SEO tips for small businesses

Beginner’s Guide to SEO – SEO Tips for Small Businesses

Small businesses and blogs rely on seo for customers, here at MarkMeets we post daily, have a verified online social media presence, a large subscriber list and are a 5 star rated agency with regular press mentions worldwide to solidate our credentials. SEO is a large part of what we offer whether we are writing a press release for a movie release, working on a client site or interviewing a celebrity!

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Many small and medium-sized businesses back off from implementing SEO after being daunted by the pricey service packages offered by leading SEO agencies.

Even those who believe that they can afford these premium SEO services end up getting disappointed after getting a big no for guaranteed SEO results.

In fact, no agency can promise definite SEO outcomes within a fixed timeframe. But why?

Search engine rankings are influenced by a vast array of ranking factors and that makes guaranteed results an impossibility. In fact, Google has 200+ ranking factors in place to evaluate web pages before positioning them in SERPs.

Besides, Google’s algorithms have become shrewder and manipulating them for higher rankings isn’t a cakewalk anymore. Even if you, by any chance, manage to break through the firewall, Google is pretty quick to get to you and demote your site in search results.

So, with SEO being a highly competitive space, what chance does small businesses stand to get higher rankings?

Let’s be straightforward. SEO is a long-term strategy, and you need to drip feed your budget to get the best results out of it. Stopping it overnight can do more harm than good for your website.

We have come across disastrous stories of small business owners who made massive SEO investments expecting quick results, stopping it mid-way as their funds dried up. After all, if there is no business, what’s the whole purpose of doing SEO?

Think of it this way. SEO is about setting the right strategy for your website on a budget of your choice. That’s why you need to find the right affordable SEO service provider who understands your goals and is prepared to go the extra mile to deliver the results you seek.

SEO Agencies are mushrooming in every nook and cranny. So, you are left thinking which one out of these is the best SEO company for your small business, right? In this blog, I will tell you everything about how you can double down on an SEO agency that offers everything vital to rank your website on Google’s first page at an affordable price.

Want to see your website at the top? Don’t let your competitors outshine you. Take the first step towards dominating search rankings and watch your business grow. Get in touch with us now and let’s make your website a star! Read on for affordable seo services for small businesses

Cheap SEO Services vs Affordable SEO Services

Open Google and search for SEO agencies. You are flooded with the results of agencies that offer “cheap” services.

So, what exactly is cheap? It isn’t just the pricing but the SEO results too.

When you sign up, the pricing may seem “cheap,” and when you ask for results, the excuses these agencies make may seem cheap. In both ways, a business like yours can’t choose a cheap SEO service because your ambitions and ROI goals are way superior than what such mediocre companies can offer.

90% of agencies that offer the so-called low-cost or cheap SEO services resort to substandard link-building strategies and obscure optimization methods. On the flip side, there are these haughty agencies that offer SEO services at very high pricing. Don’t fall prey to them either.

Cheap vs affordable seo

But wait. Don’t high-cost SEO services bring high-quality results? No. Nowhere in the SEO rule books has anyone mentioned that the higher the pricing you pay, the more quality you get. That is an SEO myth that has been around in the industry for too long.

According to our analysis, the average monthly SEO spending of businesses in the US is steadily increasing, and so are the SEO plans and pricing offered by native SEO agencies.

So what’s the alternative? Enter affordable SEO services.

We’ll delve deep into affordable SEO services in the upcoming sections. Keep reading.

How Much Will an Affordable SEO Company Charge Small Business Owners in 2024?

One of the main advantages of partnering with SEO companies that offer affordable SEO services is that they allow you to choose the services for your small business in alignment with your budget.

This way, you get more transparency into where your money is invested in order to drive positive SEO results.

Most often, a small business may not require premium SEO services, especially because the target keyword can be associated with a niche group from a specific location.

As the niche and location can be pinned down with more precision for small businesses, a basic local SEO package might do the work.

Unfortunately, a majority of SEO agencies try to sell their premium packages to small businesses to generate increased revenue. That’s unfair, right?

Let’s discuss some statistics.

Comparing the 500 top SEO agencies across the US, we found that an SEO client is billed an average $100/hour to $200/hour based on the nature of the SEO task involved.

