There are plenty of small businesses across the United States who shrug off a search optimization strategy thinking that it’s only for major brands and multi-national corporations. While there’s no question that big companies have huge teams of people working tooth and nail to make sure that their website appears within the top results of a Google search, that doesn’t mean you should roll over and let them take all your business.
No matter the size of your business, it is essential to have an SEO strategy. When you take the time to invest in an SEO strategy, you are making sure that your business gets exposure 24 hours a day, seven days a week, gaining new customers in your area actively looking for the services you offer.
People trust the results search engines give them. If you search for pizza in your area, you are most likely going to believe that it must be doing something right to have earned such prime placement. Of course, there might be better pizza elsewhere in your area, but you would never know it unless they had taken steps to make sure they were being found when people search for pizza.
Competition for Keywords
There are a lot of different avenues to explore when creating your SEO strategy, including backlinks, citations, etc. But at the core of every competent SEO strategy is the selection of the right keywords. Keywords are the words and phrases that internet users type into the search box of a search engine to find the websites that match what they are looking for.
Some keywords get hundreds of thousands of unique searches a day while others will only get a couple hundred if they are lucky. If you are a plumber, you might be tempted to choose “plumber” as a keyword but you have to aware of the fact that this is a very competitive keyword since every plumber in your area is likely trying to rank for it as well. The competition of a keyword should always influence your decision as to whether or not it’s a viable option.
Making the Right Keyword Choices
How do you go about choosing the right keywords for your business? Well, there are plenty of different keyword research tools available online, some are free while others require a subscription. This can give you a realistic sense of what keywords you should be using on your website and how effective they will be in marketing your site. But before you rule out any keywords that might be too competitive to incorporate as a cornerstone of your small business’s SEO strategy, make a list of important, relevant topics based on what you know about your business.
Thinking about the topics you want to rank for in terms of generic buckets. To start, think about five to 10 topic buckets that are important to or define your business, and then you’ll use those topic buckets to help come up with some more specific keywords, ideally ones that balance being relevant to your business and that aren’t oversaturated in your industry.
Get Help with Your Keyword Search
Now, we are the first people to admit that finding the right keywords to be the foundation of your SEO strategy is difficult. It requires research, creativity and a serious time commitment. While we don’t doubt your abilities as a researcher or a creative thinker, there aren’t many small business owners that have time to create an SEO strategy or ones that can afford to create a position in-house for their SEO needs.
If you are struggling to find the time to research your keywords or if you aren’t able to make sense of what counts as a quality keyword versus one that’s too competitive, get in touch with LinkNow Media today. We have been helping small businesses all over North America not only build beautiful websites, but also create and manage their SEO strategies to make sure that their gorgeous new website gets seen by motivated customers.
If you need LinkNow Media’s SEO professionals to help drive up your web traffic and brand’s visibility through one of the most effective marketing strategies in the world right now, “contact us today.”
