This page is a information powerhouse for all those business owners who were curious enough to reach this page. We are going to talk about everything that relates to Small Business SEO on this page. If you don’t want to buy small business SEO Service but you want to experiment yourself? Here is your chance, and the full guide.
What is SEO? How does it work?
When I explain SEO, I love to talk about this Moz’s definition of SEO.
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, which is the practice of increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to your website through organic search engine results.
You must be wondering, what does this exactly mean? Let me borrow some more content from Moz and share it here.
To understand the true meaning of SEO, let’s break that definition down and look at the parts:
Quality of traffic. You can attract all the visitors in the world, but if they’re coming to your site because Google tells them you’re a resource for Apple computers when really you’re a farmer selling apples, that is not quality traffic. Instead you want to attract visitors who are genuinely interested in products that you offer.
Quantity of traffic. Once you have the right people clicking through from those search engine results pages (SERPs), more traffic is better.
Organic results. Ads make up a significant portion of many SERPs. Organic traffic is any traffic that you don’t have to pay for.
We have covered this in detail on the following blogpost, feel free to learn more about it here.
SEO Statistics
Just so we have a context of what we are talking about, I want to share some hardcore data to back up my case. I truly believe the SEO can be the most ROI attractive channel, but here is a data that proves the same.
- 68% of online experiences begin with a search engine. (BrightEdge)
- 53.3% of all website traffic comes from organic search. (BrightEdge)
- 92.96% of global traffic comes from Google search, Google Images, and Google Maps. (Sparktoro)
- SEO drives 1000%+ more traffic than organic social media. (BrightEdge)
- The top-ranking page gets the most search traffic only 49% of the time. (Ahrefs)
- The #1 result in Google’s organic search results has an average CTR of 31.7%. (Backlinko)
- There are an estimated 3.5 billion searches on Google each day. (Internet Live Stats)
- 30% of all mobile searches are related to location. (Think With Google)
- 76% of people who search on their smartphones for something nearby visit a business within a day. (Think With Google)
- 54% of smartphone users search for business hours and 53% search for directions to a local store. (Think With Google)
- “Where to buy” + “near me” mobile queries have grown by over 200% from 2017–2019. (Think With Google)
These numbers are enough to prove the importance of SEO, because as a small business owner, you wouldn’t like this opportunity to go away.
Essential SEO Terms Every Small Business Owner Should Know
If you are a beginner and you are still trying to understand what SEO is, then this resource is for you.
We have gone in the detail of each term, and how does it relate to your SEO campaigns.
- Organic Search, SERP, Search Query
- Keyword, Ranking Position, CTR, Impressions
- Title, Meta Description, H1
- Internal Links, External Links, Backlinks
Is SEO Worth it for your small business?
When I get on a discovery call to assess if business owners really need SEO or not, I get the following questions.
- Does my small business need SEO services?
- Is SEO right choice of marketing investment for my business?
- How to determine if you need SEO services?
All these questions are legit questions, and let me tell you, you should get this answer right before making any investment.
Over the years, I have turned down many SEO leads because they weren’t the right fit for SEO as a channel. It’s possible that SEO might not be the right investment at that point in time. Or you need a website redesign first in order to rank, or you need to have your sales process in order first.
When SEO is not the right investment for you?
- You have wrong expectations.
- Website needs a rework.
- Competition is too strong.
- Budget is not enough.
- Pay Per Click ads is a better choice.
- Low Keyword Volume.
- The market is very small.
If you are wondering if your website needs a rework, competition is strong or any of the above reasons for your business, then you need to get on a FREE 30 mins discovery call to explain us more about your business, potential customers, your sales process etc. We will take those information and we will do a detailed assessment for you. Once we are done, we will get on a call or send you a report if you should go forward with SEO or other channels would bring more results.
To learn more about those 7 reasons in detail, check our the article below.
Benefits of SEO for Small Business
I have made my career in SEO, so here is a situation where you are asking a barber if you need a haircut, but you are talking to an ethical barber, so I will tell you why you shouldn’t invest in SEO first. Check out this article. If you don’t fit any of the criteria first.
Here are the benefits of SEO, if done right.
- Find new customers online
- Get a chance to educate users when they are in research phase
- Increase your brand awareness
- Overtake your competition
- Cost effective way of marketing in longterm
- Great user-experience when they engage with your brand
- Capture their email for future campaigns
- Make a lead generating asset that works 24×7
To learn more about these benefits in detail, kindly refer the following article where we talk about the each benefit in detail using real life examples of our clients.
Small Business SEO Tasks/Processes
You must be thinking, what is this whole SEO thing is. How to get this done? What kind of efforts or steps do you put in? Well, here is the straight forward transparent answer to this question.
Can you do it yourself?
You absolutely can. Can you do it in time we can? I am pretty sure no.
Should you do it yourself? In my past experiences, if you are doing this business for more than 3 years, you better focus on other important areas of the business, by delegating this work to the right partner.
But still if you want to do it, sure you can. Here is how it works.
What is the SEO process? How do you do SEO?
SEO involves the following steps.
Competitors Analysis
- We use tools like SEMRush & Ahrefs to research about your competitors,
- who are they? What are they doing?
