Wondering How To Make Your Web Design and SEO Work Together? Read This!

There are two main facets for building an effective business website:

1. Traffic

2. Website​

These are what all business owners are striving for.

No matter how they attempt to drive traffic, build their email list, convert sales, design their website – they should aim to drive as much traffic as possible and convert as much of the traffic as they can.

If your activities don't ultimately lead to one of those results, they are superfluous.

For SEO, there is often a sharp debate between which is more important: Your website's design or its SEO functionality.

Many people believe if you focus on design, you sacrifice your SEO and search engine traffic, and if you focus on SEO you sacrifice design, user-friendliness, and conversions.

In this article, I want to settle this debate once and for all.

You will learn whether design or SEO should come first when building a website to increase your business.

You will also learn how much emphasis to place on the mobile version of your site, and where SEO and website design come together.

Let's get started!

Which Should Come First: Website Design or SEO?

If you hire the right designer, the front end of your website will look beautiful.

The site will convey a ton of authority and trust, because it's aesthetically pleasing and communicates to a visitor the business put a lot of money, time, and effort into its design.

This is important, because a business who cares about how it is displayed to the world probably cares about how it serves its customers.

Your site will also (hopefully) be optimized for conversions so when a prospect visits the site they are lead down a natural path through the buying cycle and towards the sale.

However, designers tend to neglect SEO when building out a website.

The code they create can be extremely complicated and unorganized from a search engine spider's perspective.

This can lead to lower rankings (or no rankings at all) and reduced traffic.

What you're left with is a gorgeous, conversion-optimized site with no one to use it.

On the other side of the coin, SEOs tend to ignore website design.

When they write code, they write it so it can be easily crawled, indexed, and understood by a search engine spider.

This helps you rank for the right keywords, rank higher for those keywords, and bring in targeted prospects who want to buy your products or services.

However, since they've neglected website design, the website isn't easy to navigate and it's not optimized to lead your prospects toward the sale.

What you're left with is a site with tons of visitors, but it's only converting a small percentage of them (or none at all).

What you want to create is an SEO-optimized site that is user-friendly, looks good, and is optimized for conversions.

Creating a site like this is a balancing act.

You can't just focus on your site's design or just focus on its search engine optimization.

You need to work with someone who understands the importance of both and builds out both aspects at the same time.

As they are designing your website, they're also considering each SEO implication.

As they are making your site easily crawlable, they're also considering how its design will affect conversions.

But, if you had to prioritize one over the other, SEO would come first.

Here's why:

A website with complicated design code is tough to slim down and make search engine-friendly without sacrificing everything put into it.

You typically have to start from scratch and redesign the site around a search engine-optimized backend.

So it's better to start off with a search engine-optimized website backend, then build a beautiful conversion-optimized site around this code.

This ensures, no matter what, you have visitors coming to the website. Then you simply need to make adjustments to its design if they are not converting or if you want to improve conversions.

It's a lot harder to drive traffic to a website than to adjust its design and layout.Click To Tweet

So your first priority should be SEO and traffic. Then focus on design.

But ideally, you should work with someone who considers both at the same time, so that neither have to become a priority.

Mobile Design and SEO Considerations

Have you heard of Mobilegeddon?

If not, Mobilegeddon refers to Google's mobile-friendly ranking algorithm, which was released on April 21, 2015.

All else being equal, it gives higher rankings to websites with a mobile-optimized design. This design makes the site user-friendly on smartphones and other mobile devices.

From an SEO perspective, at the very least, you should make sure your website is mobile-optimized in Google's eyes. You can use this tool to verify it.

If you take a look at your analytics, a significant amount of your search engine traffic (and overall traffic) is probably coming from mobile devices.

In fact, it has probably been increasing over time, and it should continue to increase for the foreseeable future, as Google said that mobile searches have now surpassed desktop searches.

