We present here five crucial SEO basics you need to know to gain better visibility for your small business online. Read on…
By Ritu Sharma
Putting up a business is very exciting. However, it can be scary sometimes, especially when you are just starting out and you only have a limited budget. There are a lot of aspects to running a business and it can be quite overwhelming to handle everything all at once.
One major aspect of every business operation is marketing. Obviously, if you do not market your products and services, you would not get sales and before you know your business will just die down. Marketing is much more crucial for a small business like yours. You might face cut-throat competition and you need to work twice as hard to even get a slight recognition from your target market.
Fortunately, there is some good news for you. You can now make people discover your business by utilizing the one place where they all frequent: The Internet!
Yes! Marketing in the digital world is actually a thing and it has become the most-sought-after advertising and marketing method for a lot of businesses, especially SMEs. Why? Simply because digital marketing has a lot of benefits including:
- The results are measurable. This means that you actually know how your advertising strategies are performing and you can efficiently adjust or improve it for the better.
- The reach is wider. It’s obvious, almost everyone uses the Internet!
- It is cost-efficient. Traditional marketing methods like billboards, print ads, and radio and TV ads cost thousands of dollars. Digital marketing is possible sometimes even without spending no more than a fistful of dollars!
Now, the next question — “How is it done?”
Basically, digital marketing can be done in a lot of ways. The biggest part of it has something to do with Search Engine Optimization or more commonly known as SEO.
We know it sounds so foreign (especially if you are new to the digital marketing landscape).
This is why we are writing this article. We want to give you a crash course of the basic things you need to know about SEO.
In simple terms, SEO is a collection of different strategies that will help you rank higher in search engines. The higher ranking you have, the more visible you are to search engine users.
Below are a few basic strategies you should know in SEO. Take note that this is not really extensive and will only cover the fundamentals of each of the SEO aspects. We suggest that you do more reading because it is vital that you cover all your bases when it comes to SEO.
Keywords
Keywords are at the heart of every SEO strategy. It is the most vital asset you need to rank on Google and other search engines.
When people use search engines, they use particular terms to specifically find a solution to their problem. These terms are called keywords. If you have the solution that these users are looking for, then you should use the keywords they are typing in Google so they can find you.
On-page and Off-page Optimization
SEO tasks are generally divided into two categories: on-page and off-page.
- On-page: This includes tasks that you have to do on your website and its pages. Some of the important things you need to look into include tags, titles, descriptions, content, and images.
- Off-page: This is the kind of SEO that you do outside your website. Basically, this is like outreach marketing. You are going out in the digital world to let people know that your website exists. Social media management and link building are some of the tasks under this category.
HTML Tags
While content is a crucial aspect of SEO, you should not forget about optimizing HTML tags such as title tags, H1 tags, and meta descriptions. These tags should have your targeted keywords. You are doing this for the search engines. Search engines send out crawlers all over the web and if your keywords are present in your HTML tags, the crawlers will be able to see them and you will have a higher chance of ranking first for those keywords.
Content
SEO has changed a lot ever since it started. Today, it is important that you pay attention to content. While keywords are still what search engines consider when ranking websites, there is an extra layer after that. They actually filter websites and give priority to pages that actually have valuable content. After all, users are searching because they want answers. And, search engines only want their users to have the best experience.
Social Media
Think of this analogy with social media. If your website is your home, social media is like a party where you meet people and talk to them. When they already have your trust, then you can bring them and show off what you have at home. So, you also need to learn how to interact with people on social media.
These five things are the most basic concepts that you need to learn. We have introduced them to you and now it is time to do the real work!
Ritu Sharma is the Content Insights Manager at SEO Services Company PageTraffic, one of Asia’s most award-winning & recognized Digital Search Marketing agency. She has been the spear head of many successful Content Marketing Campaigns for PageTraffic.
SEO stock photo by garagestock/Shutterstock
