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5 SEO Habits Every Local Small Business Should Have

For a small local business, gaining organic website traffic from SEO is a great way to tap into a new client base and grow your clientele rapidly.

Photo: Andre Campbell, Founder of Thunder Rank; Source: Courtesy Photo
Photo: Andre Campbell, Founder of Thunder Rank; Source: Courtesy Photo

Today, inbound marketing has become the more favorable marketing strategy in contrast to typical outbound marketing strategies. Out of the many inbound marketing strategies businesses utilize, search engine optimization (SEO) is one of the most commonly discussed.

For a small local business, gaining organic website traffic from SEO is a great way to tap into a new client base and grow your clientele rapidly. However, understanding search engine algorithms can be a pain. There are so many tips, how-to’s and checklists out there with various techniques, which often times don’t work.

Below, I’ll share an inside look with you at some of the strategies I personally use for my clients at Thunder Rank to help them increase their search engine rankings.

 

Create a company blog.

Have you ever heard the saying that “Content is King.” Well, the truth is that today, in the information age, content is actually king. Search engines love relevant and high quality content and so do people.

Create a blog for your company website and write high quality content which is compelling for your audience. This will make you stand out among the crowd by making your site appear more authoritative than competitors; to both people and search engines.

If you’re unsure of what topics to write about, I recommend checking out BuzzSumo. BuzzSumo will give you an idea of the top trending topics in your industry. This will help you understand what your audience is interested in so you can write content catered towards them. Another idea is to create a Top Ten List. They’re very popular and engaging because they are quite easy to read and scan.

 

Get active on social media.

Social media is a great way to develop your brand presence online and build credibility. You don’t need to spend a lot of time creating social posts for your profiles. However, if you’re active on targeted social media platforms and provide valuable content to your followers, you’ll increase the overall reputation and outreach of your brand.

 

Begin content outreach.

This step doesn’t need to be as complicated as it sounds. Reach out to influencers in your industry. Share some of your own relevant, high quality content with them and kindly ask if they’d be willing to share it with their audience. BuzzsSumo is a great website to help you find influencers who’ve shared popular content related to your industry.

 

Start guest blogging.

When you write a guest post for a website, you can generally get a link to your website in the bio, below the article, which makes guest blogging a great way to gain high quality links for your site. To find a link building opportunity in your niche, simply type in any of the following variations into your Google search bar:

 

  • Write For Us” + “Niche”

  • “Guest Post” + “Niche”

  • “Contribute” + “Niche”

 

One thing to keep in mind is that guest blogging has become a “spammy” technique to build links to a website and Google has penalized some popular blogging websites. So, before you decide to submit a guest post for a website, skim their content and ensure that they only publish high quality content to protect your site from a penalty.

Applying for some guest blogging opportunities may be a pain since many may have strict editorial guidelines. However, many more reputable sites have become a lot more strict on their content guidelines to protect themselves from a future Google penalty. So the stricter their guidelines, the safer the site will be.

 

Obtain free backlinks.

As a local business, the easiest and best way to obtain free backlinks is through business directories such as Yellow Pages and Yelp. This is also a very good way to help you rank your business in local map listings.

You can find additional business directories to post to by copying and pasting your competitor’s phone number into Google. The results that come up will be a list of website’s they’ve built links on and a list of websites which you can build links on yourself as well.

 

This article has been edited and condensed.

Andre Campbell is the Founder of Thunder Rank, a SEO and Digital Marketing agency based just outside of Toronto, Canada. Andre loves looking for new ways to strategize and help his clients make an impact on the web.

 

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