Small Business SEO

If you’re a small business website owner or if you’re planning a new internet business with SEO (search engine optimisation) as one of your primary marketing objectives, you’re probably aware that securing top natural (“organic” or “free”) placements in the search engines for competitive key-phrases that relate to your business is not a simple process.

The bad news is that for many internet start-ups and smaller sites, achieving top rankings for competitive “head” key-phrases (high traffic, one or two word key-phrase searches) is not likely to happen without significant financial investment and development time. The good news is that you can start to generate highly targeted natural search traffic to your site, sometimes within 2 to 3 months, by targeting what’s known as the “long-tail” search. This even applies to many brand new sites.

Small Business Strategies

SEO strategies for big business websites must differ to those for small businesses and internet start-ups. Big businesses have both the human and financial resources to develop their web properties at an advanced rate. Link building campaigns, for example, are much easier to instigate if the company which plans and launches them has a large budget for online and offline PR activities, together with a sizable marketing team responsible for delivering compelling and “linkable” creative content. Small business SEO strategies therefore need to be defined according factors such as budgets, human resources and market competition.

Long-tail and Local Search

An ideal starting strategy for many small to medium size businesses and internet start-ups, especially those that are new to SEO, is to target both long-tail and local searches. Long-tail refers to specific niche, search phrases (normally 4 or more words long). Although long-tail searches tend to have low search volumes, the competition on many of these searches is much less intense. In addition, those who use 4 or more words in their searches to find specific content show a much greater level of intent to sign-up or purchase from you if your landing pages offer what they are specifically looking for. Likewise, targeting local search is another way to gain high placements in the search engines for key-phrases that have lower levels of competition. For example, if you own a bicycle repair shop in Eastbourne, your chances of securing a top ten placement for the search term “bicycle repair shop Eastbourne” are much higher than the more generic term “bicycle repair shop”. JHM can help you to put together a strategy to target long-tail and local search more effectively. For a more specific insight into small business SEO strategies you can also follow the advice on our blog.

Small Business SEO Consultancy

As a small business consultancy, JHM can offer lower rates than those charged by many established SEO agencies. Long established, London based SEO agencies are more likely to hold accounts with very large corporate organisations. As a result, the services and strategies they offer are more suited to bigger companies. As a small business SEO specialist JHM can offer advice, solutions and consultancy rates that are affordable to new and growing businesses.

For further information or advice, please get in touch via our contact page.