SEO has turned into a must-have for every business, and small business is no different either. Hiring the services of an SEO company to help a small business to rank high in Google and other search engines are likely to be a challenging task. That is akin to taking an old vehicle to a mechanic and listen to them rattling many repairs you need. The mechanic will describe problems with parts that you never heard of. Similar is the case with SEO. How can you be sure that the SEO firm that you have selected is doing an excellent job for your business? It’s simple. Choose an SEO firm that offers these 5 SEO services- keyword research, page creation, page optimization, link building and technical audit. Always remember, not every SEO firm is created equal and you being a small business owner cannot afford in making a costly mistake.
5 Essential SEO Services for Small Sized Businesses
Take a look at the five critical SEO services for small-sized businesses,
- Keyword Research – When it comes to an SEO project, keyword research is one of the most vital aspects. Before you can come up with a plan for your small business to augment its traffic and rankings from Google, you need to be aware of which exact keyword to target. Each domain page, in general, must aim at least one/two keywords. So, you should have sufficient pages to target enough keywords to cover the main aspects of the business. For instance, if you own a plumbing company that provides plumbing repairs, inspections, and replacement, it is apparent that you will search for keywords which cover these areas. It is good to search for synonyms as well. Repairing a pipe, for instance, will be the same as fixing the pipe. You can also search for prefixes and adjectives such as plumbing repair. Selecting the most appropriate keywords will narrow down to these three factors namely:
- Relevancy of the keyword and its commercial intent- Any keyword that has a business purpose will be more desirable. For instance, a plumbing replacement company will be a better choice compared to how to fix a pipe as the former has a commercial intent.
- The number of customers who will look for that specific keyword in your serviced geography- Here the more will be the people the better it will be. The ranking of your site will become irrelevant if just a handful of people search every month.
- The competitiveness of the keyword- A lower competition is suggested as it will need less money and time to become successful. Check the other pages having keyboard present in the page to check the competitiveness.
- Page Creation – After getting complete research on keywords, the next task of an SEO will be in creating new pages to rank such keywords. If your website does not have a relevant page, there is no scope of ranking. While creating a page ensure to attain the following:
- It should be sufficiently long to be comprehensive
- Each page should have unique content. Keep away from producing copy/paste or templated pages
- Include a page which people will find interesting and valuable to make sure that the bounce rate is low and your chances to rank in Google is better.
- The URLs used should be simple
- Resist the urge in targeting above two keywords in every page
- Try to map every keyword to page to cover all pertinent keywords that you came across at the time of researching the keyword.
- Ensure that the Search Engine Optimization Agency that you choose delivers a quality job that has high-quality images, no writing mistakes and pages formatted for cleanliness and legibility.
- Page Optimization – If you have got a webpage for a specific topic which you found out while researching the keyword, you should optimize the same for search engines. The search engines are similar to computers which need hand-holding to make sure it understands a page’s subject matter. An experienced SEO agency or consultant will be capable of making modifications both to the technical underpinnings and content of the page to make sure that Google, as well as the visitors, understand it. This SEO service is ideal for small business and is quite budget-friendly than to create any page from scratch. A professional will charge you either on per-hour or per-page basis. In the case of on-page optimization, the ROI will also be quite impressive. Often a page will only require small changes to be understood better by the leading search engines. That is how an SEO expert can help you:
- Choose a keyword that is both relevant and attractive
- Include the keywords, synonyms and common variations in the body of the page
- Help to optimize all the anchor text related to the links both to and on the page
- Include notation in the images to help Google understand it.
- In the case of a short page, it is SEO that will help to lengthen it for encouraging longer page visits as well as an improved reception from the search engines.
- Pull off the page that has off-topic content and shift to other parts of the site to make sure that the page succeeds in targeting not above two keywords and remain tightly themed to such terms and rules.
- Link Building – Just getting the right keywords on a webpage will not suffice and is not the sole element that you require for earning rankings on the leading search engines. After all the World Wide Web has countless other pages that have those same terms. Having said that, how will Google then figure out which to rank and in which position? Well, Google will figure it via counting both the quality and quantity of links that point to that page. In fact, it will take into consideration both the external links that come from other domains and also internal links which come to your domain from other pages. When the two are compared, it is the external links which have the upper hand and should be the target of your SEO expert’s link building effort. The key of link building will be a focus both on quality and quantity and not merely quantity. High-quality links are those that come from a relevant page having shared subject matter and come from that page which itself contains high quality external and internal links. While discussing link building with an SEO expert ensure that quality remains their priority. It will act as a benchmark for success when you receive relevant links.
- Technical Audit – An SEO expert will be adept with the standards that Google looks for and also has the required software tools which they will use on your website. The technical audits may differ dramatically with regards to their cost, size, and scope. If yours is software or dynamic site, then automatically your technical SEO requirements will be more than that of a brochure-ware site. An E-commerce website generally needs the maximum technical SEO owing to its number of pages and complicated navigation. Blogs and new sites having enough content may require higher technical optimization due to more pages, content types, tags and categories. In fact, it is a technical audit which will be a highly expensive SEO service that you may have to invest in as it will need more expertise and experience from the provider as well as will need enough time. Do not worry, although the auditing costs may be high, you will need it every 1-2 years provided you do it thoroughly. That is how an SEO expert can help you:
- Through a crawl, simulator crawl your entire domain
- Setup the console of the Google Webmaster Tool including both the creation as well as submission of the XML sitemap to assist Google in discovering all the pages.
- Suggestions designed for removing irrelevant pages or consolidating duplicate pages from Google’s index including discussion on 301 redirects, robots META tags, robots.txt and rel=canonical tags. Understanding these technical tools is not your job, but your expert will take care of it.
- Load time analysis of vital pages paying attention to top navigation pages and homepage
- Google is in favor of serving fast pages in its rankings hence it is crucial that your pages both respond as well as load faster
- Ensure that you get concrete suggestions as to how to improve
- Scanning for common indexing and crawling issues to make sure Google is not hung up in its attempt to access the pages.
Consulting an SEO agency to keep a track on your domain will be a great idea. To get ranked in Google will be the direct ticket for marketing leadership especially in your area thereby creating the difference between business to stall out and thrive. However, this will not happen overnight, and you need to be patient to see the results. Hopefully, the guide mentioned above will take you on the correct track.
For any types of queries, you can contact us on info[at]namasteui.com.