Total time spent on mobile devices is also increasing:

Source

And comScore found that a majority of consumers are using both PCs and mobile devices to access retail sites, so it's important for these visitors to have a consistent experience on both:

Making your website mobile-friendly will help you maintain and continue to grow your mobile search engine traffic.

But it also has a big implication on the design side of things.

This shift from laptop and desktop usage to mobile device usage also means a shift towards increased conversions and sales on mobile devices.

Or, at least, the intention to make purchases on mobile devices.

If your website design is not optimized for mobile, prospects may leave your site and use a competitor's, whose website is mobile-friendly and easy to use.

Thus, you end up losing out on potential sales despite continuing to drive more traffic.

So a large emphasis should be placed on your website's mobile usability.

Make sure it passes Google's mobile-friendliness test, then make sure it is designed in a way that makes it easy to navigate and, most importantly, make purchases.

Where Design and SEO Come Together

Despite the debate between design and SEO, they help each other out a lot.

Good, effective design and UI/UX lead to lower bounce rate and longer dwell time (time on page).

Due to Google adding these two factors into their algorithm, this can drastically improve your rankings.

It can also help them stay there, because Google will rank you higher if your bounce rate is lower and your dwell time is longer than your competition, even if they have tough off-page SEO (backlinks, etc) for you to compete with.

Good, effective design can also lead to increased trust and perceived authority.

Combined with authoritative content and/or superior products, this can lead to more natural backlinks and more successful link outreach.

It's always easier to promote a well-designed website with great content and superior products than one without.

And if your SEO efforts lead to more targeted traffic the design investment doesn't go to waste.

You end up with a stream of consistent leads visiting your website where they are primed to convert.

Design and SEO can make up the front end of your entire sales funnel.Click To Tweet

As a sales funnel should work together, so should your website design and search engine optimization.

Over to You

When it comes to finding someone to help with your website design and SEO, it can be tough to find a company that considers both.

Most designers or SEOs are simply not well-versed in both practices, or they feel like one or the other is not important.

I suggest that you don't hire a designer and an SEO separately. Most likely, they won't want to work together in building out your website.

This can lead to conflicts in your code that are detrimental to both endeavors.

Hopefully, you realize how important it is to build out your website while considering design and SEO together.

Find a designer or an SEO who understands this importance as well and who has the knowledge to make it happen for you.

Have you neglected either of these aspects in favor of the other?

Let me know your concerns in the comments below and I'll be happy to help you out.

The post Wondering How To Make Your Web Design and SEO Work Together? Read This! appeared first on YEAH! Local

Content Marketing: Become The Authority In Your Niche

YEAH! Local (404) 539-6068 https://yeah-local.com/services-we-offer/content-marketing/

Content Mаrkеtіng іѕ thе рrасtісе оf writing аnd рublіѕhіng vаluаblе content оnlіnе wіth thе ultіmаtе gоаl оf acquiring new lеаdѕ аnd сuѕtоmеrѕ.

The process іѕ fосuѕеd on targeting a сlеаrlу-dеfіnеd аudіеnсе that hаѕ еxрrеѕѕеd ѕоmе tуре оf іntеrеѕt in уоur particular tуре of рrоduсt, ѕеrvісе, оr business.

By publishing уоur оwn engaging аnd uѕеful content оnlіnе, Cоntеnt Marketing hеlрѕ уоu sell уоur рrоduсtѕ аnd services wіthоut асtuаllу “ѕеllіng.”

Inѕtеаd of hаrd-ѕеllіng, іt аllоwѕ уоu tо deliver great information tо уоur target mаrkеt thаt naturally рrоgrеѕѕеѕ іntо thеm bесоmіng a рауіng сuѕtоmеr.

https://yeah-local.com/services-we-offer/content-marketing/

Why Link Building is Your Website's “Best Friend” for Small Business SEO

Search engine optimization is an ever changing and evolving beast.

The 200+ factors that contribute to how the Google algorithm perceives the relevance of a website for a specific search term is often changing.

