Harnessing the Power of SEO for Small Businesses

The world has become a global village due to internet connectivity.

Did you know that as at March 2017?

• Asia was the leading continent with over 50% of the world internet users followed by Europe at 17%.
• There were more internet users in China than double the population of the USA.
• For the very first time in history, with a projected $205 billion internet ad spend compared to a projected TV ad spend of $192 billion, global internet advertising spend is expected to exceed TV advertising spend in 2017.
• The internet influenced sales to the tune of $2.1 trillion in 2016

As per these data from hosting facts, one thing is true – the internet age is here with us. But just having a website is not enough.

Your website will get buried in this avalanche of internet traffic unless you purposely work to make it stand out.

Search engine optimisation is one of the ways to increase the visibility of your website.

How does it work?

Most people use search engines like Google, Bing, Quora, Vimeo, etc. when looking for items on the internet.

How Stuffworks explains that most search engines use computer programs called spiders or crawlers to search the web and analyze individual pages. These programs read webpages and index them according to the terms that show up often and in important sections of the page. You have to use particular keywords and in the right places for the search engine spider to know what your page is about. For example, you can put your keywords on the title and section headers in your website.

Take care not to over use the keyword or your site may be flagged as spam.

Secondly, getting other websites with relevant or similar content to link to your page ensures that the search engine programs will rank your site higher.

Most search engines also seek three main things according to Shopify:

• Trust – If your site has poor reviews, Google will not prioritize it in its searches. Get newspaper articles, industry links, and other trusted sites to link to you; partners, vendors, happy customers. Get them to link to your website to show that you are highly credible and trustworthy.
• Quality – What differentiates your site from other websites offering the same products or services?
• Authority –Build a fanbase; build a social network, get people to link to you, get people to share your site pages on their social networks saying ‘I want this!’. Get people to comment, leave testimonials, and show pictures of themselves using your products or experiencing your service.When you rally your fan base to talk about you online,then you show Google that you are an authority in that particular field..

Optimizing a site isn’t always straightforward or easy, which is why some webmasters use an SEO consultant like Charlie Aligaen of Colorado springs SEO.