Small and medium businesses in the US spend $1,000 to $2,000 every month towards SEO services.

It may be overwhelming for small businesses as there are no fixed SEO pricing packages or guidelines for the SEO agencies in the US to follow. Plus, as US-based SEO agencies hire native experts, the services are always pricey.

On the other hand, there are SEO agencies in Asia and especially in India, that offer low-cost SEO plans for small businesses.

But the problem here is most of these companies cannot promise quality. Additionally, keeping track of their SEO efforts for you may be a herculean task.

So, weighing the benefits and setbacks of the two landscapes, achieving a balance between quality and affordability is key.

So, where do you find affordable small business SEO packages that don’t compromise on quality?

Here is where UK-American SEO service providers come to your rescue. These SEO companies can offer small businesses the best of both worlds – quality and affordability.

MarkMeets, being an SEO service provider in the UK-American counties, can be a touchstone for you before selecting an SEO company. Here is what Maile Ohye of Google says about things to consider while hiring an affordable SEO company for small businesses.

How to Hire the Best Affordable SEO Services for Small Business in 2024?

Your business deserves the best. That’s why, when looking for an SEO partner for your small business, you need to take several factors into account.

First, it’s essential to find a company that has experience working with small businesses like yours and understands the unique challenges and opportunities in connection with them. This will ensure that the company has the expertise to help your business succeed online.

Second, make it a point to look for a company that offers a comprehensive range of SEO services, including keyword research, on-page optimization, link building, and local SEO. This will ensure that your website is optimized for all the important search engines, including Google, Bing, and Yahoo.

Third, find a company that offers transparent pricing and clear communication. This will help you understand exactly what services you’re getting and what you can expect in terms of results. Finally, opt for an SEO agency that offers a guarantee or some form of protection for your investment. This will give you peace of mind and ensure that you get the best possible results for your business.

In a nutshell, when looking for a small business SEO services, prioritize a company that has experience working with small businesses across verticals, offers a comprehensive range of services, advocates transparent pricing and clear communication, and offers some form of protection for your investment.

As I mentioned earlier, several SEO service providers out there boast about getting you top positions on Google. That said, it becomes super important to weigh your options carefully before making the final call about affordable SEO services. Once you shortlist SEO agencies, ensure you explain your requirements clearly to the agencies you reach out to and make the decision by comparing their merits and potential roadblocks.

Make sure that the SEO services that you choose are result-oriented.

How to Find an Affordable and Trustworthy SEO Partner for Your Small Business? Here’s a look at some general Google recommendations for finding an affordable and trustworthy SEO agency for your business.

Before Hiring a Small Business SEO Company:

Conduct Interviews: Google recommends interviewing potential SEO agencies to gauge their understanding of SEO practices and how they plan to improve your site’s visibility.

Check References: Ask for case studies and references to check the effectiveness of the agency’s SEO strategies for other clients.

Request an Audit: A technical audit can provide you with insights into the SEO improvements required.

Be sure to ask questions like:

Can you provide examples of previous work?
What kind of SEO practices do you follow?
How will you adapt your strategy to our industry or niche?
What metrics will you use to measure success?
How will you communicate updates and progress?

Avoid SEO Agency that:

Promise unrealistically quick results: SEO is a long-term investment.
Use ‘black-hat’ or unethical techniques: This can lead to penalties from Google.
Guarantee rankings: Rankings are influenced by various factors, and no one can guarantee a #1 ranking.

Here are our detailed recommendations to consider before hiring an affordable SEO company for your small business.

Check the SEO Agency’s Credibility

Almost all agencies boast about how they help websites to rank higher. So, you need to know specifically about websites the SEO agency has worked with in your niche. Ask the affordable SEO service provider for a niche-specific case study.

Check Their Blog Section

This might seem trivial, but most of the SEO agencies that are doing business for clients ensure that they have a robust blog section. They create and publish content pieces that reflect their field expertise in the blog section to increase engagement with their existing clients and new ones.

This is a good indication that they have specialists in-house who know what’s in-vogue in SEO.

Check Online Reviews

Online reviews are a great way to judge the competency of an SEO agency. A few negative reviews are common. Besides, they also testify for the genuineness of the published reviews.