BUT one ranking factor of SEO which never is far from the spotlight is the practice of link buildingClick To Tweet

Historically, the links pointing to a site have always held importance.

Over the last few years, the message coming from Google has been one that has tried to downplay the significance of external links pointing to a website as being a major ranking factor.

Is the power of link building a myth then or is Google just trying to pull one over on us?

Where We Have Been

One reason we have heard Google telling website owners not to worry about incoming links to their websites is that Google genuinely wants webmasters to not actively seek to build links.

Why is this?

For years, even a non-technically gifted SEO could send hundreds and even thousands of spammy links to a website with exact match anchor text and rank for semi-competitive terms easily.

This does not fit in with what Google wanted to achieve-to provide the best value content to its searchers.

As the Google algorithm has advanced, the search engine giant has tried to eradicate the impact of spammy links to help a website rank in their search engine.

Where We Are Now

So the big question now is-are external links still valuable in the eyes of Google?

We used our own data and some external sources to take a look at a range of competitive key terms to see whether links still seemed to hold relevance for ranking.

We were looking for a direct correlation between external links from a range of referring domains and the power they had in terms of ranking.

For this experiment, we used a range of tools to help us scrape the data-the ones we found most effective were Majestic, Moz, and Ahrefs.

The findings confirmed what we thought we already knew and Moz had stated here. as well as Stone Temple here and Ahrefs here.

Here is a summary of our key findings:

1. Over 99% of top performing websites had more than 1 referring domain linking to them.




2. The number of links from referring domains and unique IP addresses correlated with higher rankings. In other words, the more websites that were linking to a website resulted in higher rankings.




3. The number of links to inner pages of a website (the page ranking) did not correlate with higher rankings. However, the links pointing to the domain correlated with a higher ranking.

So what does this all mean?

Take look at the chart below showing the difference between what backlinks will do compared to just fixing on page factors:

In a nutshell, no matter how much Google tells us link building should not be a focus –

link building still the single most relevant factor in determining the search engine ranking of a websiteClick To Tweet

What it also showed us is that while links pointing to inner pages had importance, you could still rank inner pages with less links (per inner page) than a competitor if the overall number of quality referring domains is higher.

What Is Meant By Quality?

Now we are getting to the crux of the matter and what is meant by Google when they say not to focus on link building strategies.

What Google wants to avoid (and what they want to penalize for) is manufactured and manipulated link building tactics.

They want to reward highly relevant and highly regarded links with the power they deserve.

Domain Authority comes into this somewhat but again it can be just another manipulated metric.

What is key is the Trust Flow and Relevance of the website pointing to you and the natural power that the website has.

By relevance we are talking a website about cats will link to a website about cat toys.

A website about cats is less likely to link to a website that centers around real estate.

So which link will give more relevance?

It seems simple now-but it is anything but.

The cost of building a backlink profile using this relevancy in a natural looking way is not only costly in terms of monetary value, it is also costly in terms of time, and costly in terms of experience.

If you get this wrong, then there is every chance Google will penalize your website and you will feel like the man below.

Penguin 4.0 Update and The Good News

There is good news for link building with the MASSIVE algorithm update from Google concerning the new Penguin 4.0.

Google has stated, via Gary Illyes, the following info about Penguin 4:

Bottom Line:

Google is telling us unless your site is being aggressively spammed, low quality backlinks will simply be ignored!

They will not count for or against you.

Great news for small business owners and SEO's!

Where Things Are Likely To Go Next

The significance of external links to your website is not something going away.

Our study shows this and there are numerous other studies which also back up what we found.

The SEO scaremongers will always run around shouting the importance of natural link building (if you build it they will come)…but they never come.

The reality of it is external links are and will continue to be the single biggest ranking factor in the Google algorithm and there is a simple reason for this…

External links are the hardest element of SEO to build.

Let's take it one step further…

High quality, authority, and relevant external links are the hardest element of SEO to build.Click To Tweet

Google knows this.

