Small Business SEO Series Part 1 – Get Found

In this three part series, you will learn the three basic steps for a successful Internet Inbound Marketing plan to drive customers to you.

It’s become easier than ever to get your message out. The Internet and the smartphone boom have given businesses a whole suite of powerful new tools to connect with your customers, or send information out to the world of potential clients.

But that same communications revolution has actually made it harder to market yourself the old-fashioned way, since your direct marketing and solicitation will probably end up caught in someone’s spam filter or ignored along with the dozens of other pitches a person might receive each day.

That’s why outbound marketing is doomed, and why it will take new tools tools like website optimization and SEO for small business to succeed. Just as technology has made it easy for your business to get its message out, it’s allowed all your competitors to step up their marketing, too. Add that to the businesses who are not your competitors but who still want to get customers’ attention, and you get a lot of voices that potential customers are likely to turn out, whether or not they would be interested in what you have to offer.

Fortunately, there’s an alternative, which turns the old model on its head. Inbound marketing is all about getting prospects to find you, leveraging SEO, blogging and social media tools to build a strong customer base.

Every business, and every website is different. If you’re wondering about the best way to maximize your site’s potential, the team at MLT Innovations can provide a free market analysis to show you your best options. But here are some basics to start you on the way.

When it comes to attracting potential customers, there are few tools more critical than SEO for small business. The key to good SEO is good content: Know the keywords that are associated with your business, and make sure your website is optimized for them. This can help you build a virtuous cycle where you draw more positive attention, which helps you rise higher in search engine rankings, which will draw you even more attention.

 

No single form of content is more valuable than blogging, which can boost a company’s leads by 55 percent. When a company blog features unique content that relates to your business and is updated regularly, it can become the hook that draws in search traffic and keeps customers coming back.

But SEO for small business shouldn’t end with your blog. Content marketing follows a similar principle, but is focused on making your entire site appealing by packing it with valuable resources. White papers, videos, webinars and other content can attract prospects while providing visitors with the sort of information that could encourage them to link back to your site, helping your search rankings even more.

And to truly find a place in the consumer consciousness, you want your company and the resources you offer to become part of the conversation. That means having a strong presence where that conversation is taking place, which brings us to social media. A strong social presence can help you keep track of what people are saying about you, your product and your industry, while being active on social platforms can raise awareness about you and draw people back to your site.

If you keep all this in mind while you’re building your site, you should end up with a solid foundation of visitors. You’ll still need to convert them into actual customers, since tools like SEO for small business and a social media strategy won’t sell your product by themselves. But they can get a stream of prospects, without whom your business can’t get anywhere.