Credit: Nogran
To many, SEO has seemed like a kind of dark magic. It’s constantly changing, and frequently manipulated by tech experts, making it very difficult for the common entrepreneur to have a chance in the organic search market. Taking the time to focus on generating organic traffic wasn’t at the top of the list for most people.
As Google’s ranking algorithms have become more sophisticated, the playing field has started to become more leveled. It’s now a lot more difficult to manipulate the rankings. Ranking factors have changed to devalue easy, spammy links and favor those trying to provide excellent content and build a brand value. Suddenly, business owners have a better shot.
If you’re launching a business today, online or off, doing so without being aware of how to build organic traffic would be a mistake. With such a large percentage of individuals looking online for products and services – even those looking for local companies go online – having an effective presence is an absolute necessity.
Londes Digital Marketing, a digital marketing agency in Rochester NY, has helped a number of companies from startups to enterprise clients develop search engine optimization plans to increase organic traffic.
Here are a few tips from LDM to keep in mind when launching your new company’s website:
1) Clean Website Structure – Make your website very easy to navigate and have a page for every main service or product that you’re offering. This will allow you to customize tags and content for major keywords relating to your business and rank to reach potential customers.
2) Know Your Keywords – Use the Google Keyword Tool in Google Adwords or another Keyword Research Tool to find search volumes and popularity of keywords in your industry. Based on how your customers are searching, you can cater your content and strategy to communicate effectively with them.
3) Local Directories & Citations – Online directories are important, but don’t buy into the type of the websites selling the “250 local citations” packages. Most of them are worthless. And they’ll keep charging you every year just to have a minimum amount of information uploaded. It’s better to create them yourself. Find all the major directory listings for you area and industry and make each profile as complete as possible. SEO Spot has a good list to start with.
4) Engage with Social Media – Social media links don’t have a huge impact on rankings, but that could be changing as search engines learn more about social signals. If you have the time and resources to be effective, then engage with your community.
5) Content Strategy – The easiest way for a young company to generate organic traffic without building an extensive SEO network is to develop good content. Other companies may link to it out of their own volition, plus blogs and content strategies tend to rank well for long-tail keyword search phrases.
Of course, there’s a lot more to long-term SEO success than those simple tasks, but they will get a new business off to a great start. If small businesses can execute those effectively, then they’ll be off to a great start and can always expand from there.
For more tips, you can view the LDM SEO blog for advice.
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