This is why Google places such a high value on these highly relevant contextual backlinks.

When Google looks at your website backlinks it will either give you credit for them, ignore them, or penalize you for them.

If you have over 500 referring domains and have a good backlink profile that isn't spammy then the odd bad link will not affect you.

But if you have a poor backlink profile of spammy links and they are all coming from a few referring domains, then you are likely to get ignored or penalized-if not now, then a few months down the line.

How To Backlink Safely

It really takes the hand of an experienced SEO expert to assist with a link building strategy of this nature.

The use of guest posts, foundational links, and building other high-quality backlinks on trusted sources is the number one tool in a good SEO's arsenal.

Can you rank without it for competitive terms? NO

A simple and resounding NO!

Sure, on-site factors will matter to Google-but nothing will hold the relevance and significance that a good set of backlinks will provide.

Unless you know how to acquire these backlinks in a natural looking way, the time frames that are acceptable to link out to your website, how many links to provide, the anchor text to use, the types of websites to link from, and how to assess the power and relevance of these referring websites then you are very much advised to leave the back-linking to an expert.

After all-one mistake too many and your website could disappear from the Google SERPS for good.

Need Small Business SEO Help? Download Our SEO Checklist Instantly!

The post Why Link Building is Your Website's “Best Friend” for Small Business SEO appeared first on YEAH! Local

Why Link Building is Your Websites Best Friend for Small Business SEO

Search engine optimization is an ever changing and evolving beast.

The 200+ factors that contribute to how the Google algorithm perceives the relevance of a website for a specific search term is often changing.

BUT one ranking factor of SEO which never is far from the spotlight is the practice of link buildingClick To Tweet

Historically, the links pointing to a site have always held importance.

Over the last few years, the message coming from Google has been one that has tried to downplay the significance of external links pointing to a website as being a major ranking factor.

Is the power of link building a myth then or is Google just trying to pull one over on us?

Where We Have Been

One reason we have heard Google telling website owners not to worry about incoming links to their websites is that Google genuinely wants webmasters to not actively seek to build links.

Why is this?

For years, even a non-technically gifted SEO could send hundreds and even thousands of spammy links to a website with exact match anchor text and rank for semi-competitive terms easily.

This does not fit in with what Google wanted to achieve-to provide the best value content to its searchers.

As the Google algorithm has advanced, the search engine giant has tried to eradicate the impact of spammy links to help a website rank in their search engine.

Where We Are Now

So the big question now is-are external links still valuable in the eyes of Google?

We used our own data and some external sources to take a look at a range of competitive key terms to see whether links still seemed to hold relevance for ranking.

We were looking for a direct correlation between external links from a range of referring domains and the power they had in terms of ranking.

For this experiment, we used a range of tools to help us scrape the data-the ones we found most effective were Majestic, Moz, and Ahrefs.

The findings confirmed what we thought we already knew and Moz had stated here. as well as Stone Temple here.

Here is a summary of our key findings:

1. Over 99% of top performing websites had more than 1 referring domain linking to them.




2. The number of links from referring domains and unique IP addresses correlated with higher rankings. In other words, the more websites that were linking to a website resulted in higher rankings.




3. The number of links to inner pages of a website (the page ranking) did not correlate with higher rankings. However, the links pointing to the domain correlated with a higher ranking.

So what does this all mean?

In a nutshell, no matter how much Google tells us link building should not be a focus –

link building still the single most relevant factor in determining the search engine ranking of a websiteClick To Tweet

What it also showed us is that while links pointing to inner pages had importance, you could still rank inner pages with less links (per inner page) than a competitor if the overall number of quality referring domains is higher.

What Is Meant By Quality?

Now we are getting to the crux of the matter and what is meant by Google when they say not to focus on link building strategies.

What Google wants to avoid (and what they want to penalize for) is manufactured and manipulated link building tactics.

They want to reward highly relevant and highly regarded links with the power they deserve.