Take a closer look at the SEO agency’s online reviews and check for bottlenecks that other clients faced before zeroing down on the agency.

Ask Them Which Tools They Use

Before you sign up, ask them for a quick analysis of your website or even your competitors’ if you are yet to build one.

Just don’t give the Analysis and Webmaster credentials yet. Instead, ask them to do an in-depth analysis using SEO tools. This way, you can assess how the agency strategizes your campaign and analyzes the data before coming up with suggestions and alternative strategies.

Check the Quality of Content

A good SEO agency doesn’t compromise on content quality as they know that it lays a strong foundation for SEO success. Ask for the SEO agency’s portfolio. Make sure to ask for the content samples and the websites for which the agency has already created the content. This will help you to evaluate the quality of the content the company delivers.

Check the In-House Team Capabilities

Go through the agency’s website thoroughly and find the people behind the scene who are implementing SEO for you. Ensure that the agency has trustworthy in-house resources because many agencies only act as mediators while the complete SEO task is getting outsourced. Don’t let it happen to your business.

Make sure that the SEO services that you choose are result-oriented.

After Hiring: When getting started with SEO for your small business, have an eye for a few factors mentioned below.

Regular Updates: Make sure the agency provides you with regular updates and reports.
Review Progress: Keep track of KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) to assess the effectiveness of the SEO efforts.
Open Communication: Maintain an open line of communication with your SEO agency to discuss changes, updates, and new strategies.

Now you are equipped with the vital knowledge to choose the best affordable SEO services for your small business.

By the way, you can choose MarkMeets as your SEO partner as we have been helping businesses of all sizes to rank higher on the search.

Just hit us up in the live chat, and our team will walk through the whole process we follow to rank business websites above their competitors. Listen to Mark Boardman the Founder and CEO of MarkMeets talk about how small businesses should hire an SEO and Content Marketing Agency.

How to Choose an SEO Budget for Your Website in 2024?

Remember, your SEO campaign budget shouldn’t put your business in a tight corner.

Unlike PPC which delivers quick results as you invest more money, long-term sustainability is the prime focus of SEO. In other words, what matters in SEO is the actions you take over time. That’s why consistency is the key to reach your SEO milestones.

Your SEO budget matters more than you think it does. Let’s put it this way. If you decide to spend 80% of your annual SEO budget within a span of 2-3 months, there are chances that the strategy might backfire.

To stop that from happening, it is essential that you split your SEO budget judiciously across monthly or quarterly bases. Always remember that it may take up to six months for the first results to show up.

We have come across many website owners who asked which strategy made it happen when they saw a sudden spike in traffic and rankings.

In fact, we give them the example of the old man who broke the big rock using his hand chisels. It took him over six months to shatter the rock, but he didn’t attribute all the success to the final few smashes he delivered. So the same goes with SEO.

Start with a small budget. But then, if you ask for precise numbers, that’s not possible because the budget allocation differs from one business to the other.

But if I put MarkMeets into perspective, our managed SEO package for small businesses starts at $550/per month, where you get everything you need to give your site the initial push it requires. This will be under the budget for most-businesses, especially small-scale ones.

When you see the organic traction gaining momentum and your website witnessing significant ROI from the SEO strategies in place, you can upgrade to an advanced package to implement other new strategies.

Types of Affordable SEO Services for Small Businesses and Startups

Check out the different types of affordable SEO services for small businesses below.
On-Page SEO Services

On-Page SEO includes optimizing a full range of on-page factors, including meta title, meta description, URL, images and more on your website.

Major factors involved in On-Page SEO:

Keyword Research
URL Optimization
Title Tag Optimization
Optimizing Content
Optimizing Heading Tags
Optimizing Internal and External links

Link Building Services

Backlinks are one of the most critical factors to rank higher on Google. BEWARE. a wrong link building strategy can ruin all your SEO efforts.

That’s why you should make sure that the link building practices followed by your SEO partner meet Google’s guidelines.

At MARKMEETS, we leverage a genuine blogger outreach strategy to build contextual backlinks using search-engine friendly, white hat techniques.

Some small business SEO companies might approach you to build PBN links for a cheap price.

