August 24, 2017

5 SEO Trends Every Small Business Owner Should Know in 2017

seo servicesWhen it comes to marketing your small business, search engine optimization should be at the center of your digital strategy. Google receives up to 100 billion searches each month, but an SEO strategy allows you to hone in on the searchers looking for businesses like yours.

So how do you reach them?

With the right SEO services and techniques, the right searchers will come to you, hopefully becoming customers in the process. Of course, SEO techniques and trends change all the time. To stay up to date, the following are just some of this year’s top SEO trends that favor small business marketing.

  1. Mobile First
    Marketing is all about meeting potential customers where they already are. And today, they are on their smartphones. Google now crawls your site to make sure it’s accessible on both desktop PCs and phones. This means that your website design must be optimized for a mobile audience.
  2. Quality Content
    Users are no longer satisfied with clickbait blog posts with clear promotional motives, and neither is Google. Visitors to your site want high quality content with useful information. This goes for your social media posts as well. Keep everything relevant and on brand while giving your audience a reason to read.
  3. Localized Keywords
    This may be good news for lower budget startups. Less-competitive, localized keywords are often more effective for small businesses. So, if you have been targeting broader, more competitive search terms, try to think more narrow. Perhaps that will give you the traffic boost you need without stretching your digital marketing budget too far.
  4. User Experience Optimization
    Meet UEO, SEO’s cool new cousin. User experience optimization is all about making your website as user-friendly and enjoyable as possible. This includes faster load times and simple, interactive, and visual content that breathes life into your site. The perfect UEO formula will take some trial and error to pin down, so keep a close eye on analytics metrics like the average time spent on page and bounce rate.
  5. Social Sharing
    Remember that SEO does not stop on your website. By sharing posts from your website’s blog on social media, you increase your chances of receiving more backlinks from around the web. Guest posting and blogging are also great ways to up your social media engagement.

 
Remember: Crafting your best online marketing strategy all starts with finding the right SEO services. Once you select an SEO company to work with, collaborate with them closely and listen to their advice. Together you can create a strategy that is perfectly tailored to your small business. And if all goes as planned, this will boost your lead generation and revenue.