Marketing Monday: Small Business SEO Tips for 2018

Optimize for Smartphones

Make sure you have a mobile friendly website. Search engines like Google are prioritizing the user experience on smartphones and smaller screens since the trend has been towards use of these devices for surfing the web.

Be the Popular Kid

Links to your site are still important. The internet is a popularity contest, and links to your site are a vote for you and your importance online. Ask your vendors, industry organizations, and clients to put a link to your website on theirs or to mention the great work you are doing on your social media platform of choice. (Don’t use links in either direction that are unrelated to your business though, relevance is the key!)

Renewed Focus on Your Primary Domain

Multiple landing pages not as effective, especially if they have similar content. In the past having multiple domain names that were keyword rich were a key strategy towards a high ranking for those keywords in the search results. The tide has turned, the search engines are putting less of a priority on the keywords in the domain name, the priority is unique content. It is still good to name individual pages with keywords, and sprinkle in the keywords and phrases that are relevant for those pages (having similar content with only minor changes can harm your ranking).

Secure Your Website

Secure sites are getting priority and those without encryption are being penalized. As we detail in another post the trend is intensifying to put warning messages on websites that are not encrypted with an SSL Certificate, whether or not you are collecting personal data or payment information. The time is now to secure your site if you haven’t already done so.

Content…Valuable Content!

Content is still the King and Social Media is still the Queen. I can’t stress enough the importance of adding content to your website and social media posts that add value to your prospects. Mixing a strategy of entertainment and education is usually the most effective means of garnering attention. Beware, it is becoming increasingly difficult to get noticed without paid advertising as the competition intensifies (and it is still difficult even with paid advertising).

Summary

There is not one magic tip or trick for any business online these days, the key is vigilance and adding value…which of course means different things to different industries and businesses.