The digital world is moving quickly — if you’re not using a good SEO strategy, your business will remain hidden in the shadows. For growing businesses, it’s crucial to learn how to take care of their website’s SEO in order to cut back on costs and drive success.
Take a look at these five surprising ways that being small can actually boost your SEO strategy — you’d be surprised at what you and your team can achieve when you put your mind to it!
An Authentic Brand: Find Your Online Community
Being a smaller company online gives you the flexibility to work on your brand and create something that users will love. You have the ability to create an authentic brand and build an exceptionally loyal customer base.
Big brands tend to struggle to relate their marketing strategy and products to their target market. You, on the other hand, can go all-out and be seen and heard online in the form of local reviews and quirky content like live videos.
Responding to people in a natural and engaging way online will make people feel valued and heard. Build a network of reputable bloggers and influencers in your niche to help you create a sense of community around what you do. Working with micro-influencers on collaborative content will hike up your website metrics because other sites will be linking directly back to you — it’s a win-win strategy.
A free influencer discovery tool like Discover.ly can help you quickly and efficiently build an audience.
Get One Up Over The Big Brands With Niche Targeting
The good thing about small business SEO strategy is that you actually stand a fighting chance against big brands whose content is often vague. If you show commitment to your niche and focus on laser-targeted content, you can get a lot of returns from an SEO and brand awareness perspective.
- Focusing 100% on great niche content will enable your small business to outrank the big brands in your niche. This will give your brand a huge boost through more visibility and increased sales. It might sound like a near impossible task, but small companies have a lot of assets that bigger brands don’t have. It’s ALL about harnessing your internal skills and talents (and passion) — get out there and start blogging and sharing knowledge.
- Small companies are nimble and can change their strategy when necessary. They can focus on one specific task as their number one priority, and shift to another the next week. Smaller teams can get a lot of tasks completed then the bigger brands, giving you the advantage of changing tact fast and speedy decision making — essential for SEO. In other words, SEO for small business can work wonders in a multi-faceted approach.
- Enter the market as a disruptor and ride on the coattails of a bigger competitor who has an established SEO presence. Position yourself as a viable alternative and you’re good to go. Comparison charts and landing pages will help you succeed.
- Smaller, niche online businesses are easy to come across online. Make sure that yours stands out. Invest time, money, and effort into creating a brand that’s truly unique.
You Can Reach Your Target Audience More Cost-Effectively
Huge budgets aren’t everything in SEO. Spending lots of money on run-of-the-mill SEO content or link building can actually be money thrown down the drain. Focus on usability and SEO basics instead.
Page optimization, link building, and great on-page elements will help create a trustworthy website that Google will want to rank and users will want to visit. Focusing on core SEO and web best practices will be better from an ROI perspective.
You Can Leverage Your Locality
It’s a lot better to be the number one business in your niche in Stuttgart, than a mediocre business nationally. Tap into your local audience to increase visibility in your specific area. Local optimization will target users in your region and help you get your name out there.
Even if you do operate on a national scale, tap into your specific locality and become your community’s go-to supplier – whether that’s selling high-end fashion accessories, or providing first-class software to local businesses.
Local optimization can be done in a number of different ways. The most simple way is to target local, specific keywords on your site and attend local events to represent your business.
Engaging Content Boosts Site Trust
Small businesses have the luxury of being able to create quirky visual content and push the boundaries of their brand more. Whether that’s comics, memes, of funny one-liners — embrace your online personality and stand out from the corporate sea of beige.
Engaging content and clever media, like infographics and videos, work as linkable assets that other sites will naturally want to link to, boosting your site’s metrics and getting your name out there. But that’s not all it does…
Engaging content encourages users to stay on your site for longer. And longer visiting times means better trust signals, meaning your site is more likely to show up higher in search engine results. Hook customers in with well-thought-out content and actionable advice in your niche, and inject some humor into the mix to help you stand out.
Don’t be afraid to create your own SEO strategy and run with it. How will you use SEO to help you run a more profitable business?
