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Small businesses usually operate on a tight budget. This is the reason why investing in digital marketing and SEO can be scary for them. If you own a small business or website, you can understand the challenge of competing with the bigger guys in the field.
Many small business owners believe that digital marketing and SEO can be quite costly. However, the truth is that with the right tools and strategy, doing SEO does not require you to allocate a large amount of money. There are several free SEO tools you can find online, and there are ways you can increase your traffic without having to spend another cent.
Below is a smart guide to getting you started with improving traffic on your site.
1. Content Is The Key
Content is a critical part of a successful SEO campaign. There are many ways you can adopt to get people to read your blog and increase traffic. You must produce quality content regularly. Fresh and quality content is one of the most effective ways you can improve your rank on search engines. This is because every time new content is added, Google’s web crawler will visit your site and analyze it so that it can recalculate the site’s ranking.
The web crawler does not help boost your site’s ranking just because it is new. You must ensure that the content is of high quality, unique, and relevant to your target audience. You also have to make sure that it is formatted correctly to make a significant impact on the rankings. If you make sure that you produce high-quality content every time you publish, the web crawler will realize that your website is valuable to people searching for your targeted keywords on Google.
Another way to work with SEO through content is to research weaknesses on a competitor’s website and then fill in the gaps. Try reading their blogs or social media posts and find out what they are missing. You can learn from the comments sections or if people are engaging in their posts. Once you have identified the weaknesses in their content, you can use the information to create strong content and increase your clientele.
2. Guest Blogging Can Work Wonders
Creating content for another blog is a great way to improve your rankings in search engines. When you create a guest post in another blog, this opens the opportunity to lead their readers to your website. Aside from that, it is also an opportunity to develop a sense of awareness and brand yourself as an expert in the field that you are creating content on.
The key to a successful SEO through guest posting is to write for relevant and successful blogs. These blogs should have the right amount of engagement and traffic that you can lead to your website. Also, seek those blogs that have an excellent online reputation as you don’t want to be involved in blogs that do not appeal to your target audience.
3. Keywords Placement Is Critical
In SEO, you need to identify the best long-tail keywords to add to your content. Once you have already identified these keywords, you need to focus on the right placement of the keywords in your post. You must place these keywords in page titles, URLs, and content body. Always remember that overdoing it can also harm your SEO performance. It is recommended to have the keywords in one of the page’s headers and within the first paragraph of the content. Having them placed there is enough to get Google’s attention to the content.
4. Focus On The Local Scene
If you are offering services and products distributed around your area, you need to dominate local search first. Focusing on local SEO optimization is a small but essential step you can do if you are on a tight budget. It would be best if you focus your time and energy on it, making sure, first and foremost, that you rank high in the local arena.
5. Don’t Focus Too Much On Google
In reality, not everyone is using Google. There are still people out there who are used with other search engines, like Bing. If you are not very lucky with Google, you can try your chances with other search engines. You can use this as a focal point as there could be lower competition as well. Aside from that, there is also a chance that you can easily rank locally when you try other search engines.
You can also get started with social media. Google may not use social media activity as a ranking factor, but you can still use social media to increase the traffic on your website. An increase in the website’s traffic will increase its value, and will, therefore, help improve Google ranking.
You don’t need to be present on every social media platform. You may only focus on social media sites that have a higher volume of users, like Facebook and Twitter. Managing social media accounts can cost a lot of time, so you have to focus on sites that can help improve your traffic. The key here is to go to where your customers are.
For example, everybody has a Facebook account, but not everybody is on Instagram. With that information, you can focus on creating Facebook pages rather than signing up for an Instagram account. Facebook is the third most used website today, with over a billion users worldwide. It is a great platform where you can share content and engage with your users as well.
Conclusion
Working on a limited budget is an excellent opportunity for you to assess your strengths and focus on them. For example, your brand is already known in your local area. This is where the benefits of focusing on local SEO comes in. You can capitalize on creating relevant content that is appealing to the locals and start expanding from there.
Using your brand strengths does not require too much. It will also open an opportunity to look for tools and analyses that are already available to you, for example, creating content based on the weakness of your competitor. It is a great way to ensure that you get ahead and improve your ranking as well. The bottom line is, you can implement your SEO on a budget strategy and still be as successful as the bigger businesses in the industry.
