Small business SEO strategies are valuable because they can organically bring people to your website and provide you with sales leads. A solid SEO strategy will help you occupy new corners of your market and build awareness around your product, service, or brand. Here’s a look at six SEO tactics you can use to grow your business.

1. Use Long-tail Keywords for Organic Traffic

Long-tail keywords are variants of a key term that users would frequently type as they search for information on a topic. By broadening keyword use to include long-tail terms, you can reach a wider audience while ensuring your keywords generate relevant traffic.

Generating organic search traffic to your site gives you a consistent pipeline of visitors without having to target them in expensive advertising or specialized campaigns. Do your research to make sure you’re selecting effective keywords that will lead to higher conversion rates.

2. Optimize Your Metadata

Google does deep analyses into a site’s structure and content by scrutinizing its authority.  If the metadata included in URLs and various back end systems is inaccurate, duplicated, or otherwise poorly managed, it could raise red flags with Google. Optimizing your metadata is one of the most important small business SEO strategies, as it will help you improve your web pages ranking in search results.

3. Use Competitor Sites to Identify Profitable Keywords

Competitive keyword analysis is one of the most effective ways to stand out amongst industry competition. There are several online tools you can use to analyze competitor sites and identify the keywords they are ranking for. From there, you can target those keywords to enhance your ranking and further develop your SEO strategy.

4. Run Pay-per-Click Campaigns

Pay-per-click (PPC) is an online advertising model in which you pay each time a user clicks on one of your online ads. PPC initiatives let you feature content in highly visible locations, but the costs can quickly add up. To run a successful PPC campaign you must bid on the keywords you think your customers would use to find your product. PPC can be great for generating traffic. However, make sure your content is highly targeted, so you aren’t wasting money on leads that aren’t relevant for your sales team.

5. Leverage Customer Reviews

Customer reviews can have a big impact on your small business SEO strategies. Reviews are one form of user-generated content that search engines take into consideration and help to reinforce your positive brand identity across a variety of sites. Encourage customers to leave reviews and engage with reviewers to create conversations. Doing so can deepen customer relationships and bolster a good brand image.

6. Make Sure Your Content is Compelling

Relevant, targeted content creates value for the reader and improves your search rank. If your audience doesn’t get anything from your content, then they won’t go deeper on your site or revisit it later. Make sure your content includes target keywords, descriptive title tags, links, and a meta description.

Enhance Your Small Business SEO Strategies with Working Capital

A business marketing loan can give you access to the working capital you need to invest in small business SEO strategies, hire marketing staff, or pay for a PPC plan. Over time, content marketing and SEO efforts should pay for themselves, but a short-term loan from can help you get your marketing initiatives off the ground.

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Develop Your Business Brand

To effectively market your business, you need to create a memorable brand identity. A brand is more than just a logo or tagline. A well-articulated brand connects with your target customers and conveys who you are, what you stand for, and what you can deliver. When developing your business brand, ask yourself these questions:

• What is your business’s mission?
• Who are your competitors?
• How can customers benefit from your expertise/services?
• What feelings/characteristics do you want customers to associate with your company?

Once you’ve answered these questions, you can begin to develop a brand image, voice, and message. Strong brands help increase customer loyalty and keep your audience engaged.

Create a Brand Logo

After you’ve determined your brand message, create a custom logo. You want to make sure that your logo is unique and adaptable. Consider hiring a freelance designer and comparing your competitors’ logos to your ideas. When creating your logo, make sure you use on-brand colors, fonts, and images.

Generate an Email Marketing Strategy

Effectively market your small business by creating an email marketing strategy. Email is a powerful channel for connecting with customers and driving sales. To reap the benefits of a successful email campaign, you need to identify the right approach for your business. This might come in the form of a newsletter, a limited time offer, or a promotional announcement. No matter what approach you take, align your email efforts with the rest of your brand marketing tactics.

Produce Interesting Blog Content

Blogging is integral to your online marketing strategy. Create compelling and relevant blog content to drive traffic to your website and position your band as an industry leader. According to Simple Marketing Now, companies with blogs receive 55 percent more web traffic than those without blog content. Keep in mind that you might need to hire an external freelancer or bring a marketing staff member onto your team.

Use Facebook Ad Campaigns

One of the most effective places to market your business is through Facebook. According to the Pew Research Center, 68 percent of U.S. adults use Facebook. Seventy-four percent of users are active on Facebook daily. These numbers highlight the importance of developing a Facebook marketing strategy. When you create Facebook Ads, you can choose your objective, audience, budget, and ad placement. Facebook Ads can help drive more traffic to your site and increase brand awareness and customer conversions. 

Effectively Market Your Small Business with SEO

Whether you’re new to the world of search engine optimization (SEO) or have used the practice in the past, there’s a chance your SEO strategy needs improvement. When focusing on SEO, your priority should be keyword research. You can figure out the language your target audience is using in their searches through free channels on Google or paid SEO tools, like Moz or SEMrush. The goal of SEO is to create an effective web experience that is easily discoverable in search. 

Conduct Market Research

Today’s market trends are constantly shifting and changing. It’s essential for businesses to conduct market research on a regular basis to maintain their competitive edge. If you want to dive deeper into understanding your customers, you might decide to perform market research. Conduct surveys and hold interviews to gather data and analyze trends related to your target audience. This can help you shape your present and future marketing strategies and content. 