Signing up with such low-cost SEO services for your small business can do permanent harm to your website as PBNs, Link Farms, and Blog Commenting are strategies of the past.

Google now considers these link-building strategies as spammy practices. Indulging in such Blackhat activities can lead to permanent removal of the website from Google search.

So, make sure you check the credentials of the business SEO service provider to avoid such untoward circumstances.

Major factors involved in Off-page SEO (Link Building)

Setting up a link building strategy
Competitor Analysis
Manual Blogger Outreach
Broken Link Reclamation
Disavow Spammy Backlinks

Technical SEO Services

Suppose your website has high-quality content and backlinks, pointing to another page that Google can’t index for some reason. Such cases are not uncommon among small business websites.

You can fix the crawlability and indexability issues with your website using technical SEO services. Many people overlook technical SEO. However, in reality, technical SEO issues can make or break your website by impacting your Google rankings.

Technical SEO focuses on optimizing parameters like page load speed, the crawl budget, the .htaccess file and more.

Check out our blog on technical SEO to know more about its importance in ranking your small business website.

Major factors involved in Technical SEO

Page Speed Optimization
Fixing 4xx and 3xx Errors
Log File Analysis
Sitemap Integration

Local SEO Services

Do you know 46% of all Google searches are local? Google focuses more on local search results to help the users get the best results for their queries.

That said, optimizing your small business website for local search becomes a necessity. Appearing on Google for local searches will bring more visitors to your website.

Getting enlisted in Google My Business with proper NAP and other local SEO optimization practices are essential to ensure your business gets featured for relevant local search queries.

To do all the optimization mentioned above requires a higher level of expertise. Since you are a small business owner, investing in hiring in-house resources cannot get you the ROI.

That’s why you have to filter out the best affordable SEO services to cater to the local SEO needs of your small business.

Major factors involved in Local SEO

Local SEO Strategy for Links and On-Page Content
Google My Business Listing
Building Citations
Directory Listing

Content Writing Services

Getting the best content on your website remains critical as search engines have reiterated that only content that satisfies the user intent will rank higher. Google keeps emphasizing the importance of creating high-quality, value added content with back to back updates to its helpful content system

Make sure your website features high-quality content that speaks for your industry expertise. This will improve your site’s E-E-A-T and help boost its visibility for relevant searches online.

Simplify this process by getting your content written by native experts who are aware of the local culture and thought process of the audience in specific demographics.

This is why we at MarkMeets employ native content writers to get you the best content that speaks directly to your target audience. We provide different options for our clients to choose the level of the writer’s expertise. This doesn’t mean that some of our writers are bad.

We have identified niche experts who have already earned credibility by publishing articles on high-authority websites like Forbes and Healthline to create high-quality, industry-specific content for our clients.

Why Affordable SEO Matters for Small /Startup Businesses

By choosing an affordable SEO service for your small business, you can: Save almost 50% of your spending. Get all benefits of SEO best practices. It’s as simple as that.

The best example that I have for you is MarkMeets

We are an United Kingdom and American SEO agency offering bespoke SEO solutions for small businesses. Our aim is to help businesses like yours rank on Google without worrying about their marketing budget.

You don’t need tons of backlinks and hundreds of pages to rank higher on search. For small businesses, the traffic is secondary, but the quality of people who visit the site is the most critical factor. That’s because they are the ones who impact your ROI.

We implement the right SEO strategies for you.

This means we don’t implement everything found in the glossary of SEO.

Because you don’t need most of it. We are not a yet-another-agency that makes you show up with the Visa card every other month. This doesn’t mean that we skip critical steps to keep the pricing affordable. Certainly not!

Making clear sense of your business requirements helps us to come up with a tailored strategy for you to rank you higher on SERP.

Do you know that small businesses with an interest in ranking only for a particular location need only a Local SEO strategy to rank higher? I mean, why would a real estate business owner based in DC want their backlink to be placed on a site in India? That’s the point.

But then, agencies try to ignore this aspect because there is a lot of money in implementing national and international SEO strategies. That means your hard-earned money will be spent on practices that add little value to your business.

We are nothing like such money-minded SEO agencies. At Stan, we come up with custom SEO strategies for small business owners to provide them what they exactly need. Yes, only what they require to achieve their business objectives. Nothing more and nothing less.

