Guest post by Ryan Gould
For any small business owner, search engine optimization (SEO) should be a core part of their overall digital marketing strategy. Simply stated, SEO is all about appearing higher in Google search results for keywords directly related to your business. Studies show that as much as 60 percent of all traffic coming from search engines comes from the top 3 organic search results. Think about that for a moment – if the name of your business is not showing up in the top 3 search results, people probably aren’t finding you organically. So what are some of the best ways to capture some of that Google search engine juice?
Tip 1: Create a corporate blog
From a purely SEO perspective, the primary reason to create a corporate blog is to generate a continuous stream of fresh, relevant content. Google rewards websites that are continuously updated and relevant, and one easy way to do that is via a corporate blog.
Tip 2: Don’t forget about content distribution and external links
Some business owners assume that, if you build it, they will come. Unfortunately, that’s not usually the case. You have to think about ways to distribute all of the great content you are now creating and get people to link back to your content. For example, why not leverage any existing social media platforms (i.e. Facebook or Twitter) to signal when new content is available? The more places that your content appears, and the more links there are to this content, the more likely it is that it will “pop” in the Google search algorithm.
Tip 3: Do some keyword research
Some of the keywords for your industry might be obvious. For example, if you operate a pizza parlor, then a search term like “pizza” might be obvious. But what about all the various styles of pizza that people might be looking for on Google? (If you’re in the Philadelphia area, for example, “cheesesteak” might actually be a relevant search term!) Here, you can take advantage of tools like Google AdWords Keyword Planner.
Tip 4: Avoid duplicate content
One simple rule of SEO is to avoid duplicate content at all cost because Google will penalize you for it. There are many places on your corporate website where you might be inadvertently duplicating content found elsewhere on the web. For example, if you are using generic product descriptions on an e-commerce site rather than your own unique descriptions, that’s a form of duplicate content.
Tip 5: Examine tags, descriptions, and titles
Finally, there’s certainly merit in examining the “back end” of your website. Anything you can do to help out the crawling Google spiders, the better. So make sure you are using metadata correctly. For a corporate blog post, make sure that you are using keywords to help Google find you. And re-think your use of titles. Yes, titles should catch the attention of readers, but they should also be optimized for SEO. Try to include keywords in titles whenever possible.
Final thought
By taking advantage of these five quick tips, you can help to boost your SEO efforts. In turn, that will lead to increased traffic and more people discovering your business organically via search.
Author Bio:
Ryan Gould: From legacy Fortune 100 institutions to inventive start-ups, Ryan brings extensive experience with a wide range of B2B clients. He skillfully architects and manages the delivery of integrated marketing programs, and believes strongly in strategy, not just tactics, that effectively aligns sales and marketing teams within organization.