Are you an entrepreneur at the head of a small company or a freelancer and do you have a website on which you would like to implement SEO optimization activities?
In this article, I want to give you some ideas for not feeling more intimidated or frustrated when implementing all the activities necessary for the positioning your website on
search engines (or if you think you can get it done by a web agency or
an SEO consultant ).
As the owner of a small business, you will surely see huge multinationals and large companies dominate the world of search engines ,
and it is not difficult to understand why you feel so negative.
Large companies are known to have:
- a budget of tens of thousands of euros (or more) to spend on online marketing
- a full-time staff to oversee campaign management
-
excellent authority in their respective niches, which have had time to cement thanks to being online for many years
Seeing all this, you might think that your company, with its novelty and minimal resources, has no chance to compete at the SEO
level.
But the reality is that small businesses, compared to their larger competitors, have several advantages in
SEO positioning of a website: let's see them in detail.
Niche targeting
The first of the SEO advantages is that, as a small business, it is likely that a very specific market niche is referred to.
A large company, for example in the world of home maintenance products, could satisfy general needs on the national territory.
The classic keywords to be placed on the Google search engine could be "home repair" or "plumbing problems", so that you can direct a large amount of traffic online, using broad match keywords.
On the contrary, a local hardware store might be able to offer more types of services, and meet specific types of problems in a certain city or town, to position keywords such as "replacement of Genoa locks" or "sale electrical cables for the Avena Roma ”.
Small businesses, therefore, need to implement activities aimed at optimizing long-tailed keywords (longtail keywords), which do not obtain high volumes of organic traffic but are much more targeted and, above all, less competitive.
Local SEO
Most small businesses operate at the city or regional level, and can, therefore, take advantage of local SEO activity; large companies at the national level have a distinct disadvantage in this case.
The Local SEO work on a separate algorithm, producing relevant results based on the user's query.
More in detail, Google selects the three most relevant local companies for a given query (based on the physical location of a user), and lists the names and instructions to reach the point of sale, the possible website and provides the possibility of make a direct phone call.
A small business, therefore, has a good chance of being listed locally, provided it has optimized the content for the right keywords.
General agility
Large companies have a great advantage because they have spent so much time building a reputation on the keywords most important to them and their specialty areas, but sometimes an advantage can also be a weak point.
This situation means that they have less flexibility in maneuvering, and less space when it comes to experimenting.
A small business, with fresh domain authority and more objectives than keywords, can have SEO advantages by adjusting the positioning strategies of its website over time, experimenting and trying to implement new ones.
New
When a small business tries to break into the digital stage of search engines, there is a degree of novelty that can be exploited; this is especially true if you are a startup.
When people search for an engine (eg Google or Bing), in most cases they are only interested in a specific product.
If the results of the research (SERP) propose a local business, normally the users are more interested and intrigued.
This tends to bring more interaction with the company on-site, and these interactions can indirectly improve SEO positioning
There is also evidence to suggest that new sites just added to the Google search engine index get small and temporary improvements in the ranking (ranking).
Power of the personal brand
With some exceptions, most large companies do not operate efficiently when they are driven by the influence of a personal brand.
This happens because most large companies are run by large groups of leaders, and not by a single charismatic authority at the top.
Instead, the small business is probably managed by a single leading authority - and if you are an entrepreneur - you are probably that leader.
This gives you a better ability to develop a personal brand as an extension of your corporate brand, which in turn brings:
- more opportunities in content published on third-party sites
- greater user confidence
- more social media activity
- more generally, a greater presence in all the possible search engine optimization activities.
Publication Appeal
Finally, small businesses have an advantage when it comes to the appeal of publishing content on third-party sites.
When a major national brand tries to get a publication on a website with independent content, the publisher is generally doubtful about their intentions.
Large companies often have ulterior motives and hidden agendas, while small businesses are more fascinating and reliable by nature.
In any case, small businesses have more ease in getting content published from other sites, thus obtaining a fundamental advantage.
User-friendly websites
The SEO helps owners of small businesses to create a website fast, simple and easy to use.
Although many people still refer to an old concept of SEO, thinking that it is only useful to optimize the pages for search engines, today the SEO also considers the improvement of the user experience.
The structured websites well and ordered retain visitors longer, thus decreasing bounce rates and increasing page hits. Likewise, the presence of relevant content on the site (sales pages and blog articles) responds to readers' requests, satisfies their questions, because it helps them find exactly what they were looking for on the web.