That’s why we have been listed as one of the top SEO services providers for small businesses.
Debunking SEO Myths for Small Businesses

When you choose to do SEO for your business, it is pretty natural to be bombarded by speculations surrounding the SEO space. It is important to demystify them in order to unlock the true potential of your site

Myth 1: Paid Search is a a Part of SEO

Some brands, especially newbies getting started with SEO, think that PPC (Pay-Per-Click) is a component of SEO. But, that’s not how it works.

All forms of SEO, including on-page optimization, off-page optimization and technical SEO optimization aim at generating traffic for your website organically to boost its rankings.

On the flipside, in PPC, you bid on keywords relevant to your industry for your ad to appear in search results. Every time a visitor clicks on your page, you pay the advertising platform (such as Google Ads) in return.

SEO and PPC are two different ways of generating web traffic. SEO opens doors to achieving sustainable organic growth in a cost-effective way, while the results of your PPC campaigns rely heavily on your Ad spend. BEWARE. A few wrong moves in PPC can milk every penny out of your small business. Make sure your PPC bids don’t exceed the fixed budget.

Myth 2: Keyword Stuffing Can Bring Higher Rankings and Improved Online Visibility

There was, indeed, a time when webmasters got their sites to the top of Google by just stuffing keywords randomly in their content. But, that was over a decade ago.

Today, Google’s algorithms are smarter than ever and equipped with superior NLP capabilities to better interpret the context of search queries and fetch more accurate results. Plus, Google has updated its helpful content system multiple times in the recent past to rank content that adds value to the users higher than the rest.

That said, it is a piece of cake for the search engine giant to detect and punish sites that attempt to manipulate its algorithms by stuffing keywords in their content.

So, keyword stuffing doesn’t do any good for your rankings or online discoverability. In fact, it is most likely to bring down your search rankings by earning your site a search engine penalty.

Myth 3: SEO is a One-Time Process

SEO isn’t about getting your site rank higher just once. It is about achieving high rankings and maintaining it amid the aggressive competition in your industry.

If you stop optimizing your site for search engines, your business rivals will pull you down and steal the spot you currently hold. The lower you rank, the lesser your online visibility.

Given the scenario, it is evident that SEO isn’t a one-time process. It is rather an on-going one. But don’t worry. SEO is like a baby that needs your maximum support only until it learns to walk. Once enough initial push is given to impart momentum, it keeps going on its own and only requires you to monitor outcomes and tweak your strategy when necessary.

Myth 4: SEO Agencies Guarantee Precise SEO Results

SEO is full of surprises and uncertainties, and that’s what makes the game interesting. If an agency guarantees exact SEO results for your small business, know that you are being hoodwinked.

Instead, partner with an SEO agency that is backed by a proven track record of producing realistic results for their clients. Such a seasoned SEO agency will be able to understand the unique needs of your small business and build customized SEO strategies that help you achieve sustainable growth.

Why SEO is a Must-Have for Your Small Business

From the above discussion, it is pretty clear that there is always some kind of speculation surrounding SEO for small businesses.

But, despite all these dilemmas, there are more important things that make SEO a must-have for your small business. Check them out below.

Increased Organic Traffic

As a small business owner, you may not want to make bulky monetary investments towards generating leads for your business. SEO is the most economical way to execute it.

SEO helps magnetize more organic traffic your way. Increased organic traffic means more new leads and more conversions for your small business.

Improved Brand Awareness

You need to familiarize your brand among your target audience. That’s how you will be able to reach more new prospects and expand your business in the long run.

SEO facilitates you to gear up your search rankings for relevant keyword searches and improves your website’s online discoverability.

Higher search engine rankings and improved online visibility of your site makes way for increased brand awareness among your potential customers.

Increased Business ROI

SEO fetches more leads for your small business by boosting your organic traffic rate.

Going forward, targeted SEO campaigns can ensure that the attracted leads move down every stage of the sales funnel to become your valued customers.

Translating more leads into new customers ultimately boosts your business ROI.

Increased Competitiveness

Irrespective of the industry you belong to, there are many new competitors coming in every single day.

