Though there are many factors in ranking that need to be considered like building link strength and a fast loading site, there is one thing that the grinders can be sure will eventually pay off. This article will talk about what I like to call the “Con”s of SEO, which I will go over below. If you are a local business and can add these cons into your business plan, along with chamber and local relationships that provide website links, you will likely get “Con”sistent rankings for important and relevant searches.
The “Con”s of Small Business SEO
So here we go. You will see that though there are several “Con”s listed below, they all melt together into one plan, as they are all related.
“Con”tent
You need to add content for everything you want to rank for. If you have many services, you should have a page of unique content for each one of those services, that thoroughly addresses what the service is and why someone should choose you as the provider. Aim for page content to be over 400 words. The average #1 ranked page is over 2,000 words, but for small business services, you can get away with a bit shorter. Do not let your content be under 250 words.
“Con”cept
Blogs are popular because they allow you to easily create “pages” from blog posts for any topic at any time. With semantic search shifting the focus shifting away from the old-fashioned specific keyword focus to more general concept targeting. Google understands concept and entity relationships. You still want to aim your content toward concepts with proper meta-tags and phrase usage, but just make sure you have a thorough explanation of the concept you want to rank for and you should be doing ok. As your site gets deeper and stronger and more thorough, you can start ranking for terms just for putting a post out there to address a topic. For example, I blog at least once a week and sometimes include videos. I created a post about Motown SEO when visiting Detroit, and within a week, and still, today, have two listings on the first page for “Motown SEO“”, due to a video I added as well. For hyper-local concepts or unique concepts, a good site that addresses many related concepts with pages will rank in many areas. My site has a lot of “SEO” content, so branching into Motown, I already had strength and relevance to pull off a first-page ranking, and the video allowed for two spots.
“Con”nect
Connect, or link concepts in one blog post to concepts in other blog posts or services you provided. If you are creating a good amount of content, much of it will relate to each other, so it is great to link from one blog post to another to provide examples and background to the topic you are discussing with your current post. These links help Google associate the strength and relevance from page to page.
“Con”sistent
Add posts at regular intervals. Build it into your calendar to post once a week or every other week. Something you can stick to. My industry changes quite regularly on a daily and weekly basis, so it allows for a lot of content opportunities on changes and updates. I understand some industries don’t have as much motion, and you may not have content for multiple posts a week, but keep adding content at a regular pace. With Google looking at your site as an entity and source for knowledge on specific topics, you want to keep feeding the Google beast and your customers with helpful and relevant content. Don’t be afraid to show people how to do things that you do. Most customers don’t want to do it. They will hire you even if you show them how to do it. Answer common questions with posts. If you have had the question asked of you, then you know people have asked Google.
Find Specific Topics You Know People Look For
There are far more things you can write about than you may realize. Once you start ranking, you can start to think about specific “areas” you may want to show up in search, and create content just for that. Take my post about “Google My Business’ for example. I realized people search using that term, and with Google putting more efforts in that area and people searching for it more often, I created a post for it. Within a week I was only outranked by Google itself for “Google My Business Management NJ”.
“Con”tinuous
This is similar to consistent, but you have to keep at it. The regularity and recency of your content plays into how your site is viewed and how you can rank. A Google update last year gave more strength to more recent content. “Freshness” was a big thing moving into 2018. Take old content and update it. There are always things changing. Even if things haven’t changed much and you can update your examples a little bit, the freshness will help. Keep at it. Make sure you are constantly feeding the Google algorithm and your potential prospects that are out there searching.
“Con”vert
It is often overlooked and I see it regularly with small business. Don’t forget to make it as easy as possible for your visitors to turn into customers/clients/patients. If you want them to call, make sure your phone number is clear as day on each page. If you want them to contact you via the site, make sure there is a clear contact form on every page. Make it easy to convert. Make it above the fold so they don’t have to scroll around to find it or you will lose them. People have short attention spans. Don’t assume they will find it, make it easy.
Small Business SEO “Con”s “Con”clusion
If you bake in a content marketing plan that includes all of the above, which all kind of come together naturally, you will be in a much better position. You can hire someone like myself to help build your strength and address some of your other issues, or even assist at “aiming” your content better, but “Content is King” and if you build this into your plan, you will be in a better position to get found. Reach out to us if you need help getting started.
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