You’ve been working hard to create a high-ranking site for your brand, but the SEO world moves fast and trends can change in the blink of an eye. Maybe you’re confused by a term you’ve heard a lot in passing lately: mobile-first indexing. Wondering what it is and how it could impact your work? Don’t worry: here’s a handy primer that will help you adjust to this important new development.
Why SEO is Essential for Small Business Growth
Small businesses should be focused on implementing marketing strategies that will increase brand awareness and revenue. But, many small businesses make the mistake of thinking they won’t be able to do much marketing because of their limited budgets. Fortunately, businesses of all sizes can benefit from SEO, which just so happens to be the most cost-effective type of marketing. Here are some of the reasons why your small business should be investing in SEO:
How To Do Keyword Research for Your Website
If you’ve been through the process of building a website, writing blog posts or crafting new website content to improve your search engine rankings, chances are you’ve had some experience with developing a keyword list for your website. Whether you’ve been actively involved in the SEO keyword research process in the past or you’re just implementing a program for the first time, it’s a good idea to review and update your target keyword list annually, as changes in your business, competition, and market may shift your strategy. Before you write content for your website or blog, or even plan out your sitemap, you should have a search engine optimization strategy in place.
Here’s a simple plan to get you thinking about the right words to include in all of your content:
SEO Checklist for Success
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to improve your websites chances of appearing at the top of first page rankings in organic search engine results requires a combination of elements within your website, and a long-term strategy of off-site marketing. While you may receive hundreds of emails from companies offering quick-fix solutions and ‘guaranteed’ first page rankings, you can rest assured that these are about as quick-fix and ‘guaranteed’ as a magical weight-loss program that doesn’t require exercise or a healthy diet.
There are many things you can do to improve your website’s rank in organic search, which will lead you to new customers and a greatly improved return on your marketing budget, but you should be aware that these take time and effort. You will see incredible results if done correctly, but it will take some time to achieve.
To get started, here is a simple SEO checklist to be sure your website and online marketing channels are primed for success. This is a great list to begin implementing at the end or beginning of a year, so that you can track your results each month.
Identifying and Filling Customers’ Needs – Using Online Search to Discover the Next Big Thing
If you ask any successful inventor or entrepreneur how they discovered their Big Idea for success, whether it was a product or a service, I guarantee they’ll tell you that they realized a need and found a way to fill it.
Sounds pretty easy, right? Sure. Find a need that people have, figure out how to solve it, and then sell it to them. After all, that’s how the sports bra, Spanx, disposable diapers, online dating services, the telephone, and pretty much every other successful product or service came to be. Someone paid attention, came up with a way to fill a need or improve an experience, and sold it to make millions.