Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving your website from all aspects to increase the chances of it being seen whenever a user searches for something related to your business. This article will specifically take you through the recipe for SEO success for small to midsize businesses.
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SEO for small businesses
Digital presence can be essential for a business, both for brand image and for selling a product or service. Ranking high on a search engine (such as Google, Bing or Yahoo) can be achieved through both non-paid (known as organic positioning) and paid (known as non-organic positioning) strategies. The former is related to SEO tools (search engine optimisation), and the latter to SEM (search engine marketing) tools.
Organic search engine rankings can help a company gain visibility and credibility. This, in turn, can help convert leads that visit a website, which can be considered one of the main challenges that many small and medium-sized businesses face.
One of the key stages for achieving this conversion could be attracting quality visitors and users looking for what a company has to offer. This might require the use of different SEO tactics and tools.
What does SEO mean?
As per Gartner, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is using techniques to improve qualified website traffic. SEO analyses the nature and intent of searches to deliver highly relevant search results and a better user experience.
One of the key goals of SEO is to potentially help a product or service website to appear in the top results on a search platform.
Achieving good quality organic positioning could be a challenge involving a combination of many factors, for example:
- Technical expertise with SEO tools.
- Buyer persona and customer journey analysis to understand customer behaviour.
- Content marketing to produce quality content focused on the area of business.
- Interconnection of links to create quality traffic from other sites.
But before all these, the most important thing is understanding the basics correctly. This includes understanding how SEO fits into the customer journey, defining appropriate SEO goals, and incorporating changes or developments in search behaviour and channels into an SEO strategy. Below you will find SEO tactics for SMEs that are focused on B2B businesses but can work equally well for B2C businesses.
Understanding how SEO fits into the customer journey
According to a Gartner study, a B2B buyer spends 27% of their buying journey researching independently on the internet using at least one search engine.
In the early stages of the buying journey, also known as the upper funnel, the B2B buyer researches a business need and may only use broad, generic keywords without specifying a brand or product. Here is an example of a generic keyword: design software. But as the customer progresses through the buying journey, they learn about options that interest them, and the search becomes more precise, a phase known as the lower funnel. The keywords they search in these stages are more specific to a particular product or brand. Here is an example of a precise keyword: Mac-compatible image editing software.
It is advisable to map the customer buying journey in conjunction with keyword research. This can help identify the keywords used during the different stages of the buyer’s journey. Marketers can then align the SEO strategy with the buying journey so that keywords and content marketing complement the buyer’s intentions and needs during an online search.
Set SEO goals appropriate to your business
Successful SEO may not be just about getting a specific position in the search engine result pages (SERP) for essential business keywords. In other words, some SEO campaigns might have the goal of ranking ‘0’ (zero) or appearing in the top five results for the chosen keywords, but these goals should be seen as the campaign’s milestones, not the end goal.
In reality, businesses should set SEO goals focusing on business performance and results. For example:
- Get 5,000 extra organic search conversions by the year’s end.
- Increase organic search leads by 20% in the next quarter.
To collectively align SEO objectives to business performance and results, it might be important to analyse the marketing chain and understand how SEO contributes to it. Then based on buyer behaviour, you can quantify accurate metrics for your different business objectives.
Adjust SEO strategy to changes in search behaviour
Online search might constantly be changing, and search engine algorithms can sometimes even change dozens of times in a year. For instance, one day, your web page may be in the top 5 positions, but if the algorithm changes, the page may appear on the second or third page of SERPs.
Other times, the user’s search behaviour changes, such as doing more voice searches results in longer keywords being searched for. Because of this, SEO strategists should constantly monitor these changes, re-evaluate the current strategy, and restructure it to align with new algorithms and user behaviours.
Evaluate the quality of organic traffic before site optimisation
If your business already has an SEO strategy, then you can ask yourself the following questions to find the potential gaps, and remember that any changes you make should ensure that your business strengths are maintained.
In case your business does not yet have an SEO strategy, it is also advisable to answer the following questions so that you can analyse the current state of your company’s digital positioning.
Evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of your SEO strategy
- What percentage of your website traffic is organic?
- What percentage of your website’s organic traffic converts into customers?
- Does the company currently rank above or below your competitors in the SERPs for your business keywords?
- What are the highest search volume keywords your business currently relies on?
- How often are new keywords being introduced into your SEO strategy?
Once you have completed your website analysis, it will be time to redesign your SEO strategy or create one from scratch. When doing so, remember the tactics described in this article and how important it is to know how you will measure your strategy’s success, which will depend on the current situation of your business and your industry.
