SEO tips for small businesses
The start of a new year and a new decade is an ideal time to think about the tactics and strategies you can employ to secure business success over the coming months.
Establishing and maintaining a strong digital presence is crucial, so here are three things to consider when building a search engine optimisation (SEO) strategy that will deliver results throughout 2020 and beyond.
Invest in a long-term strategy
The most effective and sustainable SEO strategies often take several months to function at full capacity. Alongside paid media which often delivers quick wins, your digital strategy should also focus on long-term actions, including content marketing campaigns which will help you to boost your rankings in search engine results pages (SERPs).
Mapping out key dates in your business calendar and taking steps to plan accordingly will help you to ensure that your digital presence is fully optimised and driving the meaningful results you need to see. You might find it helpful to utilise PDF to Excel software such as https://pdftables.com/, to create a searchable spreadsheet containing important dates and the content or marketing campaigns you plan to launch at those times.
The importance of a data-driven strategy
Strategies based on assumptions aren’t powerful or specific enough to drive meaningful results in hyper-competitive digital spaces. You need to understand both your customer and their purchasing journey to effectively enhance your customer experience and boost your optimisation results. Businesses now have a wealth of data available to them and first party data, such as newsletter subscriptions, web analytics, customer accounts and app downloads, can be used to shape a SEO strategy that will target the right people, at the right times, and in the right places.
Don’t forget about voice search
As this Verge article reports, Amazon has sold more than 100 million Alexa devices. More of us are using smart devices and virtual assistants, and in response, Google’s algorithms are constantly refining the accuracy and reliability of voice results. This means that the complexity and scope of voice search queries is likely to increase.
If you haven’t started optimising your digital presence for voice search, focusing on securing more featured snippets is a solid starting point. To do this, your content should seek to provide the best possible answers to the specific questions the people you want to connect with are asking via search.