SEO for Small Business In 2019
If you thought you had your SEO done and dusted, think again. SEO tactics for small business owners or operators like yourself will be more involved in 2019. Far more than link building, re-hashed content and keyword stuffing, 2019 spells the need to understand voice search, changes to the search engines’ algorithms, machine learning and your customers’ more sophisticated and diverse needs. Let’s see what SEO in 2019 looks like
If you thought you had your SEO done and dusted, think again. SEO tactics for small business owners or operators like yourself will be more involved in 2019. Far more than link building, re-hashed content and keyword stuffing, 2019 spells the need to understand voice search, changes to the search engines’ algorithms, machine learning and your customers’ more sophisticated and diverse needs. Let’s see what SEO in 2019 looks like…
Start 2019 with a site audit
The start of a new year is the ideal time to audit your site. Why? To help you understand what is and isn’t helping your site from ranking on the first pages for searches.
To save time, you can use online platforms and tools to help you analyse several pages at the same time. When investigating, look for any SEO errors – either technical or content related and try to fix them. Examples of such mistakes include URLs that do not explain what is on the page, missing off slashes at the end of the URL and duplicate content.
Look to your competitors and do it better
It makes absolute sense to look at your competitors’ sites and see what they are doing well and then to go away and do it even better. This strategy is particularly important if you are starting out and trying to appear in the search rankings for the first time.
As always, there are tools that you can use to save you time and to clarify how your competitors are running their SEO campaigns.
Look at where your competitors rank concerning search results and how they are targeting with paid and organic SEO. What is working well for them? How can you do it better? Also look at their paid ads and see what keywords they are using and work out their strategy.
Revise and implement a marketing plan
Using the momentum of a new year and goal setting, look to your marketing plan. Don’t have one? No problem. Look online for free checklists to follow and from that work out your plan for the next six months. If you work as part of a team, consider using a shared platform such as Slack or Trello where you can assign tasks to various members. These platforms are useful for delegating work and not having to chase-up with emails and calls.
Look to your local ranking
It’s easy to forget, but seo tactics for small businesses need to include local ranking measures. Conversion rates with local ranking are impressive – if a customer is searching for your business offering in their local area the chances of them buying your product or service are high.
To optimise your local ranking, it’s vital that you check your Google My Business pages. Make sure that all your information is correct and up to date and includes opening hours, your full address, contact details and other essential data that will help your customers find you.
Make sure that your mobile site is good if not better than your desktop site
More customers than ever will use mobile searches to find businesses in 2019. Which means, if you haven’t already, you need to make sure your mobile site not only fits and reads well but that it appears in mobile rank searches.
Regarding seo in 2019, your mobile site needs to be to regularly monitored and optimised. Again, this is a task that you can delegate to your team via a shared platform.
Make sure you’re on the map
Just like mobile sites, in 2019 more users will use maps than ever before. In terms of your SEO, this means that you need to ensure your business is not only on the map but that your seo in 2019 looks to analysing and optimising this area, particularly within your local seo strategy.
Does your YouTube account work for you?
Users love video, and they love YouTube. The popularity of the site for seo optimisation will continue in 2019 so make sure that your small business is ranking on the first page. If not? Devote some time to improving your chances.
Look to your user
Remember your users? Sometimes they are the very thing that gets overlooked when you focus too hard on your SEO performance rather than the reason behind doing it. As a small business, it’s crucial to fully understand how your customers like to find out their information. For example, do they prefer written content over images? Alternatively, do they like videos and audio? No matter how well you’ve optimised your site if you aren’t giving out the information in the right way it is a waste of time.
Is your content good enough?
You already know that Google looks favourably on content that is of high quality and answers your customers’ pain points. In 2019, seo tactics for small business will look at continuing to deliver high-quality content and also experimenting with articles that are longer in length with more companies looking at copy of up to 2000 words.
Plan and see your strategy through
SEO tactics in 2019 will continue to develop. Make sure that you continue to monitor developments throughout the year to keep ahead of your competitors.
I regularly contribute articles about the always changing world of SEO to Clickthrough.co.nz.
I am a diehard Game of Thrones fan with a passion for novels and live music! My career goal is to one day write a novel of my own. Connect me via email theresa@clickthrough.co.nz.
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