Domain Authority comes into this somewhat but again it can be just another manipulated metric.

What is key is the Trust Flow and Relevance of the website pointing to you and the natural power that the website has.

By relevance we are talking a website about cats will link to a website about cat toys.

A website about cats is less likely to link to a website that centers around real estate.

So which link will give more relevance?

It seems simple now-but it is anything but.

The cost of building a backlink profile using this relevancy in a natural looking way is not only costly in terms of monetary value, it is also costly in terms of time, and costly in terms of experience.

If you get this wrong, then there is every chance Google will penalize your website and you will feel like the man below.

Penguin 4.0 Update and The Good News

There is good news for link building with the MASSIVE algorithm update from Google concerning the new Penguin 4.0.

Google has stated, via Gary Illyes, the following info about Penguin 4:

Bottom Line:

Google is telling us unless your site is being aggressively spammed, low quality backlinks will simply be ignored!

They will not count for or against you.

Great news for small business owners and SEO's!

Where Things Are Likely To Go Next

The significance of external links to your website is not something going away.

Our study shows this and there are numerous other studies which also back up what we found.

The SEO scaremongers will always run around shouting the importance of natural link building (if you build it they will come)…but they never come.

The reality of it is external links are and will continue to be the single biggest ranking factor in the Google algorithm and there is a simple reason for this…

External links are the hardest element of SEO to build.

Let's take it one step further…

High quality, authority, and relevant external links are the hardest element of SEO to build.Click To Tweet

Google knows this.

This is why Google places such a high value on these highly relevant contextual backlinks.

When Google looks at your website backlinks it will either give you credit for them, ignore them, or penalize you for them.

If you have over 500 referring domains and have a good backlink profile that isn't spammy then the odd bad link will not affect you.

But if you have a poor backlink profile of spammy links and they are all coming from a few referring domains, then you are likely to get ignored or penalized-if not now, then a few months down the line.

How To Backlink Safely

It really takes the hand of an experienced SEO expert to assist with a link building strategy of this nature.

The use of guest posts, foundational links, and building other high-quality backlinks on trusted sources is the number one tool in a good SEO's arsenal.

Can you rank without it for competitive terms? NO

A simple and resounding NO!

Sure, on-site factors will matter to Google-but nothing will hold the relevance and significance that a good set of backlinks will provide.

Unless you know how to acquire these backlinks in a natural looking way, the time frames that are acceptable to link out to your website, how many links to provide, the anchor text to use, the types of websites to link from, and how to assess the power and relevance of these referring websites then you are very much advised to leave the back-linking to an expert.

After all-one mistake too many and your website could disappear from the Google SERPS for good.

Need Small Business SEO Help? Download Our SEO Checklist Instantly!

The post Why Link Building is Your Websites Best Friend for Small Business SEO appeared first on YEAH! Local

Why Citations Are A Bad Investment For Local SEO (and where to spend your money instead)

Citations and Business listings are a huge part of local SEO.

They help Google understand where your business is, what it's about, and who to show it to in search results.

But many SEO companies also use citations and business listings as a way to have their clients overpay for additional work that garners diminishing results.

In this article, I'm going to break down why local businesses don't need hundreds of citations in order to rank.

I'm also going to tell you how many citations you do need, what to spend your local SEO budget on, and more.

Let's get started.

Why You Need Local Citations

A citation is a mention of your business's local information on another website.

This includes your name, address, and phone number (NAP):

Some citations include a link back to your website, but many don't. So it's not the same as link building.

Search engines like Google and Bing use citations as a ranking factor in their algorithms when people search for local businesses and services.

Citations from trusted directories, like Yellow Pages and SuperPages, increase the search engines' certainty that you are a real business operating in that area.

But most importantly, they tell search engines what your contact information is and what your business is about.

Since search engines want to show the most relevant correct results to their users, this is important information:

If search engines can't verify this information about you, they don't want to display you in their results.

