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10 Actionable SEO Tips for Small

Businesses

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10 Actionable SEO Tips for Small Businesses

Copyright © 2014 Mooloop Ltd

All Rights Reserved

You’re welcome to email, tweet, blog, and pass this ebook around. But please don’t

change any of the content when you do. Thanks!

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Contents

Contents 3Introduction: The Value of SEO for Small Businesses 4

1. Focus on Title Tags & Meta Descriptions 5

2. Setup a Google+ Page and/or a Google+ Local Page 6

3. Blog Frequently About Your Business & Industry 7

4. Build Links From Local Organizations 9

5. Link Internally Across Your Website 10

6. Create a List of Keywords 11

7. Label All Photos On Your Website 12

8. Quality Over Quantity is Key 13

9. Use Social Media Thoughtfully 14

10. Dare To Be Different 15

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Introduction: The Value of SEO for Small Businesses

The major search engines, Google, Yahoo

and Bing, are a main source of the traffic

driven to businesses online today.

According to a report by parse.ly, Google

own 65 – 70% of the shares of U.S.

searches to date and consistently

outpaces the other search engines when

it comes to the traffic the service is

referring to other websites. When a

small business optimizes its website for the search engines, keep in mind what’s

important for Google’s search algorithm since these same tactics work for both

Yahoo and Bing as well.

Search engine optimization or SEO is of value to a small business because it is often

the difference between a potential customer finding your business or not. Organic

traffic, traffic to your website from the search engines, is often the top referral

source for most websites next to direct traffic, traffic to your website from someone

typing in the exact URL or clicking on a bookmark of your site. Not to mention,

direct traffic is often fuelled by the search engines since the exact URL for a website

is often misspelled and the search engines can help a searcher find exactly what

they are looking for.

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Whether a search is conducted on a desktop computer or a mobile phone, your

website should be highly ranked for the right set of keywords related to your

business. Here are ten actionable tips for small businesses to make the most of

their search engine optimization efforts:

1. Focus on Title Tags & Meta Descriptions

On-page optimization consists of any tactics used on your website to help optimize

for the search engines. One of the most important aspects of on-page SEO is to

ensure every page of your website has a unique and descriptive title tag and meta

description. The title tag is 65 characters or less and is used to identify the over all

subject of a web page on your website. Title tags are indicated as blue text in the

search engine results for a particular page.

It also appears at the top of the browser to help title a page. The search engines

take the title tag into consideration when ranking your page to best match it with

the correct search criteria. This title should be unique to the page it’s labeling, while

also including your company’s name at the end of the title tag if room permits.

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The meta description is the one to two sentences of black text that appears below

the title tag on the search engine result for a web page. It describes the content of

the page and is meant to encourage a searcher to click the link in the search engine

results. The meta description isn’t taken into consideration by the search engine in

terms of ranking, but is displayed for searchers to view and therefore, this factor

affects click thru rates.

2. Setup a Google+ Page and/or a Google+ Local Page

Google+ is yet another factor taken into consideration by Google’s search algorithm,

which could help bring your website better rankings for the right keywords your

customers are using. If your business has physical stores that customers visit, then

begin setting up a Google+ Local Page for each location. Fill out all the information

in your profile and upload engaging photos to share insights into what your

business offers customers.

If your business isn’t consumer facing with physical locations, then setup a Google+

Page to represent your company as a whole. After filling out the profile completely

with all the necessary information, confirm your email address and URL by

confirming an email sent to that email account and adding a snippet of code to

your website to confirm your ownership of the URL.

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Once you’ve completed your profile, update your pages consistently with engaging

content about your business, its offerings and the industry as a whole using text,

photos and video. The pages your business setup, as well as the consistent content

posted to those pages will help Google better associate the right keywords with

your company and therefore, help you rank more effectively.

3. Blog Frequently About Your Business & Industry

Many companies cite not having enough time to blog for their business, but it

doesn’t have to be as big of a commitment as most business owners think. Blogging

once or twice a week will help your business stand out from competitors as long as

you aren’t blogging for the sake of blogging, but actually providing value to your

audience.

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Sharing industry news, updates about your business, how to articles,

announcements of new products, behind the scenes photos and more will help

your audience become more familiar with your business and help drive much

needed SEO value at the same time. Creating content on behalf of your company is

fuel for social media like Google+ and other channels your business should be

active on, as well as information for Google’s search engine to index about your

business and its offerings.

Blog posts are an effective method of keeping your website fresh with new,

interesting content, getting keywords related to your offerings on the website that

don’t fit elsewhere, a way of continually communicating with your customer base

and a method of attracting links to your website, all of which Google favors when

ranking a website.

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4. Build Links From Local Organizations

Links are the lifeblood of a website’s SEO since they indicate when another website

favors your own and therefore, the greater the variety of links to your website the

more likely it is a quality site and valuable to its audience, according to Google’s

search algorithm. At all levels of your business, your team should be aware of

opportunities to get links to your website.

Any partnership or interaction with other organizations presents an opportunity for

a link to your website, which may seem like a small gesture but overtime can be a

huge driver of traffic for your business online.

When sponsoring an organization in your area, donating to a charity or non-profit,

becoming a member of a chamber of commerce or any other similar activity, be

sure to request that a link to your website be added as a part of the partnership.

Links from local sources will help your business become competitive for search

terms related to your expertise in your area.

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5. Link Internally Across Your Website

Internal links aren’t as valuable to your SEO as external links, but they are still

important to your overall optimization. To best utilize internal linking, simply link to

two to three pieces of related content on your website to build a sophisticated

structure of links across your website.

The goal isn’t to link every piece of content back to your homepage, but instead to

create a hierarchy of pages that link to one another in different levels as seen

below.

