Somehow we’re already almost a quarter through 2022… I don’t know how that happened but it has and with the first quarter wrapping it up, it might be a good idea to revisit your small business SEO strategy that you started the year out with (or put one into place) to continue to see if it’s trending in the right direction.
Now for anyone who isn’t a big numbers person, this might not be the most fun, interesting, or easy work to do, but just plugging along with no strategy at all will hurt you more than help.
Now there’s a difference between having a “strategy” that is just going to keep you above water and an actual strategy that will have you swimming in the direction you want and if SEO isn’t your strongest skill it can be hard to know the difference and you might have a lot of questions. That’s why we decide to put together a few focus points to help take SEO strategies for small businesses to the next level!
Find and use the right keywords for you
Now keyword research can be a tedious task but an important one to start with. It can seem like a lot of digging to just find a few keywords that work for you and at some point, you just sort of give up or get a bit lazy with the keywords you choose. I’ve definitely felt this at points, but have also found it’s important to research more than you think you should.
Do more in-depth research
Every time we work with a client on their small business SEO strategy the first thing we do is a basic SEO audit and keyword analysis. Using a tool like SEMRush for SEO strategies for small businesses, you can get the bigger picture look at what you’re currently ranking for, what pages are performing, and trends in content that produce well.
It’s a great way to get a lay of the land look and start to understand the direction you want to take your strategy.
Maybe when you first look you realize that one blog you wrote this past year is outperforming other blogs you wrote by a landslide. This can be a great opportunity to look at that specific blog you wrote and see if you can start to use similar outlines on upcoming blogs. You can do the same thing with landing pages and so on.
The great thing about doing more in-depth research and looking at the numbers is that they tell you how things really are compared to how you thought they were.
Look at competitors
Another positive about using a small business SEO tool like SEMRush is that you can get an idea of what your competitors are working to rank for or are missing that you can capitalize on.
In that initial analysis that we do, we compare the client we’re working with to a few of their competitors to see a few things:
- Are there any common keywords that we should focus on
- What gaps do we see that we can start to fill
- What can we offer in a different way than they can
The goal is not to copy exactly what they are doing but to be able to base our small business SEO strategy a bit off of theirs since after all, we are competing.
Focus on long-tail keywords
One other small focus point that can give you an extra boost is looking to rank for long-tail keywords in your area compared to just trying to rank for head-term keywords.
To give you some examples, say you’re a small painting company who usually works with office buildings. A head-term keyword would be something like “office painters”. That is true, you are office painters, but I’m guessing there are a lot of those out there that might have a bit more pull.
Instead of trying to focus on those general keywords, look for long-tail keywords that can make your company stand out from the giants surrounding you. Something like “small business office painting company in Milwaukee” is likely a keyword that a lot of your larger competitors aren’t trying to rank for, but is also likely often searched by companies looking for a bit of painting.
It can be a bit confusing and tough to work through, but just remember that head-term (or general) keywords are a lot tougher to rank for and the effort put towards it might not give you the outcome you want.
Don’t be too quick to jump ship
Now the last thing that I want to mention is that the work you put towards your small business SEO strategy won’t turn over business the next day. It’s easy to look at it as 1+1=2, but that’s not exactly the way we approach it.
You have to understand that your small business SEO strategy is not a “one and done” type of work, but something that needs to be constantly tracked, discussed, and potentially adjusted throughout the year.
Now I’m not saying that you need to turn the ship a complete 180 degrees every couple of months, but by looking at the data and using a tool as we mentioned earlier, you can get some great insight on small tweaks you can do to make your small business SEO strategy even better than it is.
The results you want are going to take time and the better you can put together a strategy and understand it, the better those results will be. If you’re struggling to get a start, we did create a beginner’s guide to SEO to help jump-start you. We hope that it can help if needed and wish you the best on the journey of small business SEO!