And if you don't have a website where Google can get this information, which is typical of less competitive local niches, having citations on other websites is even more important.

The Amount of Business Listings and Citations You Need (And Where to Get Them)

Contrary to popular belief, you don't need hundreds of business listings (citations) in order to rank your business on the first page.

You can certainly get hundreds if you would like to. It won't hurt your rankings, but it won't help them either.

In my experience with our clients, a local business only needs the top 20 to 40 business listings.

Above that, there are diminishing returns in terms of ranking power.

Now figuring out the best citations may be easier said than done.  If you take a look at the chart below your head probably starts to spin.

If you take a look at the chart below your head probably starts to spin:

Image courtesy of Moz

However, it is paramount you get those top 20 to 40 citations because they help search engines to start building trust in you and shows you are a real business.

Also, all else being equal, if Google looks at a business with citations and one without, they will favor the one with citations.

Make sure you are listed in places like Google My Business, Yelp, Yellow Pages, and a couple local directory listings (like the Chamber of Commerce).

Moz has also put together a page to see the best citations to get per city to help you out.

Where to Spend Your Local SEO Budget

Here's my gripe with a lot of SEO companies out there:

Many of them say that every citation you have must be perfect down to the dot.

That is, your listings should be exactly same, and if some of them say “St.” instead of “Street,” this must be changed.

This could mean hundreds of listings require editing, and some SEO companies base their entire offering around this service.

We say Google is smart and can understand what a website page or post is about, but we don't think they understand the difference between “St.” and “Street”?

Hard to believe…

In working with our clients, “fixing” menial parts of each listing like this has had zero impact on rankings.

Just like having hundreds of citations, this won't hurt your business's visibility in Google and other search engines.

It just won't help it.

And if you're paying an SEO company to do this for you, you may be wasting part of your marketing budget.

Building Citations May Be a Waste of Your Marketing BudgetClick To Tweet

Now, if your business's address changes, all of your listings do need to be fixed.

Each listing must have the correct address in order for people who find you on Google to find you in real life.

And if Google finds discrepancies in your citations around the web, it may be hesitant to rank you.

Note: Here's another reason to only go after the top citations. It's a lot easier to alter 40 citations when you change your address, phone number, or business name than 200 of them.

But especially if you're in a competitive niche, fixing small parts of each listing so they're all exactly the same won't help you rank higher.

Instead, once you have the top 20 to 40 citations, you should focus your local SEO budget on something much more important:

Backlinks.

Specifically, backlinks from high authority domains that are relevant to your local area, your niche/industry, or both.

This is where you want to spend your SEO budget.

Image courtesy of Moz

Many local businesses don't focus on link building, and very few even know what it is.

And the companies they're working with are probably busy fixing their listings rather than building links.

So this is where many local businesses can soar past their competition in search engines.

If there was one huge opportunity in local SEO, I would say this is it.

Like it has been since Google's inception, backlinks remain one of the top ranking factors for any business or website.

Link building is the hardest and most costly part of SEO, but even if you did everything else wrong, the right backlinks would get you ranked.

As this study from Local SEO Guide suggests.

Citations are a Commodity in Local SEOClick To Tweet

Most businesses have them, so they aren't a big enough defining factor in Google's eyes.

Backlinks are a defining factor

If your SEO company is getting you hundreds of citations or fixing small parts of each one, ask them to defer those efforts to building high quality, relevant backlinks.

If you're in a competitive niche, which is true for many local businesses, have them do this ASAP.

The Disconnect in Current Local SEO “Best Practices”

Current local SEO best practices have a detrimental fixation on citations.

Citations do have a positive impact on your rankings, but they're relatively easy to get and you can get a ton of them, which some SEO companies use as a facade to clients that they're doing a lot of work.

I think this is a ripoff.  Don't get duped by your SEO company.