The On-page SEO, if used promptly, as well as making visitors happy gives search engines of high-quality information for their users.
Increased customers
Let's face it, one of the main reasons for having a website is to differentiate yourself from the competition and increase the number of customers. Otherwise, why would you invest in marketing, right? The companies that have a website optimized using the best SEO techniques attract more customers and grow two times faster than companies that do not make use of SEO.
SEO is probably the most efficient and cost-effective marketing strategy in existence today. If you are willing to spend some time and money, SEO will help you increase traffic to your website, and possibly have more customers than any other marketing strategy.
. Greater conversion
The websites optimized for search engines load content quickly, are easy to use and can be displayed optimally on any type of device, including smartphones and tablets. Websites that are easy to read and navigate are more likely to attract the attention of readers and visitors, who in turn can become loyal customers, subscribe to the newsletter, buy your products, etc.
Increase brand recognition
One of the benefits of being positioned high in the SERPs is the increase in brand recognition.
The fact that your website appears on the first page of the results of large search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing, increases the likelihood that potential customers will trust your brand rather than other brands that do not have a strong web presence. This is why small businesses that want to increase brand recognition must invest in SEO and begin to position themselves higher in search results for keywords relevant to their business. Today search engines have a significant role when it comes to increasing brand recognition.
Differentiate from the competition
Take the example of two companies operating in the same sector, selling the same products at the same price. One of them has an optimized website, the other one no, considering that except for this, everything else is the same, which of these two companies do you think will attract more customers to your site? Which of the two companies will grow faster and be more successful?
Monitoring: Check the sustainable success
At what place does your website currently rank with relevant search terms? How did she develop the ranking - in the jargon's ranking - on Google? Regularly monitoring the search results for your project answers these questions. Thanks to professional SEO tools, we can monitor your rankings on various search engines. Even broken down to individual locations, the rankings can be determined. So you always know which position your website is currently displayed to the users in Cologne, Dusseldorf or Munich. On request, we will send you regular reports on the development of your search engine rankings.
SEO training
If you would like to build up your know-how for your small business, we would be happy to train you or your staff in the areas of SEO, WordPress, and editorial staff. You benefit from my many years of experience as an online editor, expert for content management systems and SEO. I teach you how to write good texts and prepare them in WordPress for optimal digital findability. From now on, you or your employees can do an important part of the search engine optimization themselves. This helps to continuously develop your online presence while saving costs.
The billing
As a freelance SEO expert, I am available to you on a daily or hourly basis. You pay no regular SEO packages, but pay me very transparent only for the time I was working specifically for your company and your project. Documentation takes place digitally via a time recording software. Together with the monthly billing, you will receive a detailed breakdown of my activities.
Monitoring and analysis
You can measure the success of search engine optimization. Some SEO tools are suitable for this. The most well-known of these is Google's own "Analytics" service, which is less well-known but compliant with data protection software Piwik, which was developed for visitor stream monitoring.
A common SEO bug: The keyword meta tag is overrated
Contrary to popular belief, it is not the keywords alone that are assigned to a website that determines their SEO ranking. These play only a minor role in search engine optimization. It is crucial that the search terms, under which a website is to be found, also appear in the headings and texts. Also, search terms can be stored in the file names of pictures and videos and used in the alternative texts for pictures and the title attributes for links to improve the ranking for specific search terms. If this is respected, even small and medium-sized businesses can quickly position themselves on page 1 on Google & Co. and gain competitive advantage.
SEO benefits for small businesses: conclusions
SEO is a competitive field, and there are no shortcuts or for large companies or small ones.
I sincerely believe that any company, of any size, and in any niche has a good chance of reaping the fruits of its commitment if it knows where to focus its efforts.
Knowing the SEO advantages of small businesses compared to larger ones, you can customize your strategy to get the best overall results in SEO site positioning, even with a small budget available.
The optimization
Once we know where your page still has potential, icksmedia creates a list of meaningful actions that we prioritize on our own or in consultation with you. Then it goes to the implementation of search engine optimization. We will gradually take a look at each page of your online presence. A very important part is the creation of high-quality content as comprehensive as possible. But also the optimization of the source code for the search engine referred to in the jargon Onpage SEO, we make. These include a good structure with matching subheadings, photos with matching alt tags, a handwritten meta description (the part that will be visible later in the search results), and much more.
How much and how fast we optimize depends entirely on your wishes and your budget. Since you can hire an SEO Freelancer on an hourly basis, you will get the opportunity to decide very flexibly and if necessary at any time again which work is done and when.
