Take a second and think of a haystack. Now imagine in this one stack, you are told to find a blade of grass in the middle of the hay. You have to tear the haystack apart the start guessing and second-guessing which part is the middle and blade apart the grass to pick one.
First of all, this process takes so much time and the end result may not even be as accurate. That is how the internet is; it has billions of webpages and content to analyze whenever someone is researching. If it were up to the researcher to find quality content for themselves, then they’ll have to ransack through at least 1000 webpages to land a handful or less.
That’s where algorithms come in. Search engines like Google have algorithms that filter the billions of internet content and ranks good content in descending order for researchers to easily find. Think of algorithms like rules used to calculate quality.
Google has set rules that every website has to adhere to for them to be considered quality and worth a reader’s time. These are the rules that every local business should apply in their websites to rank on the first page of Google, and that’s what we call Search Engine Optimization.
Your audience will also feel valued. How? Because they know if you’ve made so much effort to rank on such a powerful engine like Google, then you are serious about your business and your clients too. Whatever information they’ll read on your website, they’ll immediately trust it.
In fact, a higher percentage of organic traffic require your service on the spot. This means that there’s a higher chance of acquiring a client or customer every time someone click into your page. If your website pops up whenever a prospective client searches Google, then there’s a chance that every six people in ten will click your link.
This means that your website will receive so much traffic from the internet which will in turn help you to keep ranking.
Luckily, Google algorithms for SEO cover this as well. As you’ll see later in this guide, most of their requirements help with traffic conversion. Therefore, if you’re getting good organic traffic and you’re converting a good number of these visitors to customers, then that’s all your small business needs to prosper online.
Becoming an authority in your industry (even just locally) takes your business to new heights and helps you get more clients as well. You’ll get to understand your audience more and what they like, which will help you better your services and products for them.
That said, even before getting into PPC and other paid advertisements, try this out. Make that your basis because it’ll also help you learn good website practices that help with paid advertisements and social media as well.
Content not only adds pages to your site, but it also makes your site interactive and keeps readers on-site for longer. However, not just any content works but quality content. If you post articles in your blog page, then ensure that every article is easy to read and has high quality information. End every article with a call-to-action where the reader can contact your small business for services and products.
You should apply keywords to your pages’ Meta description, your blog content and alternate texts for images and videos. This means that other pages like the home and about pages should also contain industry-related keywords.
You can find your relevant keywords using different tools online such as the Google Keyword Planner. Keywords should however be used naturally and not stuffed up in every content or page.
For external links, it’s important to link to authoritative websites. When Google sees this, then it immediately assumes that you have quality content and make an effort to link to more quality content.
For example; “find a plumber in Oakland, California” will rank higher than saying, “find a plumber”.
Are you looking to boost your local business ranking on the internet? Contact us today, and we’ll help with your organic ranking.
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