Entrepreneurs, companies and business owners should be familiar with specific marketing techniques that cater to the online world. Most people in the marketing industry know exactly what SEO marketing is.
SEO is a powerful tool when used correctly. Basically, this is the free way to get your company, non-profit, church or other organization into the Google search engine.
Here’s the thing, SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. Getting your brand and business into the headlines or top page of the Google search engine means you get more publicity.
All business owners and marketing strategists know publicity is a great thing.
SEO Marketing Basics
Keywords. That’s it. You need to know which keywords to use in an article, bio, or your web page to rank for this specific keyword (s) in the Google search engine.
For instance, if you’re a beauty business or company you may want to come up on the first page of Google when someone types in, “skin care for winter.” This is a pretty common term.
Thousands if not millions of people could be searching for this phrase. If your website pops up within the first few listing it makes your website and company look legit. They’ll click on your website or blog article and may even consider being a loyal customer and referring you to others.
That’s the beauty of keyword research and choosing the right keywords.
This all may sound somewhat simple and easy but there’s a lot to consider when finding the right keywords and implementing SEO best practices. You may consider finding a marketing specialist, freelance SEO writer or content marketing guru to assist you.
How Do I Find Keywords?
You know what SEO is but how do you find the right keywords. Surely using the same ones over and over won’t get you the desired results.
Tools like SEM Rush, Google Keyword Planner and KW Finder are all great tools to use to find the right keywords relevant to your industry. These are some of the basics tools you can use to start implementing SEO into your web content.
Keep in mind, you don’t want just any keywords. These SEO phrases have to be popular enough to get you more leads and website clicks while being unique enough so your content won’t be flooded out by bigger industry names who use the most popular terms.
SEO marketing can be tricky since you’ll have to shift through trending keywords, post analytics, and do industry research on your potential consumers. Knowing how to perform marketing research will get you a long way. It’s okay if you’re not sure about this, a freelance writer, social media manager or marketing expert can assist you and write SEO content for you.
Where Does SEO Fit In?
You know the why but what about the where? How are you going to use SEO to drive traffic to your small business?
This can be achieved in a variety of different ways. Here’s a few to start with:
- blogs
- email marketing
- press release
- web page copy (landing page)
- URLs
- social media
- external listings
Knowing how to use SEO for marketing is just half of the process. Knowing exactly where, how and when to post content will make a huge difference in your SEO marketing efforts.
Does It Work For Everyone?
Absolutely! SEO (content marketing) is key for any business, industry or company. SEO is the new way of advertisement. Certain words and phrases link to a certain brand. It’s kind of like an internet slogan that can be used to track down your business.
People search for things they’re already in need of. That means they’re already looking for a specific product or service. What will they do next? They’re going to think of a phrase or keyword to find what they’re looking for.
You want your company or business to pop up when they make this search. Accessibility is crucial. They’re more likely to trust and buy from you if you’re easily accessible.
The Difference Between Long and Short Phrases
You may already be aware of this but long tail keyword phrases tend to do better than short keyword phrases.
This means a phrase like “what to do at the gym” is better than “gym activities.” Think of SEO like this. Google crawlers (virtual bots) scan your article for questions that actual people are typing into Google.
The bots pick up answers to questions and questions themselves. You can differentiate between phrases using similar words. Here’s an example:
SEO Keyword: “How to get fit in 60 days”
Variations: “Get fit quickly,” “getting in shape in 60 days,”” working out consistently,”” working out daily.”
Add these phrases throughout your blog post and remember to keep the exact keyword phrase at the top of the article. Repeat this with one heading as well.
Writing for bots or humans?
To answer this question you need to know the goal of your content. Are you trying to rank within the search engines (1st page)? If so, then you’ll need to write for the bots. Conversational content works well on big blogs that already have tons of subscribers.
But to bring massive traffic to your website and blog you’ll need to write for the bots while answering your readers questions in a clear manner.
Break up texts with small paragraphs and add photos and charts to make your content easy to read.
Backlinks are too important
SEO works amazingly towards marketing efforts and you’ll need a strong web presence to drive in the sales you’ve been looking for. Backlinks make your content 1000x better. Why? Google bots rank your content and being authoritative when you have high-quality backlinks.
So, what’s a backlink?
I’m glad you asked, simply put, a backlink is a direct website link back to an authority in your niche.
This authority should be high traffic, high-level blog or website with information about the niche you’re writing in.
Bots are looking for two things:
- Authority
- Relevance
You get the authority and reputation needed to rank higher in the google search engine for a specific phrase by having quality backlinks in your content. It’s important to get others to link back to your content as well.
This is a complex separate topic which we can cover in another post.
SEO for social media
Small businesses need to use SEO for their social media sites to bring awareness to their brand. Pinterest is one of those websites that works perfectly using the right keywords.
Consider someone who is trying to find your brand (or even your competitors) they’re going to look for specific words like “massage therapist in Columbus, Ohio.”
You want to be the company that pops up in the area whether they’re looking for your brand on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter or Pinterest.
Since we’re only covering the basics of SEO for a small business right now we’ll leave it there and save the detailed info for another article.
What now?
Use this information to come up with a content marketing strategy. Consider what phrases and words your customers and potential consumers are looking for or using.
These are the words and phrases you need to use in your marketing efforts. Find someone to help you (hire a professional) or go through and perform some keyword market research yourself.
Your company will gain publicity thus leading you to more clients and consumers. Always remember to go back and look over your keywords in case you need to update your blogs for better publicity.
Happy writing!
