10 SEO Tips for Small to Mid-Sized Companies

Lots of small to mid-size companies are finding that the expense to optimize a website is above their marketing plan and financial resources. A monthly fee for SEO might not be in your budget. However, just because you run a small business doesn’t mean you have to have a small presence. Putting time into your website is the top SEO strategy to try if you’re searching for simple tactics that guarantee the Googles of the world can pick up your content. Below are ten effective search engine optimization and promotional ideas for small companies on a small budget.

1. Show Adequate Material

   Every page of your site should, at a minimum, have 500 words. See what your competitors have on their sites. Because if they have more quality content than you, wouldn’t it be possible that the search engines pick up their amount of content over yours on the same topics? Make sure you have sufficient content to guide the search engines and your website viewers on what your website is about.

2. Remove Duplicate Information

   There is usually no negative cost for having repeat information on websites, however occasionally the duplicate information can confuse search bots and thereby rank your site lower because of this. Check out Google Webmaster and go to Search Appearances > HTML Improvements to see what repeat HTML characters are listed. For instance, when you see that you have additional title tags or additional meta descriptions, it’s probably due to pages on your website that could be accessed by multiple URLs. Download the chart with duplicate pages from your Google Webmaster Tools and examine their URL addresses.

3. Correctly Label Meta Data

   Search engines send “spiders or bots” to gather the words on your website using meta elements. Meta elements are the HTML or XHTML module utilized to provide metadata about a Web page. Spiders can only search pages that have the unique meta elements instructing them what is on the page so it can evaluate how pertinent it is to a search. It is conceivable to add related information to your site to assist the bots in understanding the data they are scanning through by describing the heading and description tags on every page of the website. Don’t worry; it should only take about 5-10 minutes per page.

   Make distinct titles and descriptions for each page of your site. Make the title descriptive of the page text with at most 70 characters. Avoid using common titles by updating your titles to match the content displayed on that specific page. For the descriptions use at most 156 characters and make sure the Meta descriptions are going on every listed page and individual articles on your website.

4. Clearly Display Your Contact Information

   It is absolutely necessary to make sure your business information is clearly displayed throughout your site. Your business email and phone number should be across the top or bottom of all your pages on your site. It will guarantee your contact details are accessible regardless of what page people view. Additionally, by putting a phone number and email contact to your site, your website will be picked up on search engines because of the location.

5. Connect from Within

   Links within the webpages with correct anchor text are able to push the webpages rank up because of your keywords. By putting links between other pages on the website, viewers are likely to find pages with common content, thus improving customer experience. What could we do to discover which pages to add internal links to? Perform a search for this query: “keyword” site:example.com. Swap “keyword” with the keyword you want to rank for, and switch “example.com” with your own web address. The outcomes will show your site’s pages containing the keyword, thereby making it easier to view pages that are interlinked to be ranked higher for that particular keyword or phrase.

6. Request Links

   Building links has a bad perception among many SEO’s because there was a sketchy link between exchange farms and wheels. Nowadays, the best route to build solid links is to request them and to show them in return. Ask your family or acquaintances who have a website to report on your business or to reference your company somewhere on their site – with a link back to your domain. Ask established clients and other associates to put links back to your domain on their websites.

7. Look for Mystery Link Donors

   One other straightforward way to get links back to your website is to do a Google search for your business and reach out to the other websites that mention you but do not put a link to your website. Be prepared to offer a link back to their site as well.

8. Prepare Your Images

   You probably have images on your site that you could spend some extra time on to adjust them for better rankings. Search engines want descriptive meta characters to optimize your graphics properly.

   • Retitle Image File: Right-click on the image file and retitle it. For example, if your image file is named “526G53130chd.jpg”, a better name might be “a_bad_key.jpg”.
   • Switch Image Title: Retitle the image meta data through the site’s CMS. Make sure the image title labels the content so the search engines can distinguish the images on the website through image searches.
   • Write Alt Text for Every Image: It could additionally be inserted through the image editor on the site’s CMS. Alt text is a meta element which indicates the actual image. For instance, if you wrote alt text for a picture of a cat laying on the sand at the beach, you could write, “LIzzy’s Laying On The Beach” as your alt text. One trick is to visualize you are describing the image to somebody who can’t see it and write a descriptive, keyword-filled line about the image.

9. Prepare Your Videos

   Many businesses use videos as a key part to their marketing strategy on their websites. The videos on your site should be optimized so the search engines can easily display your videos. Make a title, file name and narrative (if helpful) with the keywords. Additionally, YouTube offers other fields you can use to add descriptive information about your video. Utilize the ‘Tag’ field to put keywords. After you upload the video, there will be numerous choices for specifying the information on your video. To make sure your video is indexed, fill in each and every detail on the search engines appropriately.

10. Prepare for a Local Search

    Google has recently unified “Blended” results into every search. Blended results have a mix of websites and local business information – mainly from Google+ Local Pages.

    Any internet-based account of yours should be prepared and optimized including your Google Plus and social media accounts. If you don’t know if your company website shows up in Google’s local search, conduct a search for the business name or a generic term that best describes it plus your location. You should be able to find your site in the green section at the top.

    When you locate your Local page, claim your site and fill out all the information on your business. If you don’t locate your business amongst all the others ranked higher than you in the local search, start a local Google Page. Fill out the profile data with business information, even add a photo of your business location and/or your company logo. Finally, share this info with clients, your network and friends while asking for ratings and reviews from them. These strategies will guarantee Google will see you as a business and rank you higher on vertical searches like Google Maps.