Top 3 Tips For Fixing Small-Business SEO Mistakes

Small businesses have their work cut out for them in SEO. Often, they are up against bigger organizations with bigger budgets and more sophisticated strategies. The last thing a small business can afford is to shoot itself in the foot by making unforced SEO errors. Avoid these three, and you will be well on your way to a solid SEO program that can produce results, even in highly competitive market segments.

1. Make Your Website Mobile Friendly

Google’s search algorithm is steadily putting more emphasis on mobile-friendly Web pages. Furthermore, mobile Internet access now exceeds desktop usage, and the gap is almost certain to grow. Thus, if your company website is not mobile friendly, you not only lose ground with Google for organic search visibility, you lose lots of potential customers — and even current ones — who get frustrated fumbling with your website on their smartphones. Here is more detailed information on the rise of mobile-friendly SEO.

To make your site mobile friendly, the two basic options are to create a responsive website or build a separate mobile website. For small businesses in particular, a responsive site is usually the better way to go. A responsive website automatically adjusts to display optimally on any size screen — having only one website to maintain and through which to communicate with customers is much easier and more affordable than trying to manage separate desktop and mobile sites. Also, the cost to build a responsive website, and the time required to build it, will be much less.

2. Drive Traffic to Key Product and Service Pages

Why do small companies invest in SEO? The correct answer is to drive relevant website traffic that converts into sales leads or e-commerce revenue. With that in mind, making your product and service pages rank highly is important, since they are the pages most relevant to people searching for what you sell but don’t know who you are.

To improve the ranking of these pages, do this:

• Make sure you are targeting the right keywords — that is, keywords that are popular, demonstrate a high level of buying intent, and yet are not so popular that you will be crowded by the competition.
• Make sure the content of your target product/service pages is relevant to the keywords, useful, scannable and persuasive.
• Make sure these pages have a strong call to action. You must give people a compelling reason to submit an inquiry or place an order.

To execute these items properly, professional SEO assistance will likely be needed. For a small company with a limited budget for SEO, scoping a project consisting of these elements could be a great solution: by limiting the amount of keyword research, copywriting and conversion strategy, you can optimize what matters most.

3. Build Links with Off-Site Articles

One of the biggest handicaps a small business website has is a lack of high-quality inbound links. Since inbound links are a big part of Google’s search algorithm, obtaining these links is extremely important. In one area of link building, small businesses can have an advantage over bigger competitors: off-site article writing.

Many influential websites and blogs in your niche and related niches are no doubt hungry for great content. As a business owner or leader, you have knowledge and insight people are eager to learn about — people who read these same influential websites and blogs. As a result, if you take the time to write articles, market them properly to off-site publishers, and include links back to your website, you will build your inbound link profile and do wonders for your SEO performance.

Don’t let the fact you are not a writer stop you. There are plenty of freelance writers and editors who can take your rough drafts or bullet-point ideas and turn them into solid, informative articles at a reasonable cost.

When you’re looking for publishing sites, target ones with the same target audience. Make sure the publishing sites are active, get social shares and/or comments on their articles, and most of all, accept outside content. When you reach out to them with your article pitch, treat the process as you would any sales process: do your research, explain why your article would benefit their readers, and ask them for a commitment in a professional and personalized way.

Success Is Attainable with Patience

Many small businesses lack a mobile-friendly website, drive all the SEO traffic to their home page, and have few if any high-quality inbound links. If any of these three mistakes fits your business, succeeding in SEO will be tough sledding. However, get strong in all three areas, and you will see improvement — but be patient. A final SEO mistake is to expect overnight results. Instead, implement your plan and give it six to nine months. You may be pleasantly surprised by meaningful progress as time proceeds.