- How are they ranking?
- What keywords are they using?
- How long they have been doing SEO?
- Based on this information, we try to arrive at a conclusion if it’s worth persuading this space by investing in SEO or better you spend on paid campaigns for instant results.
- We use tools like SEMRush & Ahrefs to research about your competitors,
- Keyword Research
- Based on the competitors finding, we take those keywords and we extend our keyword research to various types of keywords.
- transactional keywords
- educational keywords
- awareness keywords
- Based on the competitors finding, we take those keywords and we extend our keyword research to various types of keywords.
- Keyword Mapping
- We take the list of keywords we researched and map them to specific intents. This gives us a universe of pages we should be creating on the website.
- These pages will become foundation for users to access our offerings and learn more about the same.
- Content Production
- Based on the takeaway of the number of pages we want to build, we start producing content for those pages.
- The content writers need specific guideline in to create the content, and for that we product SEO driven Content Briefs that helps content writers write the accurate and SEO friendly content.
- Content Optimization
- Once the content is ready, we use various paid tools such as SurferSEO, Frase.io and MarketMuse to optimize the content based on data driven insights.
- Once content is optimized, we forward them to website admin to publish the same on the website.
- Technical SEO Audit
- It refers to technical foundation of website. If the website has technical issues than search engine crawlers will have issues visiting your website, as a result, the website will not be a part of search engine results.
- Tech SEO addresses a lot of issues such as broken internal links, broken backlinks, broken pages, site speed, structured data, etc.
- The detail is discussed in the article referred below.
- On Page SEO Audit
- It refers to various on page SEO elements such as Title, Description, H1, sub-headers, internal links, content on the page, image, video etc.
- There are ways you can organize the website in an seo friendly way, and that can give you an upper hand considering your competitors.
- Off Page SEO Audit
- In this step we check the backlink profile, types of backlinks you have, how does it compare to the competitors.
- Using this insights, we may be able to come up the plan for link building campaigns.
- For small businesses, it includes local citations, data aggregator listings etc.
To conclude, Each step has it’s own tools, it’s own checklist and tactics to arrive at the best deliverable at the end of the step.
If you are interested in knowing more about these steps, refer to the article below.
How much does SEO Campaign cost?
I understand the urge to know this answer as a business owner. If I would be in your place, this would be my question to you too. But unfortunately, I won’t be able to give you an answer to this question.
What I CAN tell you is what are the factors it depends on:
- Complexity of the project
- Your competition
- Your Business
- Content Needs
- Link Building Needs
- No of Pages on the website
- Your current rankings
If I have to give you a range, then SEO should cost you anywhere between $1500 to $5000 in most cases. When we engage you, we try our best to help you generate more sales so your bottom-line grows more than your marketing spend.
There are scenarios where it may cost more than $5000 depending on the complexity of the project.
Small Business Tips & Tricks
With the years of experience, we have accumulated few tips and tricks that may help you small business. To summarize, here they are.
- Location Pages targeting surrounding areas.
- Creating content pages for long tail keywords.
- Using Google Search Console insights to better inform the content on the pages.
- Using Google Search Console insights to create better landing pages for paid campaigns.
Check out the link below for the details.
SEO Tools for Small Business
When I started learning SEO in 2010, for initial years I was truly fascinated with different tools. I still play around new tools alot, to explore new things, discover new tactics and it’s a great way to learn.
I am sure, as a small business owner, you must interested in learning about SEO tools too. Check out the article below that talks about a list of SEO tools for small businesses.
Ultimate Local SEO Checklist 2021
If you are a small business owner, who doesn’t have resources to hire an SEO company, then this is the best resource for you.
I have a detailed guide for you in the linked article below, but I wanna talk about high level SEO elements here. It can help you craft your SEO strategy and SEO campaign action plan to dominate search engines.
Successful Local SEO has three parts:
- Optimized Google My Business
- SEO Friendly Website
- Strong Local Citation Presence
Take a look, and out of this check, please action on as many things as you can, you will be able to make good amount of impact on your SEO.
How to Optimize Google My Business?
Google My Business is one of the most helpful tool Google has invented. It’s an easy win for your business.
If you don’t have one, create one.
If you have one, access this resource to know how to optimize it.
How to Build a Local SEO Friendly Website for your small business?
We have produced a detailed article on how to build an SEO friendly website for a small business. So if you are developing a new website or thinking about it, please check the following resource.
How to Create Local Citations & submit to Data Aggregators Listings for Local SEO?
To rank higher in search engines, your SEO strategy should have Local Citations as one of the main pillars. I wouldn’t it’s the most important, but without the citations, you will have hard time ranking your business in local search.
Our Local SEO Strategy has high quality citations as one of the foundation to enhance the brand presence in the city or region you want to rank in. Few of them are very high authority do-follow backlinks as they come from repeated websites.
How to hire an SEO consultant or company for your business?
We know there are lots of companies, consultants, experts in SEO space.
How do you find one that fits your budget as well as they know what they are talking about?
How will you make sure you make the right decision when you are still new to these terms?
Here is a guide for you that will help you make the right decision.
What does SEO company do?
At MoneyMonk Digital, we take pride in being transparent. You can check out our full process of SEO here.