That said, doing SEO doesn’t just stop you from losing your SERP position to other players in your niche but also gives the competitive edge your website needs to beat your business rivals with higher rankings.
SEO Tips for Small Businesses

Here are some quirky tips on how you can implement SEO without burning your pockets.

Focus On Your Target Market

SEO services can be very broad and the needs of every business is unique. As a small business owner, If you try to emulate the biggest players in your industry at once,you may end up spending a huge amount of money while getting very little returns.That’s why a tailored strategy is important for your business.

You can start by asking these questions:

Who is your target audience (buyer persona)?
Where are they from (geographic location)?
Which social media sites or online platforms do they use (Internet habits)?
What do you want to get from your SEO campaign (SMART goals)?

Notice that these questions focus on your business and customers. Yes, you need to be aware of your status in the industry, who your biggest competitors are, what they are doing, etc., but frankly, strategies that seek to beat the competition use up so much time and resources.

You may get better results if you focus on ranking for keywords your target customers actually use (the long-tail keywords with high click-through and conversion rates) than the ones for which your competitors are already on the top spot.

Online domination for small businesses is not always about who’s Number 1. If local customers click on a business regardless of its position on the SERPs, that business will have dominated everyone else.

When you change your perspective from competitor-focused to customer-centric, your strategy will follow. Here’s where Local SEO comes in.

Start with Local SEO

To be honest, it can be difficult for your small businesses to rank organically if you belong to an industry where there’s a lot of competition and many of whom already have an established strong, online presence.

Tenure matters in Internet marketing. Essentially, brands that have been optimizing their websites for years have an advantage over those who are just starting now. But don’t be discouraged if you are the latter. Your time isn’t too far.

SEO is an equalizer. Strategy matters more than brand names. If you have a good strategy and don’t violate Google’s guidelines, you can end up right next to the biggest names in your industry.

This is the logic of Local SEO for small businesses. Instead of betting your resources on strategies targeting a broad market, you need to narrow it down to the people with the highest potential of becoming paying customers. Many factors come into play, but for the sake of simplicity, Local SEO uses geo-targeted and intent-focused keywords instead of broad searches. An example would be “24/7 plumber in Spokane” instead of “plumbing services in Washington state.”

Use the Local SEO approach for your paid advertisements (PPC) as well. If you are a CPA offering accounting and tax filing services to solopreneurs and fellow small business owners, and you have no intention of serving clients more than two cities away, there’s no need to advertise to audiences on the east coast when your business is based in San Francisco.

Local SEO is an advantageous move for small businesses:

Your online marketing goals are realistic and achievable. Not to say that aiming for loftier goals is a long shot, but you need to lay a strong foundation first before you can launch a more ambitious campaign.

Your resources are better optimized. You don’t battle mindlessly with national brands (and spending more than you need to) when you sell mainly to customers from your local community.

The leads and traffic you earn are of higher quality. This is the best reward when you rank for narrowed-down, long-tail keywords (e.g., brown sugar boba milk tea for takeout in the Bronx instead of broad search entries. Casual researchers or customers looking for similar products and services in a different city are all filtered out. What’s left are high-quality leads who are interested in what you offer.

Local SEO, therefore, is best for small businesses that want to increase the foot traffic in their stores or receive more email inquiries and calls from potential clients.

Harness the Power of AI

The application of AI in search is booming and it is here to stay. Following the whooping popularity of ChatGPT, an AI-powered chatbot, in a matter of weeks, major search engines like Google and Bing started integrating AI capabilities, which resulted in the rollout of Bing AI and Google’s Bard.

Plus, Google has now taken a massive step forward with its Search Generative Experience (SGE). This AI-powered feature allows the search engine to generate quick responses for user queries. The users are allowed to ask follow-up questions to get more refined answers. This marks the beginning of a major SERP update,

So, what does this mean for your small business and your rankings?

Google relies on its massive inventory to generate AI answers for user queries. That said, you have to focus on creating high-quality helpful content that makes it to SGE. That’s how you can still stay competitive in this AI era.

Going forward, being an original source for Google to derive AI-backed answers to user queries helps you get to the good side of Google. This, in turn, can boost your brand visibility significantly and bring more profitable opportunities your way.

