3C Digital

Digital Marketing for Small Business

SEO

By

Small business SEO checklist

Small Business SEO Checklist

  1. Know your keywords
  2. Know your target audience
  3. Make a list of your long tail and short tail keywords
  4. List your small business in local directories
  5. List your small business in online directories
  6. Set up a blog on your site
  7. Update your blog with content relevant to your small business

Try not to yawn or drift off to a daydream just for a second as we talk about SEO for your small business. Yes, we know, it’s not the sexiest of topics — nor is it the easiest to understand. But if you want search engines like Google to find your small business, you need to have a strategy for SEO. In this post, we will break things down for you as much as possible. We’ve compiled an easy-to-understand checklist for you to read and follow. Don’t worry if you haven’t done all of them. It’s good to have a starting point for these things.

Know your keywords

Keywords are important for your small business. Yes, you’ve been told to find out what they are but it’s always too hard. Basically, you just need to answer this question: What will potential customers type into Google to find your small business? These words or phrases are the keywords you can use for your small business. Of course, you won’t know these words if you don’t know your own business or your target audience so you need to sort that one out first. It’s best if you know your short tail keywords and your long tail keywords, too. To give you an example, our keywords would be ‘digital marketing small business’ or ‘small business content creation’ or ‘small business SEO’. List down what your keywords are before hiring someone to optimise your site. It’ll make the whole process easier.

SEO guide for small business

Join local directories

Don’t underestimate the importance of adding your small business to local directories in your area. Each local directory you list your small business in helps to push your ranking online. You don’t have to be on all of them, because there are hundreds out there. Just pick around five to start with. We recommend you start with the free local business directories in your area. Then add to sites like My Google Business, Yelp, Pure Local, Yellow Pages, Star Local, and True Local to start with. Make sure you have things like pictures of your small business shop front as well as your products/services. Add your address, phone number, website and office hours. It’s a lot of work but it is worth doing.

Add fresh content

Now for some bad news. SEO is not a set and forget kind of thing. When you hire someone to ‘do your SEO’ it doesn’t mean the job is finished when they’ve added all the keywords you want to add. Google loves fresh content and because of this, you’ll need to keep updating your site with relevant information about your industry. How do you do this? A blog is a good place to start. Don’t be overwhelmed, you don’t have to post every day. As we mentioned on our post about why your small business needs a blog, it’ll give you street cred aside from improving your SEO. If you don’t know what to post, find professional content creators like 3C Digital who can help with keywords, choosing topics and writing them for you. Delegate this task if it’s not your strong suit. That way you can focus on what you do best – running your small business.

By

How to fix your website’s orphaned content

It is a given that your small business website needs a good solid SEO behind it so people can find it when they look on the Internet. But SEO isn’t something you just set and leave. There are several levels to it that you need to think of. One of these things is orphaned pages and post. In this post, we will talk about orphaned content and how to fix them.

What do you mean orphan?

Orphaned content, be it pages or posts, are the ones without links pointing in and out of it, therefore making it hard for search engines to find it. We all know linking posts and pages to each other helps search engines crawl through your site. You want Google to find your posts. Like we said before, SEO is not something you just forget when maintaining your site. It has to be constant and it has to happen each time you add a post on your site — no matter what post it is. Regularly check that you’re addressing the orphaned content. You don’t want to write all those amazing content only to leave it undiscovered.

Website checklist

How do I fix orphaned content?

Here at 3C Digital we use Yoast Premium, which makes it easy for us to know what we need to fix as we go along. Of course, if you don’t want to pay for the premium versions, you can use Yoast for free. The features will be limited but it still works. Go to your SEO plugin and see what pages and posts have been flagged as ‘orphaned’. You will need to individually check the post/page and add the relevant inbound and outbound links. Add links that are related to that post/page. Make sure it’s not some random post that has nothing to do with the text you are linking it to. You want your post to be helpful to your readers, not annoy them.

Do I need to give all orphans good parents?

It may not always be possible to fix all your orphaned pages (or necessary for that matter). For instance, website pages like Privacy Policy, Terms and Conditions or Terms of Use may not have outbound links and may be left orphaned. Also, some content like events that are only happening this year and may not be relevant after that, won’t need to be fixed. It really depends on each post. You’ll have to use your judgment on some of these contents. Or ask your agency to do the thinking for you.

One last thing, make sure you check your website’s backend regularly to see if you have posts or pages that are orphaned so you can fix it quickly. Otherwise you’ll end up with a backlog that’s going to be too overwhelming to fix in the future.

By

SEO tools you can use for your small business

There are heaps of tools out there that you can use for your SEO strategy. A lot of them are subscription-based but there are some that’s free. We suggest that if you’re not sure what to do, you start with the basics. You can’t dive in the deep end without practising how to swim. In this post, we will give you three things you can use right now for SEO.

Google page speed insights

This website will allow you to check how fast your website is loading. You might think this isn’t that important but in this day and age, people are impatient. They want quick. They want fast. If your site takes a long time to load then you will lose customers. You want the ideal loading time to be less than 10 seconds, or even five seconds. If this is not the case, there are things you can do to increase your loading time. Check with your developer to see what changes they can do to increase your site’s speed.

Google analytics

First off, Google analytics is free and easy to use so you get double benefits. What is it for? Well, Google analytics will show you heaps of data about your website. Things like:

  • where your traffic is coming from
  • what time they’re visiting
  • how long they visit
  • which page they stayed the longest
  • which topics they consume (or products)
  • how did they find your website
  • and more.

All you need to do is sign up to Google Analytics, add your website’s URL and add the tracking code to your website.

Yoast plugin

There is a free version of Yoast and a paid version. If you’re just starting out, try the free version first. Having said that, the pro version has more features and is much easier to manage, especially if you are new to SEO. For websites using WordPress, there is a Yoast plugin that you can install. What we love about Yoast is that they have heaps of information on their website and it’s easy to use. They guide you on what you need to do to improve your page or blog post’s SEO. They also warn you if you’ve used your short tail keywords too many times.

By

How to rank well on Google

How to rank well on Google. Showing up on the first page of Google is a big goal for small business owners. Some might say it’s like a dream come true. There is a way to show up organically on the first page for your keywords. Organically meaning free, not the pay per click version. What’s the catch? It’s not a quick solution and not a ‘set and forget’ type of thing. It has to be ongoing and it takes a while even when done right. Maybe months or even years. Today we are over at Inside Small Business showing you the various ways you can rank well on Google. Go check it out!