What is Small Business SEO and should your care about it?
SEO (search engine optimisation) is the process of making a website or web page more visible in a search engine’s (primarily Google) organic / unpaid results.
Someone may have told you that SEO is vital in order to have a successful digital presence, well that’s true, unless you want to be paying for every click to your website.
How you should approach SEO as a small business
There are many different ways of approaching SEO and it’s vital that you know the 4 basics before you make any important decisions.
1 – Should or can I do it myself?
If you had to ask yourself this question, the answer is no. SEO is more difficult than you may think and without the proper technical knowledge it’s easy to de-rank or permanently penalise your website.
2 – Stay away from “cheap SEO packages”
There may be companies online that are offering very enticing and very good value SEO packages. You need to remember there is a good and a bad way of doing SEO, both of which will get your website to the top however one will have serious repercussions.
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Cheap companies will do anything to get your website to the top in the fastest time possible, and more often than not that involves some dodgy tactics that could end up getting your site permanently penalised.
3 – Look at reviews
You have the whole of the internet at your fingertips, use it. Spending 5 minutes looking at a digital marketing agencies reviews can be the difference between terrible or fantastic experience. If they don’t have reviews, be cautious as they me be a new agency with little or no experience.
Good Marketing Agency:
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Bad Marketing Agency:
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4 – Think about your industry
SEO is not for every business, however greedy marketing agencies will try and tell you otherwise. Here are a few things to think about:
- You serve a very small local market
- The competition is too strong an you have a small budget
- You have a very new and niche product or service with no search volume.
If you fall into one or more of these categories, your business may not be ready for SEO.
5 – Is your current website an SEO disaster?
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If you want your SEO efforts to prove successful, you need a website that can easily be crawled by Google. Old or poorly constructed websites (yes that includes your beloved wix site) can be very hard to work around. It’s a bit like painting, if you have a canvas that’s made of dirt, you probably won’t get very far.
You’re ready for SEO, where do you start?
So your small business is ready for SEO, awesome! Investing in your own marketing is on of the biggest step you can take towards growing your business. The question now is, where do you start?
The first step is finding the right digital marketing agency to look after you. This is the easy part, go into Google and search for “SEO or Digital Marketing Agency”. You’ll see plenty of companies but there are a few things you should take into account before choosing one:
1 – Is it a local agency?
Remember, the more the digital marketing agency knows about your geography the better. If you have an Australian business and hire someone in the Philippines to do your marketing, they are unlikely to have a solid understanding of your intended audience and how to reach them effectively.
2 – Do they have good reviews?
If they have excellent reviews, chances are they are a good marketing agency. Woo!
3 – Do they specialise in a niche market?
If they specialise in businesses like yours, that’s a winner! More often than not, marketing agencies will specialise in lots of different industries, if you are unsure, just give them a call.
Key Summary
Starting SEO can be a big move for any small business, so it’s very important that you do your research and find a digital marketing agency (like R6 Digital) that will provide you awesome results at a price that’s right for you.
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