Linking to other pages across your website should always be natural and never

forced. Link to other pieces of content across your website that relate to the original

page and add more value to the coverage of a specific topic. When writing a blog

post for instance, link to a previously written article that adds more insights into the

subject by linking to a relevant phrase within the new article to the old article.

Internal linking will help Google better understand the hierarchy of your website

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Source: ecreativeim.com

�and the topics your company typically addresses online, which helps its algorithm

better rank your website accordingly.

6. Create a List of Keywords

Create a list of keywords that you believe your company should be ranking for to

help address what your business should focus on when optimizing for SEO. As a

small business, focus on trying to rank for long-tail keywords, which means keyword

phrases made up of two to four words. For example, if you’re a clothing boutique in

Brooklyn, you want to try to rank for keywords like: women’s clothing boutique,

Brooklyn clothing boutique or women’s clothing store.

Establishing a list of about thirty keyword phrases that accurately describe your

business and could be naturally added throughout the content of your website as it

is developed will help organize the SEO efforts of each member of your team.

The best approach to naturally including similar keyword phrases throughout your

website is by covering these topics on your blog as discussed in the previous

section on blogging. It’s really important to include similar keywords throughout

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�your website, but even more important that it is done so in a natural way. If done

incorrectly, this tactic could get your website penalized by Google and do more

harm then good.

7. Label All Photos On Your Website

When adding photos to your website on its various pages or in blog posts, label all

of your images to take advantage of image based search traffic as well as regular

search traffic. Before uploading your photos to your website, define the file name

as what the photo actually is. This system of labeling photos was originally designed

to help the blind understand what images they were looking at, but now is also how

Google decides to rank an image based around a set of keywords.

When selecting an image file name, keep it simple and accurate to what the photo

is depicting. Don’t add more than 5 words to the name of the photo because there’s

no need to get that descriptive, always keep it simple. Also be sure to define the Alt

Text of the image as well as a similar name to the file name by keeping the same

rules in mind. The words in the file name or Alt Text can be separated with spaces

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�or underscores. Don’t keyword stuff when it comes to naming images, but instead

naturally define what a person would see when looking at the photo to help your

company rank for its image as well as written content.

8. Quality Over Quantity is Key

As mentioned multiple times throughout this eBook, quality is always more

important than quantity when it comes to your efforts with SEO as a small business.

Quality work across your title tags, meta descriptions, blogging efforts, image

naming etc. will reap more worthwhile benefits for your business in the long-term.

There is certainly an opportunity to reach a level of proficient quantity and quality; it

just depends on how much time and work you’re willing and able to put into your

SEO work.

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Source: buyolympia.com

�Google values the quality of a website when it comes to its decision to rank one

web page over another. Take your time optimizing your website for the search

engines to ensure that your efforts are both natural and accurate. If the quality of

your content suffers due to your attempt to force keywords or topics that aren’t a

match for your website, then Google could potentially penalize your website.

9. Use Social Media Thoughtfully

Many business owners get overwhelmed with social media, especially since there

are so many different channels to be active on with their own unique cadence. The

best approach to tackling social media, which has become another factor taken into

consideration by Google’s search engine algorithm, is focusing on a few channels

that match the goals of your business to achieve measurable results.

Pick three to four social networks, in conjunction with Google+, where your

customers are active or groups similar to your customers are active like Yelp,

Facebook, Twitter, Pheed, Vine, Instagram or elsewhere.

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Source: facebook.com

�Once you’ve identified where your company should be active, fill out the profiles on

these channels to the fullest and regularly post from these accounts a few times a

week. Use one of the free social media scheduling tools like HootSuite or Buffer to

help schedule three to four updates a week from each channel and actively engage

your audience, while making sure to slowly build your credibility in the search

engines.

Share news about your offerings as well as your original perspective on related

industry news. Use a variety of text, photos and videos to help document your

unique story as a company across social media and make an impact in the search

engine results in the long-term.

10. Dare To Be Different

One of the best ways to gain traction from the search engines is by creating original

content that drives links, traffic and notoriety to your website. Anyone can develop

a beautiful infographic that generates links to their website, but not everyone can

approach storytelling from the same exact perspective and that’s where your small

business has the opportunity to stand out and achieve great success with content

that does well for your company in the search engines.

Think about the different stories that surround your company everyday, regardless

if your industry is “sexy” or not, and identify which of these stories can be shared

and expanded upon with others. This story should help represent what your

company stands for and to take it a step further, should be presented in a unique

way through text, photos or video.

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Chipotle’s recent sustainable eating YouTube PSA is the perfect example of a piece

of content created with a unique spin that also represented what the company truly

believes in. The video was viewed over 11 million times and with level of success

there’s no doubt that the content will continue to gain traction in the search engines

and be a major link driver for the Chipotle brand. Your business doesn’t need a big

budget like Chipotle to achieve this level of success, just the right attitude and the

willingness to experiment and see what works. Creativity is critical to create and

articulate a unique story for your audience.

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Are you ready to convert more visitors from the search engines with Jumplead?

Start your 14-day free trial of our online marketing system today, there’s no

obligations and easy setup.

If you have any questions about the techniques described within this guide or how

to start your free trial with the Jumplead online marketing system, feel free to get in

touch by emailing us at hello@jumplead.com or calling us at +44 (0)845 123 3755.

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�About the author:

Brian Honigman is a writer for Jumplead, a full-time

content marketing consultant and a freelance writer.

His writing has appeared in Forbes, Huffington Post,

Business Insider, Mashable, Entrepreneur and other

publications covering the convergence of technology,

marketing, business and communication. Follow him

on Twitter @BrianHonigman.

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