SEO/PPC Tips For Your Small Business

Why Your Business Needs SEO To Succeed

With the internet making it possible for one to shop online from the comfort of his/her home or office, many people rarely visit local businesses or revert to their telephone book to buy products or services. Companies too have been forced to embrace technology by taking their businesses online. While setting up a website is vital for online presence, the only way your business stands a chance in the overly crowded marketplace is by adopting an efficient online marketing strategy. This includes PPC advertising and search engine optimization/ online marketing. Failure to promote your business online would mean no traffic or customers, and less and less sales as time goes on.

Both the PPC and SEO marketing strategies should be handled properly to not only attract more traffic but also improve conversion rates. Outlined below are 5 tips how you can make your SEO marketing strategy successful.

1. Keyword Strategy

Keyword research and analysis is the first step to creating a successful digital marketing campaign. Keywords make it possible for search engines to find your business hence necessary for any online marketing campaign. Proper keyword research is therefore needed to help kick start both SEO and PPC campaigns. To begin with, you need to identify target keywords (relevant to your business), then do an in-depth analysis of the same to determine the most converting and relevant keywords for higher conversions.

Proper keyword research and selection can have a huge impact on the business’ performance in the long run, explains Matt Brandenburg. If done properly, choosing the right keywords can also help cut down on marketing costs significantly. The main idea behind doing this is to improve conversions while keeping marketing budget for the same on the lower side. Finding buyer intent keywords with low competition and high volume can drastically improve your chances to rank faster.

Keyword research has evolved significantly over the past decade, with long-tail keywords becoming a valued option in modern keyword research. One of the advantages of using long-tail keywords is that they help narrow-down target audience while improving click rate. Long-tail keywords are also much easier to incorporate into content creation and other marketing strategies. Search engine crawlers catch them easily too.

2. Build Your Brand Online

Getting your brand known to all is one of the hardest tasks that companies and marketers have to do. While you may not achieve the same results as Best Buy and other big brands in the industry, sending strong branding signals in your marketing campaign can help your business start on the right foot. As long as the branding signals are well formulated and thought-of, more and more people will get to see the brand, try your products, and even start trusting your products. Consistency is the key here. As long as target audiences see your company name and logos often, the image gets to stick in their minds for much longer. This again improves customer trust and the need to try your product.

As more people get to know your brand, they will click on links directing them to your site, impressions that help Google and other search engines rank you even higher. Higher rankings mean more traffic and a larger potential customer base.

3. Keep a Keen Eye On Your Competition

You not only need to know who your competition is but also get to understand what they are doing to get exposure and more customers. Keeping an eye on your competition’s success, as well as mistakes can help you make better decisions in the future. Tools like SEMrush make it easier for you to see what your competitors are up to, borrow a few ideas here and there, as well as get quick, actionable data that can be beneficial for your business too. Some of these tools help you identify where the competition’s traffic is coming from, and how they get it.

Although some people will call it snooping, having an idea of what other people in the industry are doing to bring in traffic and customers can help you work harder to leverage. You can learn a few SEO and PPC strategies you may not have capitalized on, strategies that could be beneficial for your company as well.

4. Start off with SEO first, then let PPC follow

Although PPC is touted to deliver faster results than SEO, it should always come after a search engine optimization campaign. Search engine optimization creates a foundation for your site focusing on the user experience. Get your website ready first, have it optimized for organic audiences and search engines, then start strategizing on relevant Pay-per-click campaigns. Search engine optimization involves more than just getting your business indexed by search engines. It helps improve website usability, responsiveness, and relevance in the niche.

Important factors that ought to be considered in every SEO campaign include quality unique content, optimized photos, ease of navigation, and proper keyword use and integration. Each SEO strategy focuses on improving the site’s usability and relevance. The first idea is to create a website that is easy for audiences to use, then enable search engines to index it appropriately. Simple mistakes such as enabling video auto-play, poor menu location, and pop-ups can have detrimental effects on your website performance and ranks.

5. Hire Digital Marketing Agencies Carefully

PPC campaigns and SEO strategies are time consuming and require lots of work for one to start seeing results. Trying to tackle this yourself or letting an inexperienced marketing agency handle some of these strategies can greatly hurt your business performance. The wrong strategy can cost your business thousands of dollars instead of creating a positive ROI.

These days SEO is something you don’t want to cut cost with. Hiring a company based on the price could cost you big time down the road. Website Visibility is more important than ever. Although SEO is an substantial upfront investment and often times you won’t see an ROI until months down the road. If your SEO strategy is able to identify and target the right demographics with buyer intent, SEO will be the most effective and affordable marketing solution money can buy.

Be sure to hire an experienced, reputable, and trustworthy company for any digital marketing campaign. A good marketing company should be able to advise you on the do’s and don’ts in online marketing, and also make recommendations on areas they feel your business can benefit from. Do not bet on a company without a proven track record.

Many companies will make bold promises and use fancy promotions to churn and burn through clients. In the online marketing world things are always changing and nothing is guaranteed. Find a company such as Scott Keever SEO that has a long running positive track record with many satisfied long term clients.  To get an idea of how long it will take for your SEO campaign to see positive results check out this case study on how long it takes to rank in Google.

Conclusion

If done correctly, search engine optimization and PPC marketing campaigns can put your business on the front pages of a search engine results page. This means improved visibility, traffic, and higher conversion rates too. Getting your business ranked top by search engines isn’t however an easy task. You need someone or an agency competent enough to handle all the optimizations and campaigns. Hiring the right company will ensure a long term relationship with positive ROI to help your business grow.

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