditional, physical, and offline offerings.
SEO has many different roles to play. It is however an overarching practice that helps to improve engagement, credibility, and conversions in both human and technological forms.
From a human perspective, SEO helps to boost visibility, answer customer problems, and act as a step in the decision-making process. From a technological standpoint, SEO helps to increase credibility, offers a competitive edge, and promotes both product and service offerings.
With such important roles to play, it is essential to understand the necessity of SEO and how to make use of it as a modern business. Whilst complex in some instances, getting started with SEO basics should help you benefit from a process of trial, test, and development.
Here’s how to use SEO for your business, no matter its type. At MaxWeb Solutions, we have a wealth of SEO tips, services, and strategies to share, to help your business benefit from quality search activity.
Role of SEO in Business
SEO is an effective tool with many different hats. Before implementing an SEO strategy, it is important to be aware of business objectives and goals, as SEO tools and techniques can be adapted to deliver results.
With some business goals in place, SEO techniques and best practices can then be applied. For example, SEO is effective whilst attracting local custom. It is also used to engage with global audiences. It is significant whilst boosting user experience. It can also improve online reputation and help to increase traction.
Search engine optimisation (SEO) therefore has many roles to fulfil, all depending on how you use it and apply its principles. Ultimately, it will work into overarching marketing KPIs. Yet can be adapted to deliver many different benefits, even if digital marketing isn’t a business priority.
Due to its heavy use of technology, SEO can come across as a complex tool to implement. There are however some basics that can kickstart the process and help you benefit from small business SEO techniques. Here’s how to use SEO for your business, taking into account the type of results you hope to achieve.
Using SEO For Your Type Of Business
Before focusing on SEO, you should truly consider the type of business that you want to be, the type of market you hope to rank within, the type of audience you hope to interact with, and the products or services that you hope to be recognised for. With a set of business objectives, you’ll then be aware of the role that SEO must play in order to benefit from its implementation.
Select suitable keywords
Keywords are the search terms that consumers enter whilst visiting a search engine. They reflect a product or service description. Depending on your business goals, you should select suitable keywords which will be searched for by your target audience, whilst also penetrating through the market.
For example, if you’re offering a local hospitality service, you’ll want to select and include relevant keywords which describe your service and location. Completing keyword research on Google AdWords will be a strong starting point, to gauge which terms people search for yet are also unsaturated for your market.
Your keywords should then be embedded into your content, from your meta description to the body of your assets.
Deliver a unique selling point
What differentiates you from others within your market should be invested in your SEO strategy. For example, if you offer a specific type or quality of product that is yet to be adopted within your local area or your specialism, this is the chance to shout about it.
Your use of keywords, your body of content and your supportive assets should all reflect your unique selling point in an organic and authentic way.
Consider user experience
Say you are an offline, local business. You serve locals and offer a tangible customer experience through a physical location. Whilst this can be a great way to develop loyalty, there’s a high chance that you’ll be missing out on a large fraction of potential customers. Those customers may be unaware of your services or credibility.
By making use of SEO tools, such as Google My Business, you’ll have the chance to add a step in the customer experience process, known as user experience. Sharing accurate and insightful information, images, descriptions, and reviews, across your business profiles and listings, can boost both physical visits, attraction, and conversions.
User experience is also extremely important for online businesses, fulfilled through robust web design, the use of complementing technologies, and considering the functionality of a platform. This is the time to consider site speed, the size of assets, the development of your website and your audience’s ability to manoeuvre around and make decisions.
Avoid common SEO pitfalls
Knowing how to use SEO for your business is important, as there are many common pitfalls out there. Some business owners will follow a stuffing technique, by overly using their keywords. Others will create content yet will fail to share and promote it across social media and other sites. Whilst others will focus on desktop web design, instead of a user-friendly proposal.
Avoiding the common SEO pitfalls will help you remain compliant and credible whilst engaging with search engines, along with making use of SEO and its full scope.
Focus on link building
Building relationships in business is very important. This is the same principle whilst building links. Ultimately, link building will help you link to another site and increase your rankings. It is however important to include quality links, rather than broken or irrelevant ones, as this will reduce the credibility and worth of your content.
You can look to include both external and internal links to your site, helping to motivate click-throughs and also helping with the usability of your website/platform.
Become a content creator
To benefit from SEO, you’ll need to become a content creator. By that, we mean that you will need to produce regular content across your platforms in order to rank highly, in order to remain relevant and in order to penetrate the marketing world.
Creating consistent yet quality content will help to keep your rankings active, will help you target additional keyword terms, and will also help you attract various types of audiences. Blog posts, social media posts, landing pages, product pages and online listing are all effective forms of content that can be optimised.
Think local
Local SEO techniques are extremely effective, whether you have a physical location or whether you offer services to local consumers. Filtering your location across your business profiles, content and advertisements will help to geographically position you within close proximity of your target audience.
Follow SEO best practices
To develop a positive relationship with online search engines, you’ll need to follow SEO best practices. Strategies should be transparent and organic in order to interact with search engines. Reaching this point will position you at a greater angle to interact with consumers.
Measure results
SEO and its tools are constantly developing. You’ll also find a lot of trial and error whilst initially using SEO for your business. It is important to measure your results to understand whether your SEO activity is fulfilling your business objectives. Regular evaluations will also help you ensure that your goals are aligned with best practices and the latest SEO technologies.
Google Analytics is a helpful tool to use whilst measuring your results.
Be patient and realistic
It can take some time to build organic rankings and results across search engines. It is important to be patient and realistic whilst setting your goals, especially whilst starting with SEO basics.
Assess, adapt, and grow
As SEO is everchanging, it is essential to be open, to change and to growth in order to make use of SEO for business. Assessing, adapting, and growing from your current strategy will be imperative to develop with the value of search engine optimisation.
SEO services here at MaxWeb Solutions
At MaxWeb Solutions, we are a digital marketing agency specialising in SEO. Here to offer a wealth of services that enhance and benefit SEO activity, we can help you implement a strong strategy to meet your business objectives.
For more tips on how to use SEO for your business or an assessment of your current strategy, reach out to our team.
SEO is a tool to stay. Making use of it as much as possible will secure the future of your business.
Sources
https://analytics.google.com/analytics/web/provision/#/provision
Posted on Friday, March 4th, 2022 in SEO.