Local SEO needs to continue focusing on citations (the top 20 to 40), but also on:

1. Backlinks




2. Content




3. Website optimization

Backlinks provide the authority you need to rank above your competitors, but content and website optimization provide the relevancy.

They tell Google who you are, what you do, who you do it for, and what keywords you want to rank for.

Here's a great chart showing where you need to spend your SEO marketing dollars:

Image courtesy of Local SEO Guide

The more links you have to your website and your content, the more Google will see your business as trustworthy and high quality.

Your content also helps educate your audience to do business with you.

And if you optimize it correctly, you can rank for long tail keywords in your local area.

The main pages of your website should also be strategically optimized to rank for local keywords.

When people search in Google for local businesses, they're searching for keywords like “best Asian restaurant Atlanta” and “Atlanta car repair.”

Your SEO company should make sure each page and piece of content is correctly optimized to send as much business as possible your way.

Over to You

Local search results can be very competitive.

If you want to rank at the top of the first page, you only need the top 20 to 40 business listings. After that, you should focus on backlinks, content, and website optimization to make that final push (and stay there).

I challenge you to have a discussion with your SEO company about what they're doing and make sure their efforts are being directed towards the right avenues.

What are your thoughts on local SEO citations? Let me know in the comments below.

Need a Checklist to Walk You Through Local SEO? Download Our Local SEO Checklist Today!

The post Why Citations Are A Bad Investment For Local SEO (and where to spend your money instead) appeared first on YEAH! Local

Keyword Research: Why Many SEO Companies Screw it Up (and how to do it right)

Search engine optimization can be a complex process.

You're in a constant tug-of-war with an unknown algorithm (or a few of them) that is always changing. Up to 500-600 times per year, in fact.

But despite all of this change, there is one aspect that has remained true:

Keyword research is the basis of all SEO campaigns.

The keywords you target either set you up for success or doom you to failure.Click To Tweet

Unfortunately, most SEO companies don't do keyword research properly.

95% of the clients we work with have used an SEO company previously who were targeting the wrong keywords.

These clients are left with mediocre results and a sunk marketing cost.

Depending on the number of pages, we spend three to ten hours per client researching keywords.

This amount of emphasis is placed on the process because it's crucial to executing successful campaigns.

In this article, I'm going to shed light on why most SEO companies don't do keyword research correctly and break down a method to do profitable keyword research every time.

And yes, this goes further than a ten-minute Google Keyword Planner search https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/2/72×72/1f642.png"; alt="

A 27-Day Online Marketing Plan For Your Small Business

 

Small business owners are exceptional at what they do.

 

From creating amazing products and services to delivering unrivaled customer experience, small business owners know how to thrive in their community.

 

There is however, one downfall of some business owners in my experience.

 

They fail to recognize the importance of online marketing for their small business.

 

 

 

 

A 27-Day Online Marketing Plan for Your Small BusinessClick To Tweet

 

This simple oversight can be the difference between hundreds or thousands of visitors coming to their store and website each week.

 

By missing out on the opportunity to capitalize on online opportunities, their online and offline business is suffering.

 

One of the biggest lessons I learned early in business was to consider the lifetime value of customers and not look at customers as a one time only deal.

 

This may sound obvious, but by failing to deliver an effective online marketing experience, you could be slicing your customer lifetime value down by thousands of dollars.

 

So how do you promote your business online with no real knowledge of marketing strategies for small business?

 

 

 

Follow our 27-day small business marketing plan to help build your business presence online.

 

 

This simple 27-day process can then be developed to take your business to the next level – helping to generate thousands of dollars worth of extra business, month after month after month.

 

Days 1-7: Getting Started

 

The chances are you have dabbled in bits of online marketing.

 

Perhaps you have tried to implement a Facebook Ad campaign?

 

Maybe you have spent some hard earned money learning how to master Google Adwords?

 

While these are all effective marketing tools for businesses, they can be costly and are not always simple to implement.

 

And that brings us to this point… simplicity is often the key to success when implementing an online marketing plan for your small business.

