SEO Guide for Small Businesses (Part 1)

It’s important to learn the basics of SEO. To guide you, here are the top principles of SEO that owners of small businesses have to know. You don’t really have to be an expert; just make sure you grasp everything:

• What are the guidelines?
• How can they influence search?
• Learn the schemes or get someone who does.

It is good to know the simple terms and use them. But more than the terms, you should know the principles.

• User Intent
  • People would say, content is king but it isn’t. It is the user intent that is the king. This does not mean that you shouldn’t do content. But before anything else, you need to ask yourself, what kind of content will boost the edge to accomplish the search engine user’s intent?
  • Simple, users just have to search for ‘adidas shoes’ so it is clear that they want to buy or probably they would. So, think, how many sites can people buy Adidas shoes? For sure there are thousands out there.
  • Now, let us talk about your intent. So you are selling Adidas shoes and the user just searched for Adidas shoes in the search engine and you don’t know its intent and we have discussed that the intent is to buy shoes. There are countless of sites that Google can pick that can fulfill that intent. Although, a study showed that users are not just interested in buying shoes.
  • Google does not focus on your intent but the searcher’s intent. A site that does that has a bigger chance of ranking and Google has a higher assurance that their user’s intent will be most likely to be fulfilled. So, you need content just so you can fulfill the user’s intent.

• Local Seo
  • If you are putting your hand on the local market, you might have known about the SEO strategies. But that is not the same kind of SEO. You have to know that there are SEO elements that are just for local. It is all about areas and parts and basis that you should look at. Know that your SEO should be looking beyond local applicability than the complete site’s solidness.
  • You may interpret this as: you will have to give more importance to the local nature of links compared to volume and that you will have to be certain that your on-site presence strengthens your location. This does not mean that you stuff your city into the content more than you should.
  • What you really need to pay attention to are:
    • Finding an organizational layout that works for you and putting it to the different pages.
    • Adding a Google Map of your business listing on your contact page.
    • Knowing your businesses on Bing Places.
    • Learning your other business listing aside from Google and Bing.

In terms of your link efforts, focus on the smaller local papers rather than the bigger sites. This does not mean though that you will not look at bigger chances, but it will take more of your time and might result to the decline of returns for local. By the way, if you want to learn more, part 2 of this series is posted here.