![\"SEO](\"http:\/\/blog.123print.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/SEO-and-Small-Business-Knowledge-is-Everything-The-123Print-Blog-300x300.jpg\" "\\"SEO")
In 2014, online visibility for your small business is more important than ever.\u00a0 In fact, the visibility of your brand in all market areas is essential to business expansion and growth. For our purposes, we are going to focus on some of the more preliminary tactics that small businesses should employ when establishing their SEO strategy.<\/p>\n
First and foremost, know your audience.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n You may think this is stating the obvious, and for all intent purposes it is. However, it\u2019s surprising how many business owners, small and large, take this step for granted and miss the boat on potential traffic and sales. \u00a0Do as much research on potential clients, their needs and behavior as possible and discover what and why they are searching for it on your site. But what does this have to do with SEO you may ask? It\u2019s simple; it\u2019s all about your site\u2019s content. Once you know your audience, you can better optimize your content to accommodate potential buyers and new customers.\u00a0 For example, if your service and products appeal more to an older business savvy audience, you probably don\u2019t want to use slang and quote Talladega Nights in your product descriptions. \u00a0By the way, if you do want to add some spice and flavor to your small business site, then incorporate a blog.\u00a0 Utilize it for things you may not have an opportunity to do on the rest of your website and engage your audience with informative posts, news or other methods.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Just as importantly, know your competition.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n It\u2019s easy for a mom and pop hardware store owner to identify Home Depot or Lowes as some of their competitors in the hardware market. Nonetheless, these are not the sites you want to initially focus on. Instead, search for the keywords you\u2019d like your brand to rank for as well as the product keywords you are targeting (Tip: Find less competitive keywords that are relevant to your business and try ranking for them. This will help establish traffic related your products and put you in a better position when you do want to throw your hat into the ring for keywords with higher search volumes).\u00a0 Analyze the search results pages and take a look at similar sized businesses in your industry that are experiencing greater online success and higher visibility. These are the websites that you should directly compete with. When you have a good feel of which sites those are, \u00a0go to their website (click on their ad if they have one- not on their organic listing!) and see what they do better than you. \u00a0Is their content more engaging? Have they optimized for their target keywords differently perhaps in the Meta description, title tag or the on page copy? Maybe they have embedded how-to videos that are driving traffic to their site? Whatever it is, you need to learn from it. It\u2019s not copying but a form of enlightenment. Besides, imitation is the highest form of flattery. Finally, study the back link profiles of these competitors. Use a service like Moz\u2019s Open Site Explorer and get information on sites linking to back to your competitors. There may be a wealth of opportunity out there that you simply didn\u2019t know about. Try reaching out to some of the webmasters and inquire if they might link to your domain as well.\u00a0 While there has been a significant shift in SEO away from \u2018link building\u2019 and more of an emphasis on \u2018link earning\u2019, you can still take advantage of your competitor\u2019s back link profile and begin to create partnerships with potential influencers in your industry.<\/p>\n Last but not least, know your site.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Pick apart your internal link structure, identify your strongest landing pages and make sure your site can be easily navigated by users and search engines alike. Your internal link structure will serve as a guide to search engines as to what you consider to be the most important pages, so be sure to make those readily accessible in your internal link architecture.\u00a0 Also, don\u2019t forget to provide your site visitors with a page that gives them information about your business such as business hours, location phone number and email address. Sometimes it\u2019s the little things that make the biggest difference.<\/p>\n What is your mantra when it comes to SEO and your small business?<\/strong> Photo Credit: FreeDigitalPhotos.net<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In 2014, online visibility for your small business is more important than ever.\u00a0 In fact, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1443,1448,1452,1455,8],"tags":[1351,1002,1353,1350,1349,1352],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.123print.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6576"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.123print.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.123print.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.123print.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.123print.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6576"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/blog.123print.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6576\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8965,"href":"https:\/\/blog.123print.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6576\/revisions\/8965"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.123print.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6576"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.123print.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6576"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.123print.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6576"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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