Does Company Size Matter for SEO?
If you’ve heard of search engine optimization (SEO) before, you’ve probably wondered how small businesses could ever stand a chance against large companies. With smaller budgets and lower online authority, it is easy to think along these lines.
So does company size matter for SEO?
Luckily, small businesses can compete in the SEO game.
What is SEO?
If you haven’t heard of SEO, it is the practice of increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to your website through organic search engine results.
There are two types of SEO: On-page and off-page.
On-page SEO refers to any action taken to improve the quality of the pages on a site, such as through keywords, formatting, URLs, and responsive design.
Off-page SEO refers to the action taken off the website, such as link building, social media, business profiles, and articles.
By improving both on- and off-page SEO, your site traffic’s quantity and quality will also improve. Because there are so many factors that go into a search engine’s algorithm, there are techniques that even small businesses can use to optimize their site.
This applies to companies of all sizes.
Whether a small mom-and-pop store or an entrepreneurial enterprise wants to use SEO, they can! No matter the company’s size, you can always benefit from implementing these techniques into your business strategy.
How to Get Started with SEO
The first task is to set specific business goals.
These goals will differ based on the company’s size and what kind of results they are looking for, but one thing is certain — if you implement at least one aspect of Internet marketing, your company will see better rankings and more traffic.
Small Businesses
Small businesses (mom-and-pop stores, start-ups, and local companies) looking to improve their SEO practices while working on a small budget can follow a few simple principles to compete with the big guys.
There are two different kinds of small businesses, which is important because they should apply SEO techniques differently.
The first kind of small business is a brick-and-mortar store with a physical location and address.
These businesses should aim to target locally to get people to come into their stores.
These companies will benefit the most by investing in local SEO, online public relations, and company branding, as well as mobile-friendly web design and Google Ads. An excellent goal for local businesses should be generating positive reviews and feedback on sites like Yelp.
However, if the business does not have a physical store, it may take a slightly different approach. Instead, those places should aim to implement a Google Ads campaign, initiate their content strategy, and focus on social media marketing and link building.
How to Implement an SEO Strategy for your Small Business
Get started with using SEO for your small business by focusing on these strategies:
Local SEO
Google favors local content, so as a small business, there are some advantages that even the biggest corporations do not have.
A large amount of local SEO uses long-tail keywords, so with some research on potential terms, you can find phrases that describe what your business offers wherever you are located.
Just by doing this, there is a chance you will rank highly in search engine results.
Social Media
An ideal means of online public relations and company branding is through social media.
By creating an online presence for your business, local (and non-local) consumers will be able to follow along and interact with you daily.
You can use your social media accounts to update consumers on events you hold, new products you have, and even post pictures to spark customer interest.
Twitter and Facebook can be used to post daily, weekly, or monthly updates about your business. Instagram is a great tool to use for “stories,” which are interactive and only last for 24 hours but give followers a taste of what you have to offer.
By using social media, you will gain trust and authority fairly quickly based on the following you acquire.
Link Building
You can use link building and internal links to show your authority.
This can be done by guest blogging, sending pages to high-quality, or relevant directories, which creates content other people want to share.
These links are crucial for three reasons:
- They allow users to navigate the website.
- They provide link equity, which helps with ranking sites.
- They help establish an information hierarchy for the given site.
Links are important because, on any individual page, search engines use crawlers to determine what pages to list.
Keyword Research
By conducting keyword research, you can target specific keywords that users are interested in and searching for.
By doing this, it shows consumers that the business is relevant to those keywords.
Small local businesses can target people in the area who can then come into their store. The higher you rank in local search results, the more likely it is that customers will decide to come into your business, rather than a competitor’s.
Google Analytics
How will you know if any of these tactics are actually working for you?
By creating a Google Analytics account, you will be able to monitor your SEO progress.
You can see the demographic of people visiting your site, how they are landing on your site, and what they are doing once they are on the site.
This is extremely helpful because not only can you see what is working for you, but you can see what is not necessarily beneficial to you and then shift the focus elsewhere.
Grow your Small Business with SEO
Though larger businesses often have more credibility and a bigger budget, there are many ways in which smaller companies can compete with and possibly even outrank companies double their size.
By implementing SEO techniques to target consumers locally, you can grow your business’s presence in search engines, and ultimately generate more clients and even more revenue!
If you want to implement some of the SEO techniques discussed in this article, but don’t know how or where to start, check out our SEO services and how we can help you get started!