Nurture Loyal Customers with Social Media

Effectively market your small business by utilizing social media. Social media can be a helpful tool for promoting your products and services and increasing your customer base. Create an efficient social media strategy and analyze your results to see where you can improve. Some social channels to optimize include:

• Facebook.
• YouTube.
• Twitter.
• Instagram.
• Pinterest.
• LinkedIn.

Set Goals and Budgets

When you create a plan to innovate your marketing strategy, you should set goals to measure your success. Make sure the goals you set are specific, measurable, attainable, and realistic. Additionally, you will need to monitor your funds and set a budget that will keep your spending in check. To gain access to working capital, you may need to seek funding from an outside source. QuickBridge offers easy access to business marketing loans, which can be used to fund social media campaigns, hire a social media team, or finance an online marketing platform.

Monitor and Review Initiatives

The best way to effectively market your small business is to go over your results regularly. Check and see where your efforts have succeeded or fallen short. From there, you can develop new initiatives that will outperform your previous marketing attempts. As your marketing strategies improve, your revenue will soon follow suit.

The post How to Effectively Market Your Small Business appeared first on SiteProNews.

Short-term working capital loans help you overcome barriers to engaging with customers online. You can use working capital loans to:

• Hire a social media specialist to manage your channels.
• Upgrade your web content management system to improve your website.
• Invest in your website’s backend to bolster performance.
• Bring in consultants to help you improve online branding.
• Bridge cash flow gaps that may occur after investing in marketing and waiting for returns.

Short-term loans can be used to eliminate the obstacles between you and your online marketing plans. From there, it’s time to act to engage customers online. Here are seven effective strategies:

1. Run Social Contests

Running a contest on social media lets you engage customers online by offering them a reward for interacting with your content. You can ask participants to attend an event or time the contest to create urgency for customers to get involved. Either way, creating a fun experience and offering an incentive can leave them more likely to engage with your brand.

Creating opportunities for new leads and customer interactions isn’t the only benefit of social contests. These social experiences help you target a wide range of customer types who want to participate in special promotions. A study from Eventbrite found that 78 percent of millennials would rather spend money on an experience than a tangible item. As such, creating an engaging contest that generates a strong user experience can drive younger consumers to invest in your marketing initiatives.

For example, you could consider holding a charitable giving drive for a local non-profit and promoting it on social media. By offering an award to the top donator you can engage customers online, fuel brand awareness, and strengthen your community reputation.

2. Create LinkedIn and Facebook Groups

Launching groups on LinkedIn and Facebook lets you create natural opportunities for conversations with existing and potential customers. Facebook and LinkedIn groups serve as places where people with similar interests can engage with one another. For example, a roofing contractor may create a Facebook group designed for people to ask questions about replacing a roof. Members of the group could discuss their concerns, and contractors could provide specific answers to questions.

These natural conversations make it easier to engage customers online by taking the focus away from direct sales and showing that your business genuinely cares about its customers.

3. Build up Your Review Reputation

According to ReviewTrackers, more than 63 percent of consumers check reviews before visiting a business. What’s more, 53 percent of consumers expect a response to a negative review in a week or less. If you aren’t working to manage your online reviews, then you’re missing an opportunity to engage customers online.

Encourage your customers to review your products and services online. Take time to respond to reviews, ideally with a unique reply and not just a pre-written post. While collecting and responding to customer reviews requires time and effort, it could mean the difference between a business’s success and failure.

4. Host Google Hangouts and Webinars

Google Hangouts and webinars provide you with the opportunity to have a personal interaction with targeted audiences or potential customers. For example, maybe you want to run a Q&A session about a new service you’re launching. This can be done through a webinar meeting or text chat on Google Hangouts. Google Hangouts and webinars are an effortless way for customers to interact with your business and for you to engage with customers online.

5. Leverage Content Marketing

Consumers research products and services extensively online. Providing informational resources and thought leadership on your site can create trust between your business and consumers. For example, imagine a customer wants to replace a kitchen and wants to know what to expect from the project. As they’re researching, they find you have useful blog posts, videos, and other content that helps them understand the process. When it comes time to make a purchase, they’ll know about your brand, trust your expertise, and be more likely to seek out your services.

Content is an ideal way to engage customers online and organically bring them to your site. Like social media contests, groups, and Google Hangouts, the goal is to create a reciprocal relationship.

6. Engage with Comments and Messages on Social Media

It isn’t enough to have a social media presence. You’ll need to engage with customers that reach out to you through your social media sites. Active messages and comments create a strong sense of community and lead to future discussions. This requires a continual commitment to being active online. The rewards that come from online relationship-building can be invaluable.

7. Celebrate Together

Did you just reach 1000 followers on LinkedIn? Did you set a sales record? When your company reaches milestones, engage with customers online and make them feel like they contributed to your success. Making an effort to celebrate your company and customers success is a great way to build a solid relationship and increase loyalty.

Prioritizing Online Marketing with Working Capital

With these effective strategies to improve your online marketing and the help of working capital, you’ll be able to engage customers online. Working capital loans can be used to optimize your website, hire a marketing specialist, and invest in social media initiatives.

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