 

Create Your Online Space

 

 

Many small business owners neglect their online space as they see it as an unnecessary cost or an indulgence.

 

This is simply not the case.

 

In fact, a company website, LinkedIn profile, Facebook page, or Twitter profile will create an online space for customers to interact with your brand, share their stories and ultimately share your business with their friends – thus doing the marketing for you.

 

For the first seven days of this plan you need to spend it bringing your website up to par with your competition.

 

Focus on creating the same online experience as you would provide offline – an amazing one.

 

Once you have your website up and running you should focus on one or two social media profiles.

 

Consider what is best for your brand.

 

LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest are some of the main options to consider, but all have slightly different benefits.

 

Make sure you link your social profiles back to your website and brand them in the style of your business.

 

Spend this time following local people, interacting with them and other small businesses and get your online name out there.

 

Featured Resource: 6 Super Useful Steps to Improve Your Online Presence

 

Day 7-14: Create Something Meaningful

 

Content marketing is a buzzword that many people have caught on to – and there is a reason for this – it is relevant and effective.

 

You should spend week 2 creating great content that your customers will value.

 

You might even enjoy writing.

 

If not, you can always hire a content writer to help you out.

 

A little tip is to make several articles of content relevant to your area – Google loves content that makes it obvious where it applies to – so help Google out by discussing your local area or expertise.

 

When you are creating this content though, always keep the end user in mind.

 

If you don't think your customers will enjoy reading it, then don't write it.

 

Create engaging content and then promote it on your social media channels – hopefully others will then share it for you and you will see the beauty of internet marketing emerge.

 

Featured Resource: 105 Blog Content Promotion Tactics

 

Grow Your Email List

 

 

An email list of previous customers is like pure gold in the hands of a savvy local marketer and is one of the best marketing ideas for small business.

 

If you are looking for ways to promote your business, then you will be hard pressed for something more effective than a highly targeted and engaged email list.

 

The key to growing your list is simple – remember simple is the key.

 

You can give your customers something they will value in exchange for their email address.

 

Perhaps an ebook, checklist, or coupon.

 

Remember – lifetime value is key so offering 20% off is nothing in the grand scheme of your customer life cycle.

 

Featured Resource: Check out Robbie Richards to grow your email list.  He has great tips which are easy to implement.

 

Days 14-27: Develop Your Technical SEO and Analytics

 

 

When looking at how to market a small business online you must consider search engine optimization (SEO).

 

Weeks 3 and 4 (and beyond) should be spent mastering simple SEO strategies.

 

Featured Resource: Small Business SEO Guide in case you get lost.

 

Name, Address, and Phone Number (NAP):

 

It is key you achieve consistency with these across any business directories you are listed in and on other websites.

 

These are known as citations and you should spend a day using a tool such as Whitespark or Bright Local to ensure your NAP is as consistent as possible.

 

Onsite Optimization:

 

You should spend time to optimize your meta descriptions and title tags.

 

As long as your city and keywords are not in your domain name, you should try to include these in your meta descriptions and in your meta titles.

 

One or two occurrences of the keyword and location in your content is also going to help.

 

Google Analytics and Search Console:

 

Setting up these tools is a must.

 

 

Analytics will provide you with all the data you need to assess how your website is performing with visitors and Search Console also features options to look at data but also allows you to give Google some information about your site.

 

The 'fetch' tool in Google Search Console is useful to help with indexing your web pages on newer sites too.

 

Rinse and Repeat

 

Following the steps above is a great way to start online marketing for your local business.

 

As your social profiles and web presence grow, so will the interaction.

 

If you are getting great feedback then leverage the social proof by displaying it on your website, or even print it and display at your premises.

 

The online building of your business will reap massive dividends so just continue to work through the steps in this guide and watch your business grow by leaps and bounds.

 

Want to take your small business marketing to the next level?  Download our Local SEO Checklist!

 

 

 

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