Besides, you can use AI chatbots to get new content ideas for your website and personalize your marketing campaigns to drive better results.

However, all these advancements don’t change the fact that content is king. Ensure that the uniqueness and value of your content is retained by all means.

Establish Your Authority On and Off the Internet

One of Google’s most important ranking factors is domain authority. It is the perceived authority of a website based on the quality of its inbound links. The more authoritative websites (e.g., known publications and official websites of government offices, schools, universities, hospitals, and research organizations) link back to your site, the more authoritative it appears to the search engine. Establishing authority is, essentially, the main goal of link building.

This technique works slightly differently in Local SEO. For search engines to recognize your site’s authority in your community, you need to earn inbound links from authoritative sites in your area as well.

Earning a backlink from a local government office or your state university, however, is not easy. Since all parties are from the same area and face-to-face interactions are possible, you might be expected to personally reach out as a form of courtesy.

Here are examples of outreach tactics that can increase your website authority:

Allow your suppliers and business partners to list your business as one of their clients or affiliates.
Participate in industry events organized by the local government and established organizations.
Sponsor charities, civic events, and other similar programs.
Participate in city- or state-wide events, especially if they are organized specifically for your industry.
Apply for membership in exclusive groups or local civic organizations.
Get published on highly rated online publications and websites.

In Local SEO, link building often needs more work than writing a compelling outreach email. But you reap what you sow: your active participation in the local community could eventually win you dot-edu or dot-gov backlinks, which are powerful, top-level links and are considered to be the Holy Grail in link building. Just one of these high quality backlinks can make a dot-com website soar on the SERPs.

Relevance is also crucial to building authority, so you may get the same link value from a dot-info or dot-biz website, provided they are highly rated and relevant to your industry. So if it gets too difficult to get backlinks from government offices and organizations and educational institutions, you may have a better chance with local newspapers and industry magazines.
Use Insights from Keyword Research

Keyword research is essential in SEO, but it can serve a greater purpose than simply showing what words and phrases to include in your on-page content.

Keyword lists can give you valuable insight into your target audience’s current wants and needs. The information can enrich your business strategy, not just your online marketing.

For example, if you own a cafe, you would assume that customers will use the keywords like “coffee shop”, “cafe,” and “coffee delivery” when they search for nearby establishments. After your SEO team conducts keyword research and gives you the complete keyword list, however, you discover that people are also looking for “free wifi cafe,” “cakes for sale,” and “dalgona coffee.” These keywords have high daily search volumes. Unfortunately, you can’t incorporate them into your on-page SEO because you don’t offer them in your cafe.

What you can do is take this information and run with it. You can study the feasibility of offering free Wi-Fi in your cafe and updating the menu to include cakes, pastries, and new coffee flavors that are popular today. This is just one example of how SEO can help your small business dominate your market — both online and offline.

SEO for small businesses can be pretty demanding, even for SEO gurus. Success takes time, but you can get good results faster if you focus on your potential prospects, do local SEO, build valuable business partnerships, and use first-hand data to refine your SEO strategy.

If undertaking the process on your own puts too much on your plate, consider seeking assistance from an affordable SEO service provider like MarkMeets. We’re here to support you every step of the way towards higher rankings. Our SEO services are not only competitively priced, but we also guarantee unmatched quality that far exceeds the value of our affordable SEO services.
Frequently Asked Questions

Are SEO services affordable for small businesses?

Are SEO services affordable for small businesses?

It depends on the SEO agency you opt for. For optimal results, your small business needs a service provider who can balance quality and affordability on a scale. At MarkMeets, we leverage our Indo-American expertise to offer affordable SEO services to our clients with absolutely no compromise on quality.

How Important is SEO for small online businesses?

How Important is SEO for small online businesses?

SEO is a must-have for small businesses and startups that strive for an established online presence. By optimizing your website for search engines, you can improve your online visibility, attract more organic visitors, get more conversions and boost your business ROI.

How to find the right SEO company for my business?

How to find the right SEO company for my business?

The right SEO company for your business is one that helps you achieve your SEO objectives without exceeding your budget. Check the professional history, clientele and pricing packages of SEO agencies to choose the one that’s right for you. Book a free consultation call with us to see if we are the one you are looking